Garden Neglect...the explanation.

I’ve been known to make excuses in the past for why my garden’s looking a bit untidy or unkempt. But lately my garden has been looking the worst it ever has. In addition to the damage caused by a couple of mid winter storms this year the situation has been compounded by months of neglect. 

Observant readers of this blog may have heard me make subtle comments about the various distractions that were keeping me from the garden at various times, and more so probably in the last year or so. Up until now I’ve refrained from going into that on here, but now it's time to break my silence. 

Sadly, the reason is because my wife Izumi who I sometimes mention on here, has been battling cancer since Nov 2011 and despite the efforts of many good people to help her, she finally lost the battle on August 27th (about a month ago) and has now gone to rest.

Izumi loved the Garden, visiting it every day to seek out something for dinner or in more recent times to gather whatever was available for juicing, in an effort to keep her immunity strong. Believe it or not there are still some vegetables growing in amongst all those weeds...somewhere.

But I couldn’t possibly allow myself to do another blog post on here without first acknowledging her passing and crediting her for much of what I was motivated to do. In many ways she was the inspiration for building the garden in the first place, a huge project which took years of painstaking effort.

I got a great deal of satisfaction out of her reaction to everything I did. Without her encouragement it probably never would have happened the way it did. She took a great deal of interest in this blog too although she was adamant that she didn’t want her picture shown on here — at least not her face, probably because most of the photos taken of her in the garden didn’t show her at her best. But also because she preferred her privacy and was more comfortable staying in the background.

Many of the ideas we incorporated into the garden came from our visits to various parts of the country usually during summer holidays. Like the time we visited Russell in the far North of New Zealand which is where we got the inspiration to grow a Bougainvillea vine over a pergola.

Or there was the time we joined the Great Greenhithe Garden tour where we got lots of inspiration from the private gardens we visited. On that tour I also got this poignant shot of Izumi walking down a long tree-lined driveway into the distance. I never imagined at the time how seeing this less than a year later would bring home the deep sense of loss I feel now that she’s gone.

Goodbye Izumi — you'll be missed!

Now spring has arrived... closely followed by daylight savings, so it’s time to get back out into the garden and start tidying up — if only the weather would let me.

Home grown vegetables helping to save a life

Speak to anyone who grows their own vegetables and they’ll usually talk about the satisfaction they get from growing their own vegies, the convenience of being able to pick it fresh whenever they want to, and some of the cost benefits they may have experienced.

But this past week and a half I have come to appreciate more than ever before the amazing health benefits of growing your own fresh vegies, particularly silver beet and beetroot which are both high in iron.

A friend of mine “Joe” has been in hospital fighting for his life after a virus which had attacked his heart left one of his heart valves practically destroyed and needing replacement. He’d been told by the doctors if they didn’t operate within the next 2 weeks he could die.

Unfortunately his haemoglobin level had dropped significantly and as he’s one of Jehovah’s Witnesses he couldn’t accept a blood transfusion which is what they normally give in that situation. And they can’t operate until they get his red blood cell count up to around 100. So suddenly my garden with a good crop of iron-producing fresh vegetables came to the rescue.

We filled a flask of freshly squeezed silver beet and beetroot juice (using the root and the leaves), mixed with 2 green apples, a whole lemon (without the zest) 2 carrots, a leaf of cabbage and a handful of parsley, then rushed it over to the hospital.

His wife and family got their own juicer and started giving him regular doses of freshly squeezed juice, high in iron, which has been steadily building up his red blood cell count.

We wish him well and are hoping for the best. 

Hang in there Joe!

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

UPDATE (as at Jan 21, 2013)

After a rigorous routine of freshly squeezed juices, Joe's Haemoglobin level was built up from 56 to 113. It was a slow process but Joe was finally able to get the heart surgery he needed and is now on the road to recovery. He’s convinced the juices helped and is now a fresh juice convert.

Thank you to all for your thoughts and prayers.

Baba’s Garden

One particular highlight of our trip to Japan was returning to my in-laws place after being away for 18 years. I’ve always found their place to be absolutely fascinating. The family home has been owned and lived in for several generations.

