I have been dreadfully preoccupied lately, mostly in the garden, dealing with things. I feel like the little boy sticking his fingers in the dyke, plugging new leaks. Although it is often not stopping leaks but creating them as I have been watering the garden based on which bed needs it most, gets it first. The same goes for the weeding.
I really need to get my act together and start using the system I put together last year that seems to work well. I divided my garden into four sections and started out by watering the second one and weeding the first. The theory being, having been watered the previous day would make the weeds come out easier. Then over the week I should have dealt with the whole garden and have three days up my sleeve for parts of the garden that need extra attention or when gardening isn’t possible – because let’s be honest, life gets in the way sometimes!
But the recent tummy bug has thrown me and I seem to drift aimlessly through the garden, when I get a chance to be in the garden. The rest of the time I’m tackling all the ordinary chores that have mounted up. I also feel like I have lost my writing mojo – not that I have forgotten how or anything, but I just don’t seem to have anything in me to make it happen – so I’m going to force it! It’s like riding a bike. Once I dust off the pedals, I shall remember the joy that is found with the wind in my hair and the feel of the keys bouncing away under my fingertips.
Summer starts on Sunday and so I shall commit myself to writing every day for most of December so I can recapture some of the love. Although I will stop short of Christmas as even a gardener needs a holiday – however a holiday period in the middle of the growing season is just madness… maybe I should start a petition on change.org to move Christmas to late autumn. That would be much more suitable for me and my fellow southern hemisphere gardeners.
In the meantime I have been a little bit remiss. Some really lovely fellow bloggers have awarded me some great blogging awards and I haven’t so much as thanked them, let alone done anything about it. So if it was you I shall be around at your place thanking you personally. I think I have rounded them all up, but if I have missed one – please forgive me and please take this as your thanks.
Firstly The Belmont Rooster http://thebelmontrooster.wordpress.com/ contacted me to nominate me for The Very Inspiring Blogger Award, but I was too slow and missed my opportunity to share with him in the celebrations. He has to be one on the most prolific supporters of gardening blogs out there as I see his little ‘like square’ everywhere I go and normally one of the first! If you haven’t seen him yet – go and check him out.
I was also nominated by Wendy at the http://quarteracrelifestyle.wordpress.com/ for the Sunshine Award, but once again that was a wee while ago and I completely missed it because of all the goings on in my life outside the garden. But Wendy has some great stuff on her blog and us Kiwis have to stick together, so go see her and tell her I told you that you absolutely had to go and visit!
Lucinda at http://lucindalines.wordpress.com/ also nominated me for the Versatile Blogger award, which was also an honour but was also a while ago and I haven’t dealt with it until now! I have been such a terrible bloggy friend. Lucinda is a breath of fresh air in the middle of a chaotic world as she talks about the ebb and flow of normal family life. Go and visit with her awhile – she is a really lovely soul!
And then yesterday Jen from http://gardenerjen.wordpress.com/ nominated me for The Liebster Award, which prompted me to do something about all these awards as it was getting a bit ridiculous. Jen is a new-ish blogger and passionate gardener in Melbourne, Australia, so her garden will be going great guns over the next few months and will be a great place to go to catch up with a spot of summer gardening. Go and see what she is doing and give her some encouragement – she is doing a great job. (I googled Liebster and it is German for sweetheart!)
Now I have to say I am dreadful at following instructions and most of these awards are too old so in the spirit of the awards I’ll tell you seven things you didn’t already know about me…. I have to say, most of these awards have very similar instructions – share secret insight about yourself – the amount of information varies even between recipients of the same award.
- I write gardening articles for many different places – online and in print.
- I’m taking photography lessons and loving them very much
- I’m working on an exciting new project with a rapidly approaching deadline
- I believe everyone should know how to plant a seed and get food in the same way they should know how to boil an egg and sew on a button.
- We have too many chickens!
- In December I will have a 1 minute series featured on NZ’s Christian radio Radio Rhema
- I had to have facebook training as I had never used it before this year and found I needed it for publicity for my book!
The awards also require you to nominate between 5 and 20 other bloggers, contacting them and then linking them to your blog, and as I have really messed this award ceremony up completely due to my lack of urgent attention, I am going to ask you to go to the first 7 blogs in the reader tag section under the tag “gardening”. http://wordpress.com/tag/gardening/ Choose the first 7 blogs you have never seen before and read and like them, and if you really like them – follow them!
