So it's Sunday night and I'm restless and tired. Why
is it that I dread Sunday nights? Well, the weekend is nearly over and I'm
cranky.
Cranky that I didn't finish weeding the whole vegie
patch, cranky that I didn’t whipper snip the edges of my garden beds, cranky
that I haven't mulched my newest no-dig garden and cranky that I haven't
transplanted the multiplying mini mondo grass from between my vegie patch
pavers to a new spot to flourish. The weekend always goes by so quickly.
It seems my endless list of jobs is rarely done,
and my backyard is never, well for want of a better word; perfect. But I have
to remind myself that that’s the point really. A garden is never ‘finished’ or 'completed', it’s a perpetual cycle of growing and evolving, a perfect mixture of
nature and human effort intertwined.
These days I’m trying to follow a gardening philosophy
of less effort and more nature, that is, something of a permaculture flavour.
This idea of working with nature rather than against it, lends itself well in
my opinion, to the busy lifestyle many of us seem to find ourselves occupying. For
example, rather than struggling to mow and manicure lawns, I’ve done away with
most of mine and replaced it with garden beds and paths so that the precious
time I do have can be spent growing food rather than watching grass grow.
 |
| less lawn = less maintenance & more space for growing food |
Seriously, one summer about two years ago I
remember being nearly finished the boring weekly task of mowing my 640m block
when I ran out of petrol. It was late in the day on a Saturday, so I decided to
leave finishing the job until the next morning. After a quick trip to the
service station, I had the mower revving back to life, only to find the small
square left to cut was now lower than the rest of the grass. Yep, in less than
24 hours, my lawn had perceptibly grown, and it was at that point I realized
how ridiculously futile the idea of a manicured lawn actually is.
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| newly mulched garden bed |
Like many things in life, it is the sum of many
small actions in the garden that add up to being something great. So as I look
agitatedly at the wall clock edging closer to Sunday bedtime, I try to remind
myself of all the small garden things I’ve managed to fit in amongst my weekend
of household chores. Like the three sections of vegie patch that I did finish weeding, like mulching the little
garden bed leading into the chook pen, like picking off Bronze Orange Bugs (Musgraveia sulciventris) from my citrus
trees and also planting out my little corn seedlings into their new garden
patch.
 |
| Musgraveia sulciventris |
I
also managed to help a friend beautify her courtyard this weekend. Let’s face
it; everyone should be able to enjoy a pretty garden. It’s just plain nice to
have aesthetically pleasing things around us, and in the same way it’s
enjoyable to have a pleasantly and personally decorated living room, it’s a
pleasure to have an attractive garden that reflects your personality too. So with some
assistance with plant selection and placement, some shoveling of soil and a
small amount of hard yakka to dig out an unwanted bird of paradise plant, and
hey presto chango a garden transformation had taken place!! Not bad for a half
day’s work now that I think about it.
So
maybe, upon reflection of the weekend's little achievements, Sunday nights aren’t so bad after all….And hey, if I set my alarm just a
bit earlier for the morning, (assuming the crane is operational) perhaps I
could transplant my zucchini or rosella seedlings out from their seed trays before work;
another small but significant contribution towards having a Bountiful Backyard.
