Country Living – Gardening time

I wish to devote this column to the forthcoming Local Government elections and indeed, to Auckland Council itself. It brings a warm a smile to my face finding such a huge similarity between the above elections and my annual spring garden ‘clean-out’, so I just cannot contain my thoughts.

Sometimes I stand on my back porch and glance over my garden and I’m intensely dismayed at the lack of organisation and some of its unproductiveness. Then I get an undeniable urge to pick up a chainsaw (with a 32 inch bar no less) and attack it with full throttle. But you see I don’t, because I am far more methodical than that, preferring to grasp my sharp secateurs with a firm hand whilst analysing the producers and non-producers in my garden and then set about to systematically prune and weed. For a start, sometimes plants can just be in the garden for too long, they become stalky, take up too much space and never seem to bear any fruit. It’s best to get rid of all this deadwood to allow for new growth. So I prune hard!

Then there are the weeds – how dare they take up space in my garden, sucking all the nutrients out of my soil, taking up valuable room. I just get rid of them, pluck them clean out, so as to allow the real producers in my garden to flourish and blossom, giving back to the one whom provides for them.

Now don’t get me started on some of those pesky bulbs. Honestly, they cost a fortune to put into their positions and their running costs are out of control – money and more money for little return. Don’t get me wrong, some bulbs are striking and are worth their weight in gold, but others seem to just stay in my garden system, get fat and multiply, never producing anything worthy of their cost to maintain.

Once I have given my garden a good clean-out, and bearing in mind that as the financier of this garden my costs to maintain it seem to be escalating every year, I make sure that I have selected some beautiful, strong new seedlings by the 8th of October. These fresh new seedlings will give my garden community hope that in the ensuing years they will bear me fruit and flowers in return for all my hard work.

So I guess what I am trying to say is our elections are ‘the people’s’ opportunity to plant only the most worthy in the garden. Sit back and really analyse the candidates in your electorate. Are they looking like strong new seedlings of hope and promise, or are some of them just unproductive old root stock who have got far too ‘comfy in our soil’ and no longer produce the desired results? Either way, the most important thing is that you have your say, because now more than ever, our communities of North Rodney need a strong voice. Before I go I will leave you with a little saying that my momma used to tell me since as long back as I can remember: “Julie, if you always do what you have always done, you will always get what you have always gotten.”