Chelsea’s annual glitterati of gardening is just a few weeks away. A cornucopia of the great, good and glamorous of the horticultural world.

Can’t beat it for armchair gardening.

You can turn horticultural pundit in the comfort of your home. Opining on growers, blooms, garden design and revelling in the gardening secrets of celebrities. There may be RHS spin-offs but none captures the glamour of gardening like the real Chelsea Flower Show.

Of course, I’ve never actually been to ‘Chelsea’. Not sure I want to break the telegenic spell shuffling amongst the crowds.

That’s the thing about gardening, is it’s less glamorous than the curated world of gardening on TV, in books and social media would have you believe. Even gardens you can visit are manicured for show.

Nothing wrong with putting on a good show. You’ve got to have something to aspire to. Although a little more small print might save us mere mortals from despondency and abject failure.

The biggest lessons in life can be found in a garden. Literally.

What lives, what dies and what thrives. If you want lessons in humility you could do yourself a favour and take up gardening.

Every year I’m more respectful of folk that live off the land. People who farm land so others can eat. Of growers of plants for their beauty and enjoyment. To grow successfully on a consistent basis takes skills, know-how and tenacity to keep going when nature turns against you.

I’m reading ‘A Wood of One’s Own’ by Ruth Pavey – perfect for us romantic ruralists. She buys a neglected orchard and woodland and sets about making it her own. Oh, such naivety – when it comes to mother nature she has its own game for you to play with increasing levels of difficulty.

Techies might think they invented the ultimate games but nature has been upping its game from the start.

This past year has been pretty challenging gardening at home. Weird weather patterns, erratic gardening schedules do not make for horticultural harmony. And just as you get one bit sorted there’s something else that needs your attention.

For us, there’s always a mix of home gardening and land management. Infestations of gorse, bramble and grass grubs can almost render me to tears of frustration. It’s always a toss-up between deadheading and preening or warding off the inevitable march of nature’s thugs. Wielding heavy duty machinery and careful tending.

There’s little glamour in that.

Just a grounding in the laws of nature. Grappling with the urgent and important.

For a novice gardener with a low tolerance for minutiae, it’s the ultimate challenge.

Great gardening is a habit. A discipline. A mashup of science, arts and crafts. But unlike other creative pursuits, you can pack away in a cupboard till inspiration strikes again. A garden won’t be packed away – at least not for long.

At your peril, you leave your plot unattended and untended. It’s a salutary lesson if you dare.

Depending on the time of year and unattended garden can turn feral in hours. It’s how courgettes turn to marrows. How buds turn to blooms. Seedlings turn to weed infestation. How bunches of grapes, bushes of berries and prized strawberries will disappear with the birds.

Turn your back for long and your well-tended garden can succumb to drought, be wind broken or pelted by raindrops. Your beanstalks and sunflowers can break free from their anchors.

All those brassicas carefully cocooned doesn’t stop butterflies landing nor their offspring feasting. Canes designed to give your delphiniums lessons in deportment can fail too. Asparagus tips poking through the earth can climb dizzying proportions in the blink of an eye.

However much protection you plan. How much careful labelling you do. Turn your back in on your patch and it will sulk and rebel to teach you a lesson, or three.

Amongst the pain, pestilence and anguish there are the bright spots. The horticultural wins. The garden delights that spark new optimism and fortitude. Or nothing more primal than the gardening habit that can’t be broken.

After a soul-crushing spring and a drought-ridden summer, it was two buckets of earthy crops that have worked their magic this year. The humble spud and distinctly unglamorous carrots have re-grounded my gardening habit.

Having cast the carrot seed more in frustration and buried the potatoes in defiance of the weather gives the garden the last laugh at my expense.

Like a sugar addict to the chocolate bar and an over buyer to the shopping mall, I’m heading back to reclaim the kitchen garden. To begin the circuitous process of the seasons and cycles of growing.

To take the entertainment of gardening into the real world again.

