I’m part of a local group of keen vegetable gardeners who meet fortnightly throughout the growing season. Each meetup involves a tour around someone’s garden, and then a cup of tea, while we discuss our gardens and gardening, complain about the weather, and generally catch up with each other.
Our most recent gathering was at a garden just 200 metres down the road from our house. Bev’s been gardening there for over 20 years, and the property is beautifully sheltered by large hedges and mature plantings.
And even though we live only a three minute walk away from one another, our gardens grow remarkably differently.
Bev’s is almost always a week or two ahead of mine. And not just because she plants earlier than I do—her tree and berry crops leaf out, bloom and fruit before mine do. She plants out her tomatoes before I do, her carrots germinate more rapidly and grow more quickly, her peas outstrip mine within weeks of germination, her green beans produce pods a week ahead of mine. The differences are remarkable.
We are so close to one another, the temperature and rainfall on our two gardens is all but identical. But Bev has created an amazing microclimate for her plants with rich soil and excellent shelter.
Other women in the group have done similar wonders on their properties, creating striking pockets of abundance by carefully manipulating the microclimate in their gardens. In fact, my garden is sometimes behind other group members’ gardens in colder locations.
It’s something to aspire to. Having started with a bare paddock with no topsoil four and a half years ago, we’ve come a long way on our property, but we also have a long way to go. We are incredibly fortunate to have amazing gardeners nearby to inspire us to keep working towards our own pocket of abundance.
The natural microclimate of our property is apparently perfect for dandelions, because they are abundant and healthy everywhere.We haven’t managed a good microclimate for citrus yet, except in the greenhouse.We do manage to grow great broad beans!
We’re two days away from the official start of spring here in Aotearoa New Zealand, and the atmosphere is definitely vernal.
The daffodils are up, and I expect them to be in full bloom within a week. The tulips are following close behind them.
Artichoke buds are beginning to form, nestled among winter’s leafy growth, ready to shoot up and deliver gourmet meals for the coming three months, and the fruit trees and berry bushes are flowering and leafing out, despite the fact there are frosts to come.
In the tunnel house and cold frame, vegetable seedlings bask in the sun. The first ones will be ready for planting out this weekend. In the warmth of the living room indoors, seeds germinate by a sunny window. They, too, will end up in the tunnel house and cold frame before long.
The bumble bees and honey bees are blundering around in dandelion blossoms, the ladybugs are out and about, and I’m keeping an eye on a preying mantis egg case which should hatch before too long.
The sounds have become spring-like as well—frogs trilling at night, magpies warbling before dawn, and white-faced herons croaking in the treetops.
Along with the bucolic scenes of flowers and bumble bees, spring in Canterbury brings howling wind. The wind whips up clouds of pine and wattle tree pollen, which settles like gritty mustard powder on every surface. The windows are hazy with it, and I find myself swiping my computer screen clear several times a day.
The wind makes springtime a challenging season—blossoms blown off the trees; fresh growth flattened to the ground; trees (and the occasional camper van or centre pivot irrigator) tipped over; trampolines, greenhouse panels and rubbish bins flying free … A lot of people struggle with springtime wind here. And of course, there will be more frost. There may even be snow yet to come. Plants out in the cold frame will have to be hauled back into the house and out again several times, tender plants will have to be covered with frost cloth. Invariably it will be too hot and dry for the early crops one week, then too cold and wet for the late crops the following week. There will be multiple disasters in the garden due to weather, pests, irrigation malfunction, or any number of other factors. I’ll struggle and I’ll stress …
Moody springtime sky, with rain obscuring the mountains.
But there will be moments when the wind stills, the sun is warm, and I can sit among the spring blossoms drinking a cup of tea and watching the bees and dreaming of summer.
Last weekend was quite warm—temperatures in the mid to upper teens—with sunshine to make me think of spring. It was a gift I didn’t want to waste.
A tidy herb garden. The wooden step had been nearly overgrown by the thymes on either side.
Most years, we have a window of beautiful weather in the depths of winter. It’s a great time to get out and do some tidying in the garden.
So last weekend, I deadheaded and trimmed the herbs and flowers. I had mostly kept up with the deadheading through the autumn, but I trimmed sparingly then, trying to coax a few more blooms out of bedraggled plants. Last weekend, I was ruthless. With fresh new growth just beginning to show, I cut away all of last year’s rangy branches, even if they managed to make it through most of winter with a few leaves intact.
