Wild Hope Homestead

So, my bamboo plan didn’t pan out last night. The Husband had to work late, and he can’t really control when he finishes each job he has to do. Never mind, we will try bamboo hunting again tonight.

I had plenty to keep myself busy yesterday anyway. I spent a large chunk of the day with The Husband’s Father and The Husband’s Mother, who came around to finish putting up our new fence. Originally, I had envisaged a timber fence, but what they came up with, as the property owners and ingenuity specialists, is cheaper and probably better. They found this great outdoor fabric product, in a lovely natural brown shade, which has been attached to wires and metal poles, erected onto the existing small wire fence. We did a double layer of it for more privacy. The lengths of material had to be sewed together so I finally got my new sewing machine out. The Parents gave it to me for my birthday, but I have been too busy with my other projects and have put my fingers in so many pies that I daren’t bust into the sewing machine before I have taken my fingers out of at least one other pie. Fortunately, The Husband’s Mother is a sewer, so I left her to it.

The great thing about the material is that it still lets a little bit of light through all over, unlike a timber fence. Now I can potter around the patio area without the whole world staring at me from the park. And I won’t feel so ashamed about watering my patio plants in my dressing gown. Not that that happens very often… I wasn’t much help with the fence, I got distracted pruning the adjacent bushes and chopping up the prunings to a good composting size.

When I had the garden back to myself, I determined to have another crack at the ‘feijoa garden’. This is the garden along our front fence and round the corner a bit, which has three feijoa trees, a young mandarin tree, a young cabbage tree and a large population of partly dead weeds. I had sprayed the weeds a while back, when they were meadow-like and covering the fence. I should have taken some ‘before’ photos. I have had a couple of cracks at tidying it up, but have been avoiding it to my best ability, in favour of almost anything else. Why? Because it is a garden of terror. However, it must be done, as it is letting the property down from the street and making me feel guilty.

Why is it so terrible? Well, it is home to a few things that in themselves are nasty, but altogether, strike terror into my heart. First, there is the kikuyu grass. It is hard enough to get out of pliable ground, but when it has overrun ground full of feijoa and cabbage tree roots, it’s hideous. I may have killed the above-ground growth, but the roots and runners are everywhere. Second, there is oxalis. Again?! Yes, it is in this garden bed too. Argh! And what’s even worse is what it has been growing in. Cat litter. Apparently the last tenant thought it was a good idea to empty his cat litter into the garden. A lot. The thought of stumbling across cat pooh while I was clearing everything out was disturbing. I suppose that’s always a risk while gardening, but it just seems gross sifting through cat litter! Aside from these thoughts, the garden is full of tiny white stones, which is not ideal.

I did my best to shovel out most of the stones, but the chunks of kikuyu had to be dug out from amongst them, which caused the stones to fly around. Digging up the kikuyu and shoveling up the stones disturbed hoardes of little oxalis bulbs. Why? Just why? Ok, this is a FWP, but still. It is very slow progress, but I have made progress. I will probably have to spray the oxalis again, as it is sure to resurface now that I have disturbed all those bulbs of terror. I have also made progress with reclaiming the mystery concrete edging that the grass and soil had covered over. And I even planted some hedge seedlings. Poor things, they had been sitting around waiting for longer than I ever leave plants because of my avoidance issues. Now, I need to put some compost on the garden. I’d like to think I’ve cleared the worst of the feijoa garden, but there’s another pile of cat litter on the other side of this feijoa tree. Yup. Maybe I should just have a wee look at that sewing machine…