A day of rest

I'm blogging on a Sunday because yesterday was so good that I didn't have time - or I forgot.

Janice and I spent until 3pm yesterday at the market, grocery shopping, visiting my mother and doing nursery work and quilting. You can work out who did what. After 3pm a couple of our neighbours who we saw at the market came for afternoon tea and we just frittered the rest of the day away. Nice.


This morning I plan to spend time in the garden and will take a few images to show you how, despite the cold, some plants are growing at pace.


The delphiniums are coming into flower too and it looks like we'll need more pollinators in a couple of weeks.



Roses are breaking bud.









And there is a small, summer interloper setting up shop in the greenhouse.



So, a good day in the garden and I finished off the activity with a bike ride, the first for some months. I figure if I can keep up the blogging then I can keep up the riding too.

Cheers

Terry

Home again, Home again, Gigity gig!

We have arrived home before dark after a successful trip to Auckland.

Today we began by having a puncture fixed (because of a nail in one of the car tyres) and then kept our appointment with the waste bin at my parents old house where we threw out all the remaining rubbish from the garage. The place is now in a good condition to sell and it will be offered for auction on November 28th.

From there we drove south a few ks to Drury to meet another flower breeder, grower and exporter and chew the cud over business possibilities. By the time we left it was 2pm and as Wanganui is a 6 hour drive from there decided to go straight home after stopping for lunch. We later called at the "Persimmon Tree" at Pirongia which is the best cafe/restaurant (real food) on the way home, where Janice had a freshly baked, gluten free friand and I a rhubarb and apple tart. I heartily recommend this place to any traveler - superb food and service at a very reasonable price.

The only stop we made after Pirongia was to collect the weekly box of fresh, organic veges from Robert and Jennifer's place. We have to have it delivered there as they are in town and delivering it to us (out of town) would take another day.

And so to email, blog, farmville and bed.

Cheers

Terry

On Tour

Janice and I were up at 4;30 this morning getting ready to leave for Auckland, about 500km north of wanaganui. We are visiting a plant and cut flower exporter, sorting out the selling of my father and mother's house and finishing emptying out the garage, still full of my brother's "stuff".
Well, it's 6pm and the house business is almost all done. Colin, our eldest daughter's (Emma's) partner brought his large truck and we filled it to bursting. Colin and emma are storing the gear until Alex, currently in Invercargill, can sort out what he needs. That could take a while.

This evening we are visiting Janice's niece and family (lovely people) and  then staying with Janice's sister's place (lovely people too). Tomorrow we drive back home after a business meeting ar 11am.

But what of farmville? We were both reasonably well organised and planted long term crops...I think!

Leaving the nursery at this time of year (when water demand increases rapidly and the plants grow like crazy) is a little scary...but a good test for our manager.

That's all for today. I'm doing this today mainly because I've committed to it, as there's no delphinium talk. More tomorrow.

Cheers

Terry

Excuses!

Ok, no excuses, I forgot to do it yesterday alright!!!

Excuse 1) Monday was a holiday here in New Zealand so my system was disrupted

Excuse 2) There was a lot of weeding to do in the garden and I got carried away

Excuse 3) It was sunny and warm. This was the first sunny, warm day for a few weeks and it was glorious outside. Who in his right mind would come inside to blog?

Excuse 4) When I finally did get inside there was dinner to eat and work to do

Excuse 5) I was tired after the hard day outside and evening in the office

Ok, so today was wet and cold. What a good job I mowed the lawns yesterday evening

Does it really matter if I don't use full stops?

Today was very productive at work, making up for yesterday off. I fixed a few things, visited our trial patch and tended it, planned the week's work with Edita, visited mum and dad, picked up fertiliser etc. Now it's inside to blog, farmville and get off down to backgammon, pick up the scales I lent to Robert, come home and pack out some seed for an order and post it.

Cheers

Terry

Market Day Again

Today was Market Day by the river in Wanganui again and the second week in a row we had taken a stall. The day was fine if a little cool and cloudy and, being the first day of a long weekend there were plenty of folk around.

Janice and I are finding we are actually enjoying doing this. Sure, it doesn't pay much be we're having a great time socialising with all the local folk, many of them friends, the time passes quickly and we get to have a great coffee and breakfast without making it. What more could a man want?


Today, Janice bought a stool, mirror, some soap, a Christmas present, breakfast, a coffee and a newspaper while I managed to score some animal manure, apples, straw, coffee, breakfast, 2 gluten free friands and probably other stuff too. We both managed to sell a few delphiniums.

We also had time to relax and watch others relaxing too and fortunately, the smoke from the PSS Waimarie was blowing away from us.


Yes, we have decided to keep going and except for the week after next when we'll be in Wellington for our granddaughter Jessica's 5th birthday, we'll be at the market until the end of November at least. We'll get investigate getting some decent signage done too because although it's only done for fun and pocket money we may as well do it right!

Too busy to blog!

Today was spent mostly out of the house.

The Pukekos are playing havoc with our trial delphiniums. They need some lead based medicine.

We met our friends in town tonight and had a very pleasant dinner.

The truck is loaded up for market in the morning.

Going to bed now

They're growing

The delphiniums are now growing very quickly and looking set to give us an early crop. Last year we tried growing plants slowly over winter to see if they would flower early and pollinate well. This year we are repeating the exercise with other varieties. The flowers in this image would normally be at least a month later.

Below, Edita tending the "spare" mothers and plants for sale when they flower.




We are planting five plants of each of our see lines this year in order to produce somefresh images for labels etc. This is one of them newly planted - note the slug pellets and fertiliser to ensure a fast start.



One of our breeding aims is to produce consistent short plants. The image below shows a short plant now in its second year. It is very unusual to have growth this short in a 2nd year plant and we will surely be breeding form it this season. The trial patch at our nursery has been considerably reduced since we erected the new growing house so I have commandeered it for experiments and moved the main trials to a friend's place.








And I'll leave you with a close up of a vibrant light blue that has been giving me grief trying to fix in a good form with good seed quality, maybe this year?



Please note, no sign of sun. This is truly wet, windy spring weather, nothing like the 35 degrees centigrade Nadeeka and family are enjoying in Sydney!