The thyme, finally mostly done blooming, got a major haircut. I reclaimed paths from great swathes of creeping thyme and from bushy thymes muscling out over the edges of their beds. I cut the mint and oregano to the ground to encourage nice lush cushions of leaves in spring. I cut off dense clumps of dead flower spikes from the winter savoury, and hacked a rangy sage back to try to improve its look. I hauled four wheelbarrow loads of dead leaves and flowers and trimmed herbs out of the front gardens.
I actually rescued this path two weeks ago. The wet area shows where the creeping thyme was cut away. Other paths were equally invaded.
Then I turned my sights to the basket willow. It never fully loses its leaves here, but at some point in the winter, it needs to be cut to the ground. I harvested four hefty bundles of long sticks from it. I’ll use those sticks in the garden over the coming year to support plants, frost cloth and bird netting. Once the trees were levelled, it was time to tackle the thick layer of leaves they’d strewn over the path and the stones of the Zen garden. I raked them up and tucked them underneath other plants as mulch.
After the plant tidy-up, there was the garden shed to tackle. In two weeks, I’ll start using the shed weekly for starting seeds and potting up seedlings. It needs to be clean and tidy for that. So I sorted through all the stuff that had carelessly been tossed in there over the past couple of months—sacks of bird netting and potting mix, plant trays, irrigation hoses … everything that came out of the garden at the end of summer and had never been properly put away.
My husband finished a beautiful rack on the back of the shed on Sunday, so the tidying expanded to include going through the pile of wood sitting in the orchard, and organising everything worth saving onto the new rack. Some of the things weren’t worth ‘saving’, but were worth using right away, leading to a new bench in the fern garden that I’m looking forward to sitting on with a cup of tea some day soon.
And of course, while I was at it, it was time to tidy the pile of fencing, hoops and stakes I use in the vegetable garden every summer. These items sit atop a wooden platform beside the compost pile. I hauled everything off the platform and realised the rats had shoved compost under it, nearly filling the space.
So, the platform had to be lifted, and I hauled almost two full wheelbarrow loads of beautiful compost out from underneath and spread it on the garden.
By Sunday afternoon, a walk through the yard was a delight, with everything neat and tidy. I had lunch on the porch, gazing out into an immaculate herb garden. I hadn’t considered it messy before, but the difference was stunning. The Zen garden, visible now that the willows are down, is a little gift every time I step outside. And I can’t wait to start seeds in the tidy garden shed.
Unfortunately, there will be no sitting outside to enjoy the garden this week. The clouds rolled in Monday morning, and by the time we got home from work, the rain had begun. It promises to be a proper winter storm, with wind, rain and temperatures in the single digits. (The snow won’t reach us here, but the mountains should be spectacular when the clouds clear.) I’ll have to enjoy the garden from indoors this week.
I enjoy winter hiking—I enjoy the crisp air, the opportunity to hike without sweating too much, the snow on the peaks.
One of my favourite winter phenomena is frost heave. This is when moisture in the soil freezes. Since water expands when it freezes, the ice crystals push soil and rocks upward. We get frost heave at home, but in the mountains, where there is both more water and colder temperatures, the phenomenon can be spectacular.
On a cold Matariki morning a few weeks ago, I snapped a photo of five-centimetre-long ice needles near Foggy Peak. Each needle was topped by gravel—the whole top centimetre or more of the sloping surface lifted. As the sun rose and melted the ice, every rock fell a few centimetres downhill from where it started. I imagine this process happening daily all through winter—a slow-motion conveyor belt shifting the mountain downhill.
Meanwhile, higher up on the mountain, water seeping into the cracks in rocks and then freezing shatters them day by day into smaller fragments to be added to the icy conveyor belt.
It is such a small thing, frost heave. But its slow action has a big effect.
The Southern Alps are rising at a rate of 10 to 20 millimetres per year—some of the fastest rising mountains in the world. If no erosion had ever occurred, the mountains would currently stand over 20 kilometres tall. Our tallest mountain, Aoraki Mount Cook, is 3754 metres tall.
Of course, when we think of erosion, we think of the big events like landslides and rock avalanches. These events can be spectacular.
On 14 December 1991, a rock avalanche on Aoraki lowered the summit by 10 metres over the course of a few hours. Fourteen million cubic metres of rock and ice tumbled down the mountain at speeds of up to 300 kilometres per hour. The shock waves from the landslide were recorded on seismographs as far as 58 kilometres away.
But without frost heave, the 1991 Aoraki rock avalanche might never have happened. Frost heave slowly weakened the rocks, slowly snapped them into smaller and smaller pieces, slowly shifted their weight. Centimetre by centimetre, those little ice needles brought the mountainside down.