They live in the countryside so they have quite a large garden. My mother-in-law who we call Baba has always been a keen gardener but now that she’s in her 80’s she has not been able to care for her garden the way she used to. It was sad to see her garden looking so overgrown and uncared for.

So what better job to occupy myself with than to get stuck in and tidy up her garden. The challenge was: What could I do in the short time I was there?

BEFORE

DURING

AFTER

Some interesting aspects of the project were, finding all the tools I needed...

...helping my daughter to appreciate some of the joys of gardening...

...and finding ways of overcoming the language barrier...

This is me pictured with my brother-in-law Kazuharu, who was very grateful for my help tidying up his parents garden. He knew it needed doing but just didn’t know where to start. I was glad to be able to help.

Plus it seemed I even provided some entertainment to some of the locals – 

including the postman and a few nosey neighbours.

Watch the video I made about Cleaning up Baba's Garden

Bad Memories in the Garden

Saturday, November 5th, 2005 was a bad day in my garden. 
Nov 5th is Guy Fawkes day in New Zealand which is when most people go mad with fire works. It happened to be a Saturday and I’d decided to have a few friends over for a BBQ. Back then my back yard was still in it's original state with no gardens or BBQ properly built yet, there were no lovely steps or paths to walk up, so it was a pretty rough setup, although the bridge had been built by this time. It was just a grassy bank that levelled out at the top which is where we did the BBQ.

Because the garden is surrounded by bush, I made a point of asking our guests to refrain from bringing any fireworks – everything was pretty dry. There were a few families including a number of children who were running around all over the property. As it happened, the neighbors kids who were around the same age (early teens) started showing off and were letting off fireworks on their property. Then one of the neighbors kids appeared with a tennis racquet and lobbed a large firework over some trees and into the trees next to us causing the whole bush on a steep bank to erupt into flames, including a huge pine tree that was towering above us. Within seconds the flames were leaping several metres into the air and making a terrific roaring sound.

Most of my guests stood there stunned while I was thrown into a panic. I was terribly concerned that it would quickly spread and set the whole area on fire endangering the houses. I sprinted to the house and called the fire service, then grabbed as many buckets as I could find and started directing our youngsters to fill them up from a large stormwater tank in the bottom of the gully and ferry them to the base of the fire which was over the brow of the hill.

 
We managed to get the fire mostly under control by the time the fire engine arrived. But the pine tree was still on fire above us and there was no way we could throw a bucket of water that high.

So within a reasonably short time the fire crew had their hoses on it and managed to put the fire out. Everyone was a bit shaken and I was high on adrenalin. I was hugely impressed with one of the boys (about 14) who was quite heroic in his efforts to help me. It was all rather exciting for the youngsters who got more than they bargained for that night despite being asked to leave their fireworks at home.

While in the process of putting all their hoses away, one of our boys mentioned to one of the firemen how the fire had started. Next thing we know the police turned up to investigate (as far as I know no charges were laid). By this time night was falling...

In the mean time those in charge of our BBQ (which I'd completely forgotten about) had finished cooking all kinds of sausages and what-not and were taking the food back over to the house ready to serve.

One of the guests 'Sharon' was making her way down the bank to the bridge carrying a dish full of cooked sausages, when she slipped down the bank (the grass was still wet from the fire hoses which took the same route). She went skidding down the bank on her bottom, the sausages and dish went bouncing down the bank in all directions. She came to an abrupt stop landing awkwardly on one of her ankles. When we tried to help her up we could see she was in pain and she couldn't put any weight on it. 

One of our boys (the informant) told the fire crew what had happened. One of them came to see if he could help – he appeared to be trained in first aid. He suspected a broken bone, so then he called an ambulance. Sharon ended up on crutches for several weeks after that. 


The neighbours in the surrounding area must certainly have been wondering what was going on at our place that night with all the emergency services turning up one after the other.

Needless to say, I've decided never again to have a BBQ on Guy Fawkes night.

Sharon's little accident was a huge motivator for me to install the steps and landscaping to make the back part of our garden safer, so at least something good eventually came out of it.