Rural idylls don’t become so unless you live them. Romance is dead without true love. Gardens cease to be unless you keep creating. It’s nature’s way to resist and be recalcitrant to test your commitment and staying power.

After 10 years or serious gardening, I still feel a beginner. Every season is a start of something unique. A chance to dig in and begin again.

The raspberries and red/blackcurrants have been going great guns. Not so much the strawberries and what little gooseberries we had disappeared one day, one assumes along with a gorged bird that must have snuck in and out the fruit caging. Kitchen gardening can be a frustrating adventure at times.

Needless to say we’ve enjoyed our haul – naked, compoted, juiced and accompanied some rather delicious ice cream. The freezer is filling up too so we can enjoy them at a later date. Whilst the supermarkets are full of the usual seasonal fare; strawberries, blueberries, stone fruit you hardly ever see currants and the raspberries are eye-wateringly expensive making what we grow at home seem all the more precious.

Just as I was settling into lazy routines the holidays are over and it’s back to work. Needless to say it’s been a shock to the system even though I do have a rather slower and more flexible return to the office than most.

It’s all well and good having time to kick-back and enjoy the break but I end up dreaming up all sorts of projects that sets my mind into overdrive and ambitions way beyond my capacity to deliver. Each day the to do list gets longer with seemingly little progress although those little ticks in the notebook indicate stuff does indeed get done.

The one place I can go for some calm is down to the garden. Watering the veges on an evening is the perfect time to allow the mind to settle, pull up a few stray weeds, curse the cat that seems to have moved into the greenhouse and dream up more ideas of what we can do with the tayberries, loganberries, boysenberries and blackberries springing into life for a few weeks time.

After a successful experiment for sugar free jam, I’m bringing the preserving pan out of retirement to conjure up a small stash for the freezer to enjoy in the darker days that will inevitably come. For now though I’m going to enjoy the evening sun with plans for a sundowner and some berry grazing straight from the bush. It’s the stuff of the good life.

A promise I made to myself this trip was to treat myself to a few foodie excursions. I had plans to squeeze in trips to two of London’s markets – Borough market and Maltby Street Market but as it turned out I only made it to the South Bank and the ubiquitous Borough Market. and just as I was just warming to the place my visit was suddenly cut short for a family emergency.

The thing about food markets is that you can rarely capture its full glory in one go. First you conduct a full reconnaissance to scope out the scale of the place and mentally take notes of the most intriguing and most interesting products and stalls to explore. No point in getting all excited about the first cheese stall or bread seller you come across because there is likely to be more than one that you then need to compare.

Before you get down to the serious business of exploring the food in-depth I find it’s always best to seek some light refreshment. That way you don’t start to behave like a ravenous hog chowing down excessive tasting portions. This break also gives you thinking time to plan your route, which produce you most want to revisit, and you can start to mentally drawing up your shopping list.

Like viewing houses, the second round of a market is all about the head, not the heart. Yes those jams, pickles and oils all look delicious but do you really need to add more condiments to your already overflowing pantry. Best to keep a cool head and don’t succumb to the overwhelming feeling that you should buy just a little something from every stall holder who catches your eye or holds you in conversation about the intricacies of producing their artisanal goods.

If you don’t want to behave like any other camera toting food tourist and want to indulge in some serious food photography and food writing research, I think you should offload all your parcels to your already long-suffering shopping partner. Unless you have an equally foodist companion this might be the part of the market visit you conduct by yourself as you can never capture the true spirit of the place nor find the most interesting perspectives to write about when you are under the pressure of a watchful eye or earshot of those exasperated sighs.

I was seriously impressed with what I saw at Borough Market, the range and quality of the produce I tasted was pretty amazing. Going on a weekday saved us from the worst of the tourist crushes that flood to the market on a weekend. The only complaint I have about my whole trip is that somehow I missed out on eating some of what we bought. It’s a long story but the chap in the last photography below sold us some impressive charcuterie including goat salami that I shall have to just dream about until I can get back next time and buy some more.  Seems my nephews, sister and brother-in-law enjoyed it though which is scant constellation.

