Working in the Garden

This past weekend we started to work in earnest on parts of the garden. I planted some lettuce and herbs in a patio box just off the kitchen. There's lots of basil so Michael can be the mad pesto maker.  I am trying an experiment by planting in multiple locations to see which areas the plants do best in - midday sun or late afternoon sun.

We are creating a vegetable patch near the one small lemon tree and yesterday I spent a few hours with Nomfus clearing out weeds. Nomfus is the 4 year old daughter of the woman who cleans for us once a week. She is very curious and likes to follow me around and help me with things. Of course she speaks Xhosa and I speak English so it can be quite funny.  Yesterday she was trying to teach me some Xhosa - like the word for mole, of which I found a dead one while clearing. Actually that is a current problem in our lawn - lots of mole hills. Apparently they like bulbs but I certainly have no idea where we have bulbs. I have noticed though a bunch of loose little onion like mini bulbs floating around so there must be something. I will have to learn about humane ways to discourage them from hanging around here. 

There are some trees here called Eugenia which were brought from another country to be used as hedge plants but they are ruthless self-seeders so one must control them carefully if you want to have them in your garden. In South Africa there is a lot of discussion of alien versus native vegetation and trees - and we seem to have quite a few of the alien, and invasive, trees and shrubs. At first I was like, so what? But I am beginning to see the light and now of course it means there will be much more to do in recreating our large garden. Today we had the very satisfying experience of pulling out one of the small trees which has grown up around the fish pond. It was not planted and blocks much light from the little pond. We are hoping that opening up the pond to the light will minimize the duck weed and allow the water lilies to thrive. 

There are lots of similarities in the summer plants except that here I suspect they have longer blooming times and some of the plants that are annual for us are perennial here and vice versa. I am hoping to get plants from friends' gardens. Tim in particular has a very big and complex garden with lots of thriving native plants so he'll be a good resource.

Anyway, it is time for me to return to the garden to do some clear-up of our earlier activities.

Oh, one thing we should adopt that happens here is the big "L" which appears in some car back windows which means the person is a "learner driver" - very smart. It is big enough to be seen from afar and you are forewarned. I'm thinking of getting one for myself as I get used to driving on the other side of the road.