Told you I was never one to follow instructions.
Come again soon – normal gardening blogging will resume in earnest from tomorrow!
Sarah the Gardener : o )
Well done 🙂
Thanks Wendy.
I hope you have had some of this rain on your garden – but not too much. I think we have had too much. It is all a bit soggy out there.
Cheers Sarah : o )
Yep, soggy here too Sarah but a beautiful day today.
You got there in the end 🙂 I hope you manage to find your energy soon. Sometimes these bugs knock you out for far longer than the physical symptoms hung around for (if that makes sense).
Love the idea of training the pumpkins to grow in a straight line and good luck with that. Every year I resolve to get my to grow in nice, compact circles and every year they get away from me 😀
Glad to see the Mudlet Chilli doing so well. I’ll show the girls when they get up. The Tim and Joey chilli is also doing nicely and I will take an update picture of it next week 🙂
Hi Elaine. I seem to be having more luck keeping my pumpkins straight than my tomatoes. I have been trying to keep the laterals pinched out but while I was sick they raced ahead and are all over the place! One year I’ll get nice straight tomatoes. That seems to be the a lesson in the garden – you can never actually achieve perfection – no matter how hard you try!
Cheers Sarah : o )
(I know how to sew on a button?!)…I “think” we have about 70 chooks at the moment…I can hear 1 of them crowing so I know that we have at least 1. Most of them have headed off to make nests on our 4 acres and every few days they trot out with another 20 fluff balls that the feral cats (hopefully not 70) promptly round up and hoover down…I guess it’s a form of natural “pest” control?!!! The problem being that we don’t get eggs and we are feeding these masses of exponential breeders for scratching all of the mulch out of the garden…not sure what we are going to do but it might involve trying to herd most of them into a cattle truck and fondly waving bye-bye…
Just planted our garden (thanks to a friend forcing me to). I am overwhelmed as well. I walked out into the bright sunshine (we have sunshine?!!!) full of purpose and suddenly realised that the last month of full on studies has taken us away from the garden at a most crucial time. All of the forget-me-nots that we forgot-them-not for the last 2 years got forgotten and came back en masse and Serendipity Farm is a sea of blue waving in the breeze, spreading sticky seeds to all and sundry. The Scotch thistles are back with a vengeance and after our month of solid rain have stems on them like small tree trunks and one of them took the whipper snipper line out of my trusty steed and rendered it stuffed…they are fighting back! I think they are in cahoots with the chooks and the feral cats…
I don’t take part in awards as I think they are akin to chain letters and are designed to feather the nests of the people that invented them as everyone has to head back to their blog to read the instructions and imagine the hits that they are getting…the free Search Engine Optimisation that they are harvesting for absolutely nothing? So NOPE to that! I DO however completely and utterly love the people who nominate me and the thought that goes behind it and hugs to everyone who cares enough to nominate bloggers for awards :).
I will come and help you get through your lettuce… I will sacrifice myself in order to assist you in your hour of need. I have a total of 1 lettuce in the garden thanks to my friend and a generous gift. I am going to have to get my act together if we are going to have lettuce on the Christmas table but this year has been a garden wash-out, next year I will be growing my own seedlings from heritage seed gleaned over the winter period and carefully selected. This year I am just lucky to have anything in the garden at all. Here’s to that elusive butterfly called “organisation”, may she ever fly around over our heads like the sword of Damocles and remind us that there is a way out of our bewilderment 😉
Hi Fran. We haven’t had any chicken escapes in ages, so it would seem we have mastered the art of chicken fencing! Although I moved the nesting boxes the other day and haven’t had any eggs since?! I may need to go and tackle the undergrowth in their field so there is nowhere to hide!
I kinda wing the awards thing as I’m not one to follow instructions. I like to honour those who nominate me, but a lot of effort needs to go into finding new nominations and linking them and checking and so I kinda go a bit free range there. I hope no one minds too much.
We have had an extraordinary amount of rain in the last few days and everything has gone nuts in the garden, but it is too soggy to go out and do any thing about it. It is driving me crazy… I must garden – I simply must…..
Have an awesome weekend.
Cheers Sarah : o )