Apology of sorts to the previous owner
‘‘The asters are getting too big for their boots, Nancy, the dahlias are fighting a bit for the attention they deserve.’’
In the final instalment of an occasional series of musings from reporter Carly Thomas on her chaotic journey since buying a grand old country house and garden in rural Manawatu¯ .
Life gets busy, it gets full and crazy and things tip off edges of diaries and days. They puddle darkly on my to-do list.
I haven’t visited Nancy. I have been busy. But busy just isn’t a good enough excuse when someone is elderly and you should have visited and you didn’t. I should have.
But I didn’t and now Nancy is not well enough for me to do that. It lies heavily on my chest and her garden reprimands me; the dahlias haven’t been as good as last year.
I can do something, though. I can tell Nancy about her garden, she can walk with my words and I can fight back the weeds while shooing the birds off the grapevine.
The asters are getting too big for their boots, Nancy, the dahlias are fighting for the attention they deserve and so the asters will get a haircut when they are done bringing colour to my mornings.
The fuschia is threatening to take over the house. I thought I had pruned it sufficiently but I greatly underestimated its ability. It is in cahoots with the wisteria, whose tendrils travel underground to pop up in inappropriate places. I admire its attitude.
We have reinstated the vege garden and the self-seeding sunflowers that I hear are clingers-on from a height competition years ago are nodding high over the paddock fence at the horses.
We are all sick of courgettes. I planted three when one would have been more than enough – you probably could have told me that.
I am still having a daily battle with the oxalis. I weed it and it grows back overnight in a ridiculous deja vu loop. I acknowledge its can-do, will-do ooomph, but by God I despise it.
I have planted salvias in glowing ember red and a deeply bruised purple. Hebes, too, for the bees and a hedge of lavender. The ladies at the garden centre ask about your garden. People remember it, Nancy, and they remember you.
I am not as good a gardener as you are, nowhere near, the dahlias are proof of that, and I wonder what your trick with them was. I guess a lot.
I apologise to things that I have pulled out and then found out they are actually an heirloom plant. I hope they had a chance to seed and I applaud new growth.
The kids make huts, Sam shrieks around the tennis court after Lily, and Ava draws your flowers. The conker tree is the running-away-from-home tree.
It’s busy, this garden of yours. I can’t keep up with it – it is always a step ahead of me as I dig and weed and cut and mow.
But it is never too busy that it doesn’t have time to sit with me as I sip my tea and wonder at the people that have passed through its far-reaching arms.