Creating Pathways

A new little pathway (with Jaq the three legged chihauhau back by the worm farm)

I  continue to be preoccupied in the garden, making new raised beds for planting, and putting in access paths. Both tasks are hard physical labour that leaves me exhausted if I go at it for more than a couple of hours at a time. But the results are very pleasing, so I'm trying to learn to pace myself better when carrying concrete slabs or digging.

I'm also trying to avoid unnecessary expenses in the garden so both my raised beds and paths are made with things I've found for free or very cheap: odd paving stones, old bricks, broken concrete, a material that usually ends up in landfill but when reused  is sometimes called 'urbanite'.  There was a lot of broken concrete lying around the property when I arrived but I've used it all up and now have to go out and collect it from other people's places- more heavy lifting.

My two most recent path projects are short and sweet.  Inside our front gate is a dark damp little wedge which I'm trying to make lighter and more attractive.  This is what it looked like a year ago, just before I moved in:

That nasty spiky plant positioned to poke everyone in the eye as they entered was the first to go.  

Weeded, with a few pavers and bricks arranged at the bottom of the steps

Cleared for action, with a bunch of tiny baby succulents newly planted and almost invisible on the right. 

I cleared away all the weeds, moved the pebbles around a bit, and planted up succulents against the house. Access to the front door is up the steps but to get around to the back garden and the cottage where my flatmate lives involved crunching over more pebbles- particularly troublesome for pushing a bicycle or wheelbarrow, but it stayed like that for nearly a year. I kept waiting for someone who might help me make a proper path.

looking down on the new path from the deck

Then last month I finally just went ahead and made a new little side path, using only materials I already had and laying them onto bare earth. I've researched enough about making paths to know I haven't done it properly, but it looks all right and so far it hasn't tripped anybody up.  I still need to rearrange the pebbles some more, and once the planting takes off come Spring it should be a much more welcoming entrance area.  Even at this stage of work in progress I still get a little thrill every time I come home and open the gate.

An improved entrance- look how well my succulent garden is coming along.

The other recent path project was to fill in a soggy gap between the wooden boardwalk and the steps to Shirley's cottage behind the house.  A few overgrown bits of broken concrete dotted a low lying lawn which collected rainwater, making winter access very muddy.  Having gained some path making confidence with the entrance above, Autumn's rains prompted me to finally have a crack at the cottage pathway.

The old path, last Spring

I decided to try and make the path flush between the top of the boardwalk and the bottom-most step, which meant raising the path quite high up from the lawn. I bought a $17 of pit sand for the purpose- the only cash spent on both paths.

A Summer view showing the boardwalk which comes to an abrupt end halfway to the cottage.

 I dug out the grass first and then put in little trenches on each side of the path to try and help with drainage.  Shirley and I put in wooden boards on each side and then filled the trenches and centre with sand, trying to make it as compressed and level as we could without specialised tools.

More-or-less finished path, raised up from the lawn to be level with the boardwalk and bottom step.

We made the path on a Saturday morning, trying to beat rain forecast for late morning so I had started very early preparing the foundations. Just as I'd laid the first few pavers, friends arrived with a truck load of free firewood which I had to help unload, and by the time I'd done that I could hardly move. Luckily Shirley did a great job to finish laying the path, so it was truly a collaborative effort.

High and dry crazy paving. The feet came with the cottage.

Falling for the Hobbiton Aesthetic

Bag end, home of Bilbo and Frodo (with nasturtium and comfrey)

It may be unpatriotic to admit this, but I am not a fan of the Lord of the Rings, or Hobbit, films. I enjoyed reading the Hobbit as a child but found Tolkien's LoTR to be a slog. I have watched all the films, to see what the fuss is about, but had trouble staying awake through them. My favourite bits were always in the Hobbit home village.

Child size chair and a stack of firewood

I do feel a connection with the stay-at-home hobbits that Frodo and Bilbo left behind, with their cosy underground houses, well-stocked pantries and second breakfasts.  So when my cousin from America, who is a serious LoTR film fan, came to Hamilton last week I was happy to have an excuse to visit the nearby film set of Hobbiton, now a Waikato tourist attraction.

Community garden with birdhouse

I was quite charmed by Hobbiton, not so much by the round doors, but by the consistent attention to quaint detail. It feels like a cross between an historical village and a permaculture farm, all scaled down to child size.  Hobbit extras were required to be 5 foot tall, just my height, so being on their the film set was a rare experience of not feeling too short for the world. Even the furniture and tools were to my scale, with practical little ladders scattered everywhere. It was also a welcome oasis of lush green abundance after a long drought.

Little ladders come in handy for hobbit-sized folk

There are no obvious anachronisms once the bus drops you off at the entrance to Hobbiton. In this version of Tolkien's pre-industrial arcadia everything  is made by hand of natural materials (or appears to be); from the thatched roofs,  fancy iron work, carved wooden facades, lead-light windows to the lush green turf and pretty pumpkins piled around.

Punpkins in the Green Dragon 

Hobbit hole facade with doorstep cottage garden 

The original temporary film set has been rebuilt in permanent materials for the popular tourist attraction, now more than 10 years old and entertaining thousands of people every day (70 people every 15-30 minutes all day long every day of the year).  It is all make believe, from the empty spaces behind every hobbit hole facade to the painted lichen on the picket fences. Among all the genuine trees in the village there is one (on top of Bag End) which was built from scratch for the first film, at a cost of one million dollars.

Million dollar fake tree on top of the hill, real trees in the foreground:  pear grafted onto quince  and apple both laden with unpicked fruit

I was especially delighted and inspired by the gardens which (the guide advised) are kept looking in just this state of tidy fecundity year