The Visit

Today started well with a bike ride at 6:30am. I hate riding in the mornings but this morning it was reasonably calm (only a 5-10 knot wind) and forecast of increasing to 15-20kts later in the day, so I opted for the early start. My legs ached but the main problem was the sun in my eyes on the way home. I'd forgotten about that.

After the ride I made a huge list of tasks to be completed today and I'm happy to say, managed to complete them by blog time. The highlight of the day was undoubtedly the trip to our nursery that the Home of Compassion organised for 7 people, including my mum (rest home) and dad. Dad is in Hospital care in the advanced stages of Alzheimer's disease and is only able to visit with special wheel chair transport. They came to see all the delphiniums in flower.

Mum has seen the nursery before and remembers but dad's memory has been so far gone for so long that we wondered if it would register. Dad has been a grower almost all his life, growing tomatoes and chrysanthemums mainly, so being round the nursery would maybe catch his interest we thought. Well, it sure did. He was actually smiling and animated for the first time in ages. Twas a joy to behold! Janice wheeled him round while I helped some of the others then I took over the driving. He loved it. Later, in the packing shed, he ate a great afternoon tea and when I moved outside he made a great lurch to follow, which he could not do of course, so he got another ride out to see more delphiniums. It was real cooooooool.


Another item of note in the day was the White Ribbon March against violence upon women.

A few hundred of us males turned up to march up the central street of Wanganui to raise awareness that violence against our womenfolk will not be tolerated. It may or may not make much difference on its own but combined with growing publicity and awareness of how much family violence there is in our society and that it is not acceptable it will contribute to a change in attitude, we hope. So just remember fellas - cut it out! face the issues, be a man and most of all, love your family, they are the best treasure you will ever have.

So, against those two items the rest of the day pales but between the excitement I sure got a heap of work done too, including checking up on our trial delphiniums at Bristol's place. They are doing fine, just like the weeds.

Now I'm going to play a little guitar and wait for some visitors to arrive.

Cheers

Terry

Bason Botanic Gardens

Wanganui has a great, young botanic garden, the Bason Botanic Garden, and was I recently asked to join the trust board that works in partnership with the Wanganui District Council to administer the gardens. This afternoon between 4 and 6pm a number of us walked around the gardens discussing new developments.
There is much for me to learn about the plans for the gardens and how they are formulated and administered so this evening's walk around was very useful. Unfortunately there is a pile of work on the delphinium business front at the moment as well as the sale of my parents house this coming weekend. Altogether this leaves little time to blog.

See you tomorrow

Cheers

Terry

Rotary Monday

On Sunday we normally eat with Robert and Jennifer. This Sunday we had two other people to cook for.....but they didn't come as work intervened...so we got to eat too much very nice food. Such is life, and to top it off I didn't go for a ride either. Such is life. But I did get some good gardening done. Such is life.


Monday at 7am is almost always Rotary time and this Monday was one of those almost always days. I got to listen to a very interesting talk from a prospective new mayor of Wanganui who came along to tell us about himself. Himself is a safety engineer specialising in coal mines, latterly in China. Safety in Chinese mines in improving, it needed to.



There was also a presentation of a $9,500 cheque to Birthright Wanganui. This was the proceeds of the Last Night of the Proms concert our club produced back in August. Hence our club president, Val is decked out in the Union Jack for the occasion.

The rest of the day was spent getting seed orders out, doing organising stuff and pollinating the trials.

Now can I do Farmville please?

Cheers

Terry

Fun by the river

Friday was a bit of a whirl with pollinating of trial delphiniums to do (see a short white below) as

well as a host of other outside work, a haircut in the late afternoon, fries on Friday at five and a night out at a production of Fawlty Towers (plus meal). The show was great, the meal was very good, the company excellent and the night late. That made getting up at 5:45 this morning to prepare for market a little difficult - but we made it.


Once again there was plenty of entertainment at the market by the Whanganui River and we were especially delighted to see a "happening" develop right behind our stall. A troupe (well maybe half a troupe, what's that, a tro? of musicians, actors, and hangers on started skipping, accompanied by a bongo and a flute. It was a treat to watch them enjoying themselves and inviting the participation of young children and anyone else who wanted to try - no I did not.

Throughout these past few weeks while we have been "doing the market" (my idea) Janice has been a great help doing at least half the work and most of the organising (as always). Thanks Janice, you're wonderful! Only one more to go then we can prepare for our open weekend the following week. Yay!

I think I'll have a lie in in the morning - probably manage to stay in bed till 7am.

More tomorrow I guess as I missed blogging yesterday.

Cheers

Terry

A good day's work

Today I finished weeding some daylilies, weeded delphiniums in the trial grounds, took photos and sprayed growth retardants on a trial of delphiniums in pots. All fun, all useful and that left no time for anything else.




Ok, while I'm waiting for them to upload I forgot to tell you that I went for my 9th or tenth bike ride of the season today. I'm determined to get fit again and am doing 40 minutes riding (slowly at this stage) every day











Cheers

Terry

Breathe promise of merry sunshine

And Merry sunshine is sure something we could do with. This spring may have been good for the bloomin' flowers but it sure needs a little more brightness. Below are the first blooms of our Wedding Day rose struggling to find a little sun.














One of the parents of Purple Passion is in flower in the nursery trial garden. There are a few of our cutting grown clones here waiting to be photographed. They have a real narcissus complex but I guess I would too with a name like that.



I just included the next image for something to do. It's a view, well, of part of our garden. I bet you didn't know that eh!


Today was spent doing errands in town and then tripping over to Palmerston North to have the car serviced. This is a pain and happened because the garage in Wanganui, the only one that services European cars, just went broke. We now have an hour's trip for the service. However there are some compensations. I get my glasses frames fixed ( I refuse to buy glasses in Wanganui as they are too dear compared to elsewhere) and Janice and I get to go Christmas shopping. Whoopee, do I love Christmas shopping!! Year right. Got some nice books though and found another cafe not to visit again.

Ok, all for now

Cheers

Terry

The Flowers That Bloom in the Spring Tra La

For a plant breeder who grows flowers that bloom in the spring, tra la, this sesason is a time of wonder and renewal, of vindication and disappointment. This spring, in New Zealand, has been a wonderful growing season for may flowers and flowering shrubs and trees. Firstly I noticed the Kowhai trees bloomed prolifically and with great colour. This was followed by a procession of other flowering plants.

Right now the roses are absolutely magnificent, lush of growth and festooned with an abundance of large, bright flowers. Not surprising then that he delphiniums should be flowering a couple of weeks early wonderfully well. That in itself is great as it means that the bulk of the pollinating will be over by Christmas. However, it gets better!
Last year I trial flowered a row of a new strain of our dark blue delphiniums we currently call Royal Aspirations. This variety has always been a bit bothersome as the germination rate has been relatively poor (at 67%) and the colour quite variable (giving some mid blues as well as deeper ones). Well, last year's trial was ok but nothing spectacular so I decided to roundup most of the bed and leave only a small patch for some photographs this season. Lucky I did. There, right on the end of the row, was a plant of wonderful deep blue with even, white bees and a great spike form. What really tops it off is that this plant is at least an F5, that is it is a 5th generation of this variety which means it will almost certainly throw offspring that are well on the way to being identical to the parent. To have such strength and vigour coupled with the strong colour at this stage is just a dream come true.


Needless to say we will be breeding from it in real earnest over the next couple of seasons and have something quite fantastic to offer in the near future.

There are some other beauties in the breeding beds and production houses too. I hope you are enjoying the images!

Cheers

Terry