Next time I am in the UK I aim to be back at the market to do a full food blogging assignment as I have since found out that a former colleague of mine is a volunteer trustee so I am counting on the inside track and fully exploiting the rule in life that it’s not what you know, but……..!  In the meantime, here’s a few photos from my tourist toting mode.

The temperate climate here means the garden never truly hibernates making gardening an all year round occupation. Whilst fellow vegetable gardeners in the northern hemisphere hunker down with their seed catalogues dreaming of untold food harvests in winter as they sit in front of the fire, down here we still primp and preen our gardens, battling natures wilder habits and kidding ourselves that we can maintain some sense of order and horticultural standards.

Unless the weather is too unbearable, I perambulate my usual route around our Kaitoke acres. First I keep count that there are still only five chickens roosting and our resident pukekos have not snuck in to enjoy the higher class accommodation. Walking through the orchard area we are vigilante to the young trees from breaking their anchors and being pushed around by the fierce winds.  The state of the kitchen garden only worries me when I see crops missing signalling bunny invaders are at work, otherwise I’ve learned to turn a blind eye to its buffeted state. We return to the house only after standing up all the plants in the nursery area that despite out best efforts to shelter them always seem to take a whipping.

It’s usually the only walk that the bassets will bound ahead of me with Fortnum barking in frustration at Mason who is running too fast for him to catch. Of course they are little help in the garden aside from their big basset paws having remarkably effective bed flattening capabilities. More often than not they spend much of their time snuggling up and begging for neck rubs.

For all it’s ramshackle state, the garden still provides us with plenty of vegetables and herbs to see us through the winter. Since advance planning for dinner is not always our strongest point you can often find me ferreting around sporting a head torch to dig up a few carrots or gather in some winter greens. Thankfully it won’t be long before I add seed tray tending to the daily chores which is the best reminder of all that the garden will soon shed it’s winter state and be blooming once again.

Having gone from drought to monsoon conditions over the last few weeks it’s been a battle with the weeds and previously ungerminated seeds who have shown an albeit late but nevertheless indecent haste to kick into life.  Thankfully I saved the bean and sweet pea seeds from their pods for planting next Spring before the worst of the wet weather arrived. This is the second year of saving seeds so it feels less like a novelty and more of a milestone in my kitchen gardening history.  Next Spring I shall be growing a second generation crops.  That is if the mice don’t break into the seed tin and plunder my stores.

Once again the driest of summers has made it a tough year for getting winter crops underway.  Also, my cold frames were being refurbished so I’ve resorted to buying in seedlings for much of my winter greens.  Thankfully the carrots finally came good even if the celeriac, parsnips, beetroot and salsify have stubbornly refused to play ball.

It is a shame that the not one of the gardening books tells the true story about kitchen gardening.  If you believe all that you read you’d think that there is perfect formulation for growing your own food.  If there is, I’ve yet to crack the horticultural code.  But we’ve eaten well this summer so I can’t complain.  The last of the tomatoes are ripening before being roasted and pulped into a rich sauce that will see us through until the first of the fresh tomatoes next year.

My top crop award this year goes to the Aubergine (or Eggplant if you care to call them instead).  For the first time ever we have enough fruit to call it a crop which is wonderful but I wish I knew what it was that made all the difference this year.  Aside from the brassicas, my flop crops this year has been cucumbers (not one full grown) and raspberries (I think I may have cut back the wrong stems).  The gooseberries, worcesterberries and loganberries went on strike whereas the blueberries, currants and blackberries surpassed themselves. The figs and medlars are close to harvest in the orchard so I have that to look forward to. Although I confess I have no idea what to do with the kilos of medlars I shall be hauling up the hill.

Call me a romantic if you like but there is nothing better than sitting down to eat the food you have grown yourself.  Although there is little romantic about trudging down the garden in the teeming rain to pull up a few carrots, cut herbs or pull up some greens I wouldn’t have it any other way. There is something wonderfully empowering to speed through the vegetable section of the supermarket spurning colourful displays knowing that you have your own backyard pantry at home.

