Rebuilding

This is the Opawa Methodist Church. The church was badly damaged during our earthquakes in 2011, and is now being rebuilt. The church building was brick with a wooden roof, quite a beautiful wooden roof, which was removed in one piece and set aside on the site while the foundation and superstructure were rebuilt. This week the old roof was popped back onto the new framing with giant cranes. All went smoothly, and now a modern church will be filled in under the roof. This is a brilliant re-use of the old with the safety of the new, and I look forward to seeing the new building take shape.

Here you can see one of the new steel stanchions that support the old roof.

SEE:

http://www.stuff.co.nz/the-press/news/75197869/crane-swings-20-tonne-roof-back-into-place-for-opawa-methodist-church

Post-hailstorm blues

Pot of nasturtiums -shredded

No, this is not a new laceleaf zucchini cultivar

Garlic completed flattened where the hail ponded

Some despondency today, after looking more closely at the damage done by Sunday's hailstorms. I've been at work since then, so haven't really had time (or the inclination) to do a proper inventory of the garden. Much shredded leafage, and some pitting of fruit, but since I'm not growing for export, this last won't bother me. All across the city, you can hear the lamentations and gnashing of teeth as gardeners discover their vegetables and fruits damaged. Hopefully they will stage a resurgence, (gardeners and plants) so best leave the stuff and hope for a better more clement summer from now on.

Thomas likes to sit on my kneeling pad, and gets on it every time I move off. The new non-black spot replanted.

On the bright side,this afternoon has been sunny, so I've got out and completed the redevelopment of the "black spot" I talked about in my last post. I decided to remove the lambs' ears after all, and have replanted with a row of Lebanese cucumbers (they will have a support), an odd cucurbit that self-seeded in the strawberry bed (might be a pumpkin?) and a row of chives at the front for decoration. I'll also scatter some coriander seed in the middle section of the plot, and hope for the best.

I'm also thinking about making some fruit wine this year. There's only so much jam a person can eat, and with the price of wine what it is, this would be an interesting exercise. (Although New Zealand wines get good press overseas, most of the cheap wine available here is not that good.) My dad used to make fruit wines from the garden and very nice they were too. Apricot and peach were particularly good, I remember. It's a good way of using the surplus, and even if I get only vinegar at the end, at least it will be my own vinegar!

Crazy weather

Rose "Double Delight"

Nutty weather today. Two severe hailstorms one about 3 hours after the other, plus a tornado reported out in the countryside. I was at work when the first storm came in, it was so bad a large seagull came down to rest on the lawn outside because it couldn't fly in the hail. Never seen that before. About 15 minutes after I arrived home there was a second storm, not quite so bad hail-wise but lots of loud thunder and lightening. Some of the plants in the vegetable garden are shredded. The zucchini plants are particularly bad, and one of my Purple Calabash tomatoes has been stripped right down into a stalk! Very annoying - I have been coddling these as they are not very robust anyway - and many of my seedling basils have been broken off completely. Grrr! I'm glad I'm not a commercial grower and my livelihood depends on my crops. It's the start of the cherry season here now, which is brief enough anyway, without hail damage. There'll be a lot of farmers who will be looking at their fields and shaking their heads right now. And the bloody supermarkets will be using that as a reason to put their prices for fruit and veg. up. Grrrr!

Black spots

Every garden has its black spots, and this is one of mine. It's been deteriorating for some time now, a bed of violets that has been infiltrated by twitch grass. For some reason, I haven't been able to "see" this until the last few days, so stealthy has the takeover been, but today I got into it and removed most of the weeds and violets. It is only a small patch of garden, and I have to leave the overgrown part to the right, where the lambs' ears are, because the bees love the lambs' ears flowers and I'm loath to remove the plant when it's being utilised by them. The soil is quite hard and threaded through with violet roots and the fibrous roots of the fern on the right. I don't know what I'll put here; it is quite a difficult place as it gets no sun until the late afternoon, when it bakes. Perhaps a bush cucumber or coriander? It's right outside the kitchen door - perhaps parsley, although I have a lot of that growing all over the garden.

First strawberries today, with a few raspberries thrown in. Yum!

Lots of garden pics

Nice hot day at last, so I washed out some of my vintage stuff. I'm still undecided about whether I want to sell them; I can't wear them anymore as I am too portly now, but I do like them, and I have a horror of selling them only to find out that I really should have kept them. I've done lots of gardening, transplanting the vege plants that I still have in punnets, and sowing a bit more. The tomatoes are planted out, except for the Purple Calabashes, which are just sitting doing nothing. I think our climate here is too changeable for them, they need a steady heat and a mild night-time temperature. Oh well, I know not to grow them again. Our summers are not long, about 4 months, so things need to be up and growing by about mid-December or there is no time to get a crop. The dragonfly is a first; I have never seen one in the garden before, I think the very boisterous wind we had today must have blown him from the river (not too far away, at the end of the next street). Off now to water the potatoes, which will be parched.

Roses, roses

Crown Princess Margareta

Buff Beauty

Haven't posted for ages! probably because very little is going on right now, except for the flowering of the roses. They've been delayed by our mad weather, which has been quite cold and windy, but today has been hot, so now they are coming out quickly. The vegetable garden is several weeks behind, one minute I'm worried about frost, the next watering like mad because it's drying up. Anyone who says that climate change is a lie is a fool, in my opinion. The weather now is so completely unlike that of my childhood that it is like living in a different country. I'm sure our weather was more stable and less changeable than now; we used to have  whole weeks of hot weather in summer, now we just get a day here and there. We used to have hot nights all night too; now the temperature always goes down overnight, so by four o'clock in the morning I'm looking for the duvet to cover up to get warm. Of course, this is all "anecdotal" as the pundits like to say, it's not proof.

Of course, terrible things are going on in the world. As always. There is always conflict somewhere. The Vietnam war played on TV every night when I was a child, and sadly, nothing much has changed. Some philosopher once said that the world would be a better place if everyone just stayed quietly at home. I stay quietly at home, growing my vegetables and admiring my roses; I feel that this is the only way I can contribute to world peace, just not being a violent pain-in-the-arse to everyone else.

Bits and pieces

                                         Jiro using the washing as a hammock.

Not much going on at the moment (not that there ever is, and I can be quite thankful for that; I'd rather have peaceful nothingness than drama and crisis). The cats are being delightful at the moment, they like the better weather and longer days that summer brings. Jiro's latest game is to meow outside the kitchen door, then run away when I open it, just like a kid doing the door-knocking game. Thomas is being very snuggly and affectionate; he's finally realised that even though there's another cat, there's still enough love for him. Not that he likes Jiro any better, but is a bit more relaxed and friendly towards me.
     It's still quite cold here though; tonight the temperature is down to 5 degrees (Celsius) so it's not exactly warm. I was looking at my posts for this time last year and see the same comments, the weather is hot and dry and I'm watering the garden, the next day it's cold and wet. We've had Halloween, I even went to a party, but didn't dress up for it; I'm scary enough as my real self. Now Guy Fawke's night is coming up tomorrow, so I'll brace myself for the noises. No doubt it will go on all through the weekend as well. Not my favourite celebration.
      The spring-cleaning continues sporadically. I start with a hiss and a roar and bags of enthusiasm, then rapidly lose interest. The problem is that the house doesn't stay clean, so it's a labour of Sisyphus or Hercules. At least it's only my own mess to clean up, not some dodgy husband or flat-mate. The cats aren't too bad either; they are both young and don't throw up too often in the house! But why do cats always have to up-chuck on the carpet, not the vinyl flooring? One of those mysteries that will never be solved.