life
gardening
gardening May 20, 2017
Reviving a garden for winter
My garden is currently not so much a sight for sore eyes as it is one for the lens of a garden reality show. The entire thing is a makeover “before” picture that sustains only chickweed, and possibly a family of rats. If the landscape militia from...
gardening December 24, 2016
Flowers for summer
There never was a minister for employment truly loyal to the garden. If there were, we’d all have won the right to horticultural leave by now. This time would be taken nowhere near the Australian summer sun, whose heat does...
gardening October 31, 2015
Waterwise tips to beat this summer’s killer heat
Gardening in the Australian summer is an unhindered pleasure whose sun radiates in our hearts even as it brings to life the scent of cupped and erogenous blooms. Our borders are full with promise and our memories with the...
gardening June 4, 2016
El Niño, La Niña and flowering annuals
There is little that is more troubling than the glory of the daphne at number 10. Not even neoliberalism bothers me so deeply as that bush. Iris, the best gardener in the street, and possibly the climate zone, kept its lobed...
gardening August 8, 2015
Growing raspberries, strawberries and berries
The strawberry, you will be reminded by its professional admirers, is not even a berry. Neither, for that matter, is the raspberry, the boysenberry or any of the quite delicious, mildly decorative edibles I will shortly exhort...
gardening March 21, 2015
War of the weeds
There are just two sorts of people who will tell you that gardening is peaceful. These are (a) those who never held a trowel, and (b) heiresses who do not so much garden as tell the groundsman to be a dear and pop that...
gardening January 31, 2015
Singing the praises of kale and cauli, baby
If there were a Department of Comedic References, it would confirm that jokes involving kale ceased to be funny through overuse months ago. But try telling this to Iris at number 10, the street’s best gardener and foremost...
gardening November 29, 2014
Lies, damned lies and exotics
Iris at number 10 may be, now and until her death by topiary, the street’s, and probably the electorate’s, best gardener. But she is not terribly good at telling the truth. Then again, all gardeners hedge around their...
gardening October 25, 2014
Herb your enthusiasm
If the production of homemade fertiliser is the hard smack of gardening, then herb cultivation is its gateway drug. My neighbour and the street’s greenest thumb, Iris, knows this and that is why she, an inveterate pusher, has...