Having a kitchen garden forces you to be much more creative in the kitchen too. Forced by nature to rustle up something new and tasty to eat as a reward from your hard earning gardening efforts.  For nature follows the recipes in cookbooks as much as it follows the wisdom of gardening books.  And, that’s half the fun.

I probably wouldn’t have noticed the date had a friend not texted me yesterday from Christchurch to say she was thinking of me and hoped I wasn’t having bad memories. Seems that my friend was experiencing the eerie feeling that many people feel when they visit for Christchurch central city for the first time since the quake.  My response was deeply philosophical – “Nah!  No looking back.”

Without recognition of the date, it seems that 22 February has worked in mysterious ways again.  After months and months of deep thinking, otherwise known as procrastination, looking forward had finally paid off.  Ideas that have bubbled away finally broke through the surface and I put a label on the outside of my notebook as a formal declaration of intention to myself that this project of day dreams and midnight insomnia is going to come alive for real. Now the hard part is over I can get on am make things happen.

I read somewhere that should “create what you crave”. I have been pretty lucky doing that in life, career and business and for the first time this year I feel the backyard pantry to kitchen lifestyle is coming together. Meals come from what’s fresh in the garden. Admittedly I top up with bought vegetables and fruit because I’m not that good a gardener to have the perfect succession of food and when the crops go crazy you can get sick of eating the same thing day after day.

Mostly I grow more food than two people and a couple of basset hounds can consume so our neighbours benefit from our bountiful existence.  It seems to me there is no better feeling than knowing that with a lot of help from nature you’ve created something useful and delicious to eat.  And, that good feeling keeps coming with every meal and every bite.

When you eat things seasonally they become all the more luxurious making everyday meals a special occasion. You take more care to put your precious harvest to good use and be as creative in the kitchen.  The first year I grew broad beans I had two sackfuls to harvest in one go. We froze most of the crop it just wasn’t the same to eat broad beans in winter.  Beans are for spring.  A verdant declaration that the best days of the year are to return out of the depths of winter.  The sign of moving from warm comfort to refreshing invigoration.  Heavy meals to light snacks and spontaneous grazing in the garden.

This year we ate broad beans in so many ways.  On crackers, on toast, in risotto, with bacon, with blue cheese, on their own with garlic, butter and a spritz of lemon. I even hankered momentarily for a thick piece of gammon ham and a creamy parsley sauce I remember from my school days.  But mostly I ate lots of raw beans freshly unzipped from their pods sitting on the grass with the bassets fighting me for the first bean that popped out.

Broad beans are one of the most ancient foods.  Protein dense, prolific and highly prized as a good luck charm.  They also have magical properties in the garden returning nitrogen to the soil making them one of the most good-natured and tolerant vegetables around.  I shall be able to see whether they continue to give pleasure through the year as I converted two kilos of broad beans into falafel and stacked them in the freezer.  They are nestling up with the frozen cherries and strawberries destined for ice creams, jams and juices.

Credit where credit is due.  My fellow gardener cook blogging friend Sue was the inspiration for this bean pâté.  I shall report on the success of the falafel next spring when I expect my food blogging to be a little more in forward-looking and in season.

That said, I have a set holiday homework for some of my coaching clients around resolutions and goals so I can’t return to work empty handed. Thankfully I have a few weeks up my sleeve before I have to start sharing my thoughts.  Inspired by the Christmas garden harvest, my intentions are to make 2014 a “bountiful” year.  A year of abundance and generosity.  After all, being born in 1964, it seems right to make this year especially auspicious.

Hope that 2014 brings you good health and happiness with a sprinkling of good luck.

