About a week ago I was sitting on the lounge room floor of my girlfriends place talking about Gardening and the best place to put your washing line so that you get the best out of the sunlight. We said it then and I'll say it again, we definetly aren't in our 20's anymore.
Gardening is not something I was ever very good at or interested in. I have a slight neglection problem with indoor plants. As in, if they are indoors they might as well be dead becuase they soon will be. I don't mean to kill them, I just don't remember to look after them. And before you say "you have to keep a plant alive before you can keep a pet alive before you can have a baby." That's stupid. My cat's alive and scratching and he's 14 years old.
The garden at my house is large. Huge even. Mum is an avid gardener and it was hers before I inherited it along with the house. Don't get me wrong, my parents didn't die, they just got sick of waiting for me to leave again and decided to do it first.
Now that the weather is warming up and I'm keen to spend the summer days and evenings outside having BBQ's and relaxing in the sun, I'm making a real effort to do more and more gardening. Of course before doing any gardening I need my appropriate gardening tools. In my bucket I have everything I need and I carry it around the garden. It's my Gardening handbag.
I started with the little patch by the garage. I de-weeded it, pulled out pretty much everything except the lillys and the bulbs, laid down new soil, planted new bulbs and some sunflowers.
I picked up the hose to water the patch and was pleased that I had followed my number one Gardening rule: ALWAYS HAVE YOUR CAMERA HANDY.
On patio and deck there are hundreds of pots. I've been de-weeding them all, but decided it was time for an overhall. I've pulled out and de-soiled all the odd pots that had either nothing in them, or I didn't like the plant. The deck is now the 'Orchard'. I've had two lemon trees for a long time.
And now I have a Lime Tree.
And Strawberry plants.
The plants were only $1.84 each. I think I always thought it would be difficult to make little houses for the strawberry plants, but we had the mesh and the plastic ties, so I wrapped the pots up like christmas presents and whalaa! Hopefully it works and those birds keep their dirty paws off my fruit! I can't wait to have fresh strawberries this summer.
There are three things I don't like about Gardening:
1. I hate getting dirt under my fingernails.
2. The prospect of spiders at every dig.
3. It's hayfever foder.
But I'm excited for my new orchard, and the nice summer area, and of course the potential to spot photographic opportunities is fantastic. Especially when I always obey rule number 1.
