Unlike Esther, I have not loved my garden nearly enough this year. Superficially it looks very pretty, but get right in among it and it is dry, littered with dead and dying pansies and tomatoes and large barren patches. I feel a lingering sense of guilt and sadness every time I go out there. I don’t know where the long days of lovingly tending the garden have gone - my weekends always seem too full and my weeknights too tired. And water restrictions are breaking my heart - Wednesdays and Saturdays (or is it Thursdays and Sundays? I can never remember) seem to slip by so fast.
Despite this sad lack of attention, there are still somehow always treats waiting out there for me. There is more corn than we can manage to eat; at least twice a week we can easily pick a punnet’s worth of strawberries; the fuji apple tree is so tiny and laden that it almost has more apples than tree; the plum tree provided enough plums for a week’s good eating and half a dozen jars of deep red glorious jam; lebanese cucumbers are crisp and plentiful and the zucchinis and squash seem to be able to withstand terrible neglect and still produce more than we can eat; there are onions stored under the house and potatoes just waiting to be lifted; the rhubarb and silverbeet are perennially generous and the roses - oh the roses are divine: big blowsy red, yellow and apricot bundles of mind-blowing scent. I don’t know why, but despite the dry and the uninspiring soil I planted them in they are deliriously happy.
At least the empty space will be ready for the huge crop of broccoli that I am planning for winter. Maybe it will even rain again one of these days.