I like to think of frost heave as a metaphor. Each of those tiny ice crystals, by itself, can move a pebble, and together they bring down mountains.
Today is Matariki, and like new year celebrations all around the world, it’s a day for assessing the past and planning the future. It’s a day to spend with family and friends. It’s a day to remember and honour our connections with other people, the seasons, and the land.
Spending time with whānau wasn’t an option for me today, so I thought I’d celebrate my connections to the seasons and the Earth instead. Before dawn I drove to Porter’s Pass and hiked up towards Foggy Peak. It was dark when I began the ascent, with just a hint of light to the east. I hiked the first 40 minutes or so with my head torch, before it was light enough to see the track.
Being midwinter, I expected it to be cold. It was actually surprisingly warm to start—the air temperature was above freezing. But the wind was stiff, and the temperature was still falling. Thankfully, there was no problem staying warm on the uphill.
But the wind grew more fierce the further up I went. I stopped frequently to enjoy the beauty of dawn in the mountains, to gaze back at the bright smudges of towns dotting the plains, the pinpricks of light from the cars crawling up the mountain to Porters Pass. I never stopped for long, though.
I’d hoped to catch the sunrise from the summit of Foggy Peak, but as the scree gave way to icy snow, my progress slowed, and I wished for crampons. I watched sun strike the snowy peaks of the Craigieburn Range and decided that that would have to be good enough—I could push on to Foggy Peak, but I wasn’t going to sit there with a cup of tea and watch the sun rise as I’d hoped. Even if I’d been in time, it was too windy and cold.
So I had my tea in a sheltered spot lower down, where I could sit and enjoy the view. It wasn’t the summit, but it was a beautiful way to start the new year.
Sometimes, you try something new in the kitchen (like using an entire quart jar of black currants in a recipe for cupcakes), and it’s edible, but not something you particularly want to repeat. Then there are times you make something up and it just works.
On Saturday I made a cake that used all the eggs in the house and most of the butter. It didn’t leave me much to work with for Sunday breakfast. (This blog is not about Saturday’s cake, but it was amazing—the Brown Sugar-Spice Cake from King Arthur Flour’s Whole Grain Baking book—it’s what you’d get if gingerbread and pound cake had a baby together, and it was raised by carrot cake.)
So I figured I’d make a yeasted bread for Sunday breakfast. My initial thought was cinnamon rolls, which we do for Christmas breakfast every year. But I wanted something different—cinnamon rolls are for Christmas, not everyday.
I started off by looking at recipes for various traditional fortified breads, but all of them either had eggs or lots of butter in them.
So I decided to wing it.
Saturday evening, I combined two cups of warm milk, some yeast, about two tablespoons of butter, some salt, a spoonful of honey and enough flour (half wholemeal (whole wheat) and half high grade (bread flour)) to make up a nice bread dough. It rose beautifully, and after two hours, I rolled it out into a large rectangle. I spread it with about three quarters of a cup of quince paste, then sprinkled on some cinnamon and a generous handful of chopped walnuts. Then I rolled it into a log and cut the log into twelve thick slices, which I arranged, cut side down, in a greased 9 x 13-inch baking tin.
I popped the pan in the fridge overnight, and the rolls were beautifully risen by 5 this morning. I gave them 30 minutes in a 210℃ oven, pulling them out when they were nicely browned.
While they were still warm, I drizzled a simple glaze over them—1/2 cup icing sugar (confectioners sugar), about 1/2 tsp vanilla, and enough milk to make a thick, pourable consistency.
It’s really too bad I didn’t actually measure most of the ingredients, because the result was excellent. In fact, I think it’s worth running out of eggs and low on butter purely to have an excuse to make these rolls. Maybe next time I’ll measure my ingredients so I can give you all a recipe—it’s definitely one worth sharing.
In the meantime, if you’re adventuresome and would like to give my loose winging-it recipe a go, I highly recommend it. If you can’t get quince paste, I reckon apple butter or a thick apple sauce would work nicely, too, though it’s hard to beat quince for flavour.
As my regular readers all know, I spend a lot of time in the garden. I also spend a lot of time thinking about gardens, looking at gardens, planning gardens …
The bare paddock: former forest, future garden
I am fortunate to be part of a local group of keen vegetable gardeners. Of course, we don’t just grow vegetables—everyone has perennial food crops like fruit trees and berry bushes, and ornamental plants as well. All of us take pleasure in planting and maintaining our gardens, as well as relaxing in and enjoying them. Some of us are in the early stages of establishing our gardens, and others have spent decades cultivating one place. But we’re all focused on the future.