After five years of kitchen gardening, this spring seems to be better than the previous ones.  Finally, the endless reading and planning for an ideal way of gardening is beginning to make sense.  Also, experience has shown that there is no perfect way to produce food, and you can only do your best and hope nature helps you along the way.  It does of course help to spend time in the garden to get ahead of the growing season instead of prioritising other things.

My attempts to stay in tune with natures way seem less frantic than in the past.  Seeds germinated on cue, and the mice didn’t eat them as I used the conservatory for raising the seeds away from the pesky mice that visit the greenhouse.  There are more plants in the beds rather than growing in the paths as I finally relented and sprayed the paths with weedkiller instead of spending hours hand weeding.  There are of course things I have forgotten to plant yet like sunflowers, but I’m confident that their sprint growing abilities will see them right.  I have somewhat more sweet pea seedlings than there is space in the garden so I shall experiment growing them in a pot for the veranda instead.

My big moment of realisation was that breaking down the chores in the garden is better than trying to do it all in one go.   No more feeling of being overwhelmed or exhausted with it all.  Small accomplishments will in time build up to a bigger achievement. I am no longer fretting the lettuce has gone to seed and the weeds are going crazy in the salad beds because if I turn around I can see the peas and beans are in the ground and starting their upward climbs.  Also, the fruit has been pruned and tied down before the wind does its work and the gooseberries grow their thorny crowns.  The garlic shoots look smart in orderly rows.  The greenhouse is overflowing with greens and herbs so those salad beds can wait a week before getting their makeover.

It may be tempting fate so early in the season to be so satisfied, but I am going to enjoy it anyway.  After all, who could resist a bit of happiness with a plate of freshly picked asparagus, spring greens and herbs for dinner, even if was blowing a southerly gale outside.

Although the forces of gravity were a mere shrug to the Christchurch earthquake of two years ago on Sunday 17 July at 17:09 we had our very own 6.5 richter shake.  This sparked its own comedy with me simultaneously hugging one basset whilst rugby tackling the other intent on chasing the invisible intruder whilst shouting @m_treanor to catch my prized china penguin that waddled precariously close to the edge of the shelf on which it sat.  The shaking stopped as abruptly as it started but then came the tsunami of tweets from fellow Wellingtonians who clung to doorways, took a medicinal dram sitting under a table and reports of motion sickness from swaying in high rise apartments.

Such earthly high jinx blew a hole through our evening.  Plans for a leisurely Sunday evening of chores and blogging were overtaken by an adrenaline pumped frenzy of unearthing earthquake survival packs, rounding up highly prized fragile items for safe keeping and stowing kitchen appliances for fear of a Kenwood mixer falling off the bench down onto the bassets’ heads.  In such times calming measures are required so @m_treanor was put to work making fennel risotto in the hope that the constant stirring would be adequate distraction from the repetitive TV footage of shaking and cracked buildings that makes you hyperventilate if you watch it for too long.

Post quake engineers flooded into the Wellington and Marlborough regions to check buildings, rectify breakages and restore core public services.  Some might say it was a gross over reaction but I’m all for erring on the side of caution.  Interestingly whilst most buildings in Wellington stood up to the quakes pretty well it seems even some of the newest buildings had their internal fittings trashed with broken ceilings and water pipes or activated water sprinkler systems causing much damage and mess.   Wellington was up and running for business again within 24 hours although the coffee shops won the race to trade again and maintain almost continuous service to fuel the Capital’s coffee habit.

If you are ever in some sort of public drama you can’t beat being surrounded by New Zealanders.  Their laid back and no-nonsense approach to life can lighten the mood of even the darkest hours.  I am always comforted by the black humour from our geoscientists who monitor and report on earthquakes bringing a human touch to what is otherwise a mass of scientific data.  For all the naysayers of social media such as twitter there are real people behind those twitter feeds that reply to each tweet that they receive from curious followers.  Admittedly I’m biased because I do work for GNS and they are some of the brightest people totally committed to understanding how and why the earth works in these mysterious ways.

