As I stepped into the kitchen garden this weekend it was like being transported to a different world. A place of minor miracles everywhere you look. I still can’t get my head around the fact that I can grow food. Food we eat and enjoy. Food that started by me fumbling with packets of seeds and crossing my fingers that my efforts would not be in vain.
I munched my way around the beds pulling out the occasional weed but otherwise marvelling at what nature has produced for us to eat.
I didn’t know it the time but the line of sight to the kitchen garden from the bedroom window is perfect. It’s the first thing that I see when I first open the curtains in the morning and the last thing I see when I close them at night. Every day I look down and think how marvellous it is that you can grow food right there outside your bedroom window.
There are many other things that also cross my mind like must tie up tomatoes, plant swede seeds. Order cloche frame. It’s a pressure cooker of things to do.
Between you and me I’m just relieved that anything is growing. The fact that we’ve just eaten our first beetroots grown from seed that tasted rather delicious is just a bonus. And every day I pick something new for us to eat I just feel happier and happier. Now all we need to do is align our menu planning a little more strongly. I can tell you that it won’t be long before we’ll be eating courgettes in as many forms as we can.
I remember 2006 being a year long winter. A cold, wet winter in the UK and a cold wet autumn, winter, spring and summer in New Zealand. It wasn’t until weeks into 2007 that I realised that sunshine existed. I’m starting to get that feeling of déjà vu.
On one hand the moist air flows we’ve been experiencing in the last couple of weeks are a pain but they are doing wonders for the kitchen garden. I could happily do without the cold temperatures though. It’s a heinous crime to have the heating on in the height of summer but with single digit temperatures this week my fingers and toes were starting to seize up.
I remember the pain of returning to work after a vacation. The numbness of arriving to my desk and the energy it required to talk to lots of other people. The exhaustion that sets in from mid morning and the overwhelming feeling to lay my head on the desk and hope that no-one would notice if I had 40 winks. So, I know how MT has been feeling as he headed back to the office this week.
The bassets and I have lost our momentum too. Our holiday routine has gone and with it our home companion. I’m not sure if it was this or the cold snap in the weather but it’s been an uphill struggle to the start of this week.
Being the butt of many jokes was an occupational hazard working in marketing and PR. Someone once asked me if we threw a party in the office to open the post since we were constantly organising opening ceremonies of one sort or another. Although my life in corporate PR is now a thing of the past I still couldn’t bring myself to do anything special for the official opening of the Domestic Executive kitchen garden. Also, vegetable gardens are very much headline news so think it’s best to keep a low profile.
Suffice to say the kitchen garden is now officially open. But not open to everyone.
Water tank bursting rain is upon us for a few days. The temperatures have plummeted and the winds are wild enough to create sleep depriving booms under the veranda. However hard I tell myself that rain is a good thing for the land I can’t help feel deprived of summer. Call me old fashioned but I rather like the sun to shine during the summer months.
Cold enough to add a layer and replace the jandals with socks it was also a day to ditch the salads in favour of something more warming. Just was well as the last remaining cauliflower was crying out for harvest.
As I stood at the Butchers on Christmas Eve I overhead another customer telling him that they were staying at home over the holidays as they had animals and were supervising their neighbours animals. The butcher replied “….seems very fashionable this year for people to be staying at home and looking after other people’s animals.” It struck me right there that for the first time in my life I am following a fashion!
Our neighbours are off up north and we’re been entrusted with their precious livestock for a week.
Being in the new Kitchen Garden with me is a whole new adventure for the bassets with enormous scope for mischief. I love their company but gardening with bassets is a futile exercise in command and control. There is rarely an offer of a helpful paw but rather an annoying contribution to digging. They are also insistent to check things out like a canary in a mine to sniff out the patch until they are satisfied that it is safe for me to work in.
Mostly they will busy themselves finding the most comfortable spot to sit and contemplate the view or take in a few rays while they snooze. There was no time for snoozing for this Domestic Executive though as I’m already weeks late in planting out the spuds.
Our new garden construction has been called many things. Vege Garden, allotment, Elizabethan Garden and potager. I’m pleased to announce it’s official name is the Domestic Executive Kitchen Garden. This is the third element of the Backyard Pantry empire – the first being the herb and salad potager and the free range chicken coop.
It’s been an exciting and exhilarating experience to get to this point from dream, to plan to construction. Now the real fun can start. For the moment I’m enjoying the beauty of it in its pristine condition. I just love the way the path sweeps down. I’ll be getting to know that path real well in the future.
I’m sure you wouldn’t like it if you were dressed in shorts and sent outside without sun screen or a sweater on a summers day in Wellington. It would be both chilly around the knees and potential for sunstroke in a flash. My vegetable seedlings feel the same. To bring them onto the next stage before being planted out I needed to construct some cold frames.
On my trips back the UK I was careful to spot the best designs for these plant incubator units, such as those at Chatsworth House or the Organic Garden at Ryton. Of course mine turned out with the traditional Hatchet and Botchet Enterprises style (functional but not necessarily beautiful).