I’m reminded of the quote I copied years ago from the book 1491: New Revelations of the Americas before Columbus, by Charles C. Mann:
“Gardens are fashioned for many purposes with many different tools, but all are collaborations with natural forces. Rarely do their makers claim to be restoring or rebuilding anything from the past; and they are never in full control of the results. Instead, using the best tools they have and all the knowledge that they can gather, they work to create future environments.
If there is a lesson it is that to think like the original inhabitants of these lands we should not set our sights on rebuilding an environment from the past but concentrate on shaping a world to live in for the future.”
I look at the 3000 square metres of land my husband and I own. For thousands of years, this land was covered in forest and periodically scoured by the Waimakariri River, which deposited around 300 metres of rock and clay here on top of the bedrock. When Māori arrived in the region, they burnt the forest to flush out moa and other game birds. European settlers later brought in sheep and cows and planted European pasture grasses. From the mid 1800s to 2019, our little block of land was used to pasture sheep, and later, dairy cows. When it was subdivided to develop as residential housing, the topsoil was scraped off, leaving bare, highly compacted clay studded with rocks. Even weeds grew poorly (in places where we have done nothing to improve the soil, there are still bare patches, where nothing has been able to grow in the past 5 years).
Flaxes provide food for native birds, currents provide food for us.
There was no restoring or remaking what was once here, but when we bought the land, we envisioned a place rich in native plants that might attract native lizards, birds and insects. We envisioned a place full of plants that would provide food—an orchard, berry crops, nuts, herbs and vegetables. We envisioned a place that was beautiful, and bright with flowers.
A volunteer lancewood.
We cannot erase the fact that the soil here has been sorely abused for nearly two hundred years. We can’t erase the fact that we sit over an old river bed full of rock and clay. Not everything we plant flourishes, and other plants have done so well, they’ve become weeds. Some insects and birds have returned, but glaring absences remain, and non-native pests still dominate.
But like all gardeners, we look to the future, our imaginations filling the gaps in what we see today. We do our best to collaborate with the natural forces at work here in order to shape a little pocket of plenty for ourselves and others.
Less than three months until Dragons of AotearoaNew Zealand is released! I’ve had so much fun working on this book, and I can’t wait to share it with you. I’m especially excited about the awesome illustrations created for me by the amazing Lily Duval. Look for a cover reveal in June, and the release of the book in July at the Tamariki Book Festival!
A world-first guide to dragons, written in consultation with the dragons themselves.
Hidden for centuries, Aotearoa New Zealand’s dragons step out of the shadows in this unique and informative guide.
Here you will find information about:
All eight dragon species found in Aotearoa
Dragon biology and evolution
Dragons’ unique culture and customs
New Zealand Draconic language
The history of dragon slaying in New Zealand
Dragon conservation
How to stay safe in dragon country
With a foreword by the founding members of the Dragon Defence League, and special commentary by the dragons Rata and Foggy Bottom.
Here in Aotearoa New Zealand, most of our native trees are evergreen, so we don’t have the same spectacular autumnal colours I remember growing up in North America. There are, of course, plenty of European non-native trees planted in parks and gardens, so we do get some autumnal colour, but here in Canterbury, where summers are dry, the overwhelming landscape colour in autumn is green, as cooler temperatures and increased rainfall lead to a flush of grass growth.
In the vegetable garden, however, there’s plenty of colour. Much of it is subtle, but it speaks of autumn nonetheless.
Winter squashes offer deep green, heathery grey, and orange, first in the garden, and then in the laundry room where they adorn every available surface at the moment. They’ll also offer beautiful orange in dinners throughout the coming year as we work our way through them.
Dry beans also provide colourful beauty at this time of year. Trays of drying beans on the porch make me smile: Blue Shackamaxon’s glossy black, Bird’s Egg’s speckled spheres, and Cherokee Cornfield’s riotous mix of colourful varieties.
Then there’s the flint corn. This year, I planted Strawberry Popcorn, which produces deep red kernels, and Glass Gem, with its glittering multihued kernels. Husking corn is like opening a box of crayons.
In the greenhouses, summer still reigns, offering red tomatoes, multicoloured peppers, and purple eggplants.
On top of the colourful vegetables, there are plenty of autumnal flowers in bloom: dahlias, heliopsis, and chrysanthemums provide bright splashes of yellow, orange, pinks and reds. They also attract colourful butterflies like yellow admirals, red admirals and monarchs.
So while we may not have the colourful autumn leaves, there is plenty of brightness to enjoy, even as the days grow short and dark.
Robinne Weiss 