As the after shocks continue to roll in like waves lapping on the shoreline we have all returned to normal life if a little distracted and jumpy at every bump and rumble that passes by.  Thankfully nature boosted morale further by bringing blue skies and sunny days making winter seem like an abstract notion hard to associate with.  Perfect weather for starting to get stuck into the planting of garlic and clearing out the kitchen garden ready for the upcoming growing season. Perfect too for a spot of basset sun bathing as the hounds kept a watchful eye on my every move playing more an ornamental than productive role but bringing a sense of calm, normality and simplicity to life.  Just the way I like it most.

Nowadays olives are one of world’s most cultivated temperate fruit with an explosion of production in the last ten years as olive oil has become the messiah of cooking and healthy eating.  Dominating the oil aisles of supermarkets and upmarket food stores, olive oil is as much liquid gold today as it was when traded in ancient Mediterranean.    When you look contemporary olive production, there is nothing romantic about their industrialisation, globalisation and commodification, especially the production of olive oil. I shall save the gory details for my next gastronomic course essay for there is more fun to be had in recalling a glimpse into the world of olive oil grown just over the hill in the Wairarapa where we spent a pleasant weekend at the inaugural Martinborough Olive Oil Festival.

I’m going to skim over the lunch experience of the festival since the extramural oil tasting, oil pressing and olive harvesting more than made up for what was a disappointing gastronomic experience. Let’s just say that the olive oils shone out from a meal that was otherwise lack lustre and just goes to prove that even the finest ingredients can’t make up for a culinary and hospitality shortcomings.

Like wines, to fully appreciate the range of olive oils you have to taste a few.  Guided by Margaret Edwards, one of New Zealands most authoritative olive oil tasters, I learned about the fruity, bitter and pungent qualities of olive oil and how a good slurp of air in and out as you taste gives a deeply complex sensory experience.   If you close your eyes it helps to conjure up those flavour associations – a touch of banana, vanilla or tomato stalks – as the chemical compounds generate the organoleptic  properties of the olive oil.  With a background in food science the names of all the phenols were rattled off by Margaret making the session feel a little like a chemistry lesson but an essential part of getting to grips with the unique and delicate flavours that make up an oil.

Admittedly after two hours of slurping oil my gastric juices were ready for a rest and a wander around the night market was the perfect antidote.  Glowing in Martinborough’s Town Square food and craft stalls plied their wares by candlelight made all the more magical when nursing a cup of warming mulled wine.  The cafes and bars of Martinborough provided refuge for festival goers from the icy cold brought in by a southerly.

We didn’t let a little cold stop our tour of olive oil pressing and harvesting to wrap up our whistle stop tour of Martinborough’s olive oil empire.  Started only around 20 years ago, the region is producing award winning oils and even prompted a new New Zealand best selling book by Jared Gulian who tells his city slicker tales of olive farming as Moon Over Martinborough.  As a long time reader of his blog it has been wonderful to see his ambition to be a published author come true.

I may be a romantic but there is something special about eating food when you know where it comes from and who produced it.  Talking to Helen of Olivo oil about her experiments with infused oils and growing olives was encouraging and inspiring.  Made all the more amusing as her beagle Sophie scavenging for left over soup infused with olive oil handed out to visitors to the Olivo tasting room.

To top it off Helen shared with us her recipe for chocolate mousse that was a small triumph at the lunch and I’m looking forward to making it as a special treat at home.  In the meantime, I’m tasting olive oil in a completely new light.  But more importantly I’m lucky enough to have made some delicious orange infused olive oil muffins and topped off his lordship’s signature risotto with just a splash of porcini infused olive oil.

Although much of Martinborough’s olive harvest was over  it was fascinating to see the tree shaker harvester being demonstrated and learning how the olives are washed, dried, mashed, and spun to extract the extra virgin olive oil.  Most surprising was to meet someone who grows olives on our side of the hill delivering their olives for pressing.  Needless to say we jotted down his recommendations for varieties to grow as it turns out my dreams of being an olive farmer might be more real than my day dreaming might otherwise have me think.