My garden is nothing short of embarrassing. When we first moved here a few years ago we were in the middle of a drought so nothing grew. Nothing died either as they were all drought hardy plants. The garden just didn't change. Oh joy! A garden that needs NO TENDING! Perfect.
Then the drought breaking rains. Dormant seeds lying in wait under the surface woke up and grew like crazy. These new plants that suddenly appeared in the garden are known as WEEDS. Full on Cobblers Pegs and Scotch Thistles.
And grass... in the garden bed.
Oh and it's TOO HOT to garden. I ignored it for a while and then I looked around with the eyes of a visitor and thought, 'The people who live here are grubs.'
There have been some valid attempts at weeding and new plantings. But the maintenance! Oh the maintenance! I do despise maintenance. I do a thing once, I like it to remain the way I left it. For ever.
Mum's garden is a different story.
Looking out from the veranda to lush green. A bit of an overcast day- but there have been many of late.
It's still a work in progress. A garden that's always changing. AND CONSTANTLY MAINTAINED, unlike other gardens I've mentioned... recently.
I always pictured myself as the gardening type, but I'm so NOT. It's unfortunate because apparently my garden has 'good bones'. Whatever that means. Planted over an ancient burial ground perhaps. Who knows. I certainly don't.
My mum is a mulcher. She was mulching before it became 'the thing'. Her mulcher guru (some old hippie in a straw hat and gum boots) put a wallaby in her mulch and swears by it. APPARENTLY, there was no rotting flesh smell at all and in a matter of moments (or was it days? weeks?) the steaming heap of mulch did it's work and the wallaby was gone. Bones and all. Or so the legend goes.
The closest I've ever come to composting was when I mopped up spilled milk with a towel and didn't get to wash it for a day or so and in the Brisbane humidity it had started to steam... steam was visibly coming off the towel, it was radiating heat and smelt like a rotting wallaby.
But I wish I was a composter.
Gardening would be so satisfying.
I don't know how you do it, Mum. How you've always done it, even when we were small and time consuming.
Your garden has always been beautiful.
