Gardening Update

So part of the reason for this blog is to help keep track of everything I'm trying to do, and you get to learn with me, share my successes, and hopefully guide me through the mistakes. To understand what brought me to this point I need to take you back to the beginning of it, just over two years ago when I started gardening for the first time.


I'd never felt the 'call' to be a gardener, I was happy with a tree or two and vast areas of lawn, or maybe yard is the better description (lawn conjours images of manicured greeness, which I've never had). When we first came here I fell in love with the block, the slope of the land, the big trees, and a nice yard. All was well with it as it just seemed to self maintain with enough rain & sun to require nothing of me, except to dig out the occassional plant that broke up my 'yard' or chop back something impedeing a view out the windows. And then the sad day came when I was advised I would need a new septic tank. In a moment of insanity I decided to move it from it's original location and needed to put in 64 metres of trenches to go with it. (My inexperience discounted the idea of a biocycle unit, which in hindsight would have been a much better thing to do). To cut a long story short, in came the giant Tonka toys, and when they left there was not a blade of green left anywhere. After spending an inordinate amount of money on this folly, and ending up with what looked like first images of Mars (yes, red clay everywhere & no visible signs of life) I didn't have the option of 'instant' buy it in & roll it out lawn. Never to be outdone I figured I'd just grow my own.
Nothing can prepare the non gardener for the joy of seeing those first few tentative green sprouts. We'd sprinkled lawn seed down at the first sign of showers & within days the red took on a greenish hue. Day by day you could see those first little signs of life getting bigger, greener, until the red of the clay was hidden, and my green paradise was returned, better than ever.
I was hooked! The satisfaction I got from watching something I'd planted grow and develop was like nothing I'd experienced before. I figured if grass worked, what about vegies? And so began my journey...

Life's too short for the red silk dress

The morning of my Christmas lunch saw me in a panic as I gazed at my red silk dress I had planned to wear (and look effortlessly fantastic in). There, right on the front, in the middle of the stomach area, was a stain! I immediately doused said mark with water in an attempt to remove, only making the problem worse by ending up with a new, even more noticable watermark, which surrounded the stain like a target highlighting a bullseye. With no alternative option prepared I had to improvise, so, my Christmas vest (a brightly sequinned little number) that only comes out Christmas eve, was used to cover the whole torso area, target, stain & all. All day I shone like a giant christmas ornament, not quite the elegant & effortless look I'd hoped for.
Later reading another blog, about another special dress that had a mishap & was then relegated to the "home" wear pile, I wondered about how many well loved clothes out there have had short lived wear due to a drop or two of red wine, a deliciously saucy spaghetti bolognese, sticky drops of mango nectar, or an errant run away baby beet.
I've become a little less ruthless with these pieces, now recycling them as gardening outfits, but a designer red bias cut silk dress, I can't see it living up to the strains a mornings gardening would demand of it.
As I dwell on it's future, I wonder, why is it we don't celebrate these little marks, why we don't see it not as an ending for a fabulous dress, but as a celebration of occassion. Lets embrace the stains in our lives. Each stain could tell of a life enjoyed & experienced in it's fullness, moments to treasure or even to be envious of, rather than embarassed about. Just imagine how much more we'd wear that outfit we keep for special, and when wearing it, how much less we'd worry about those prospective little accidents, how we would order crab and crack it with enthusiasm, how we'd clink glasses with cheers, and play on the grass with the children. Life could come back to living beautifully if only we could live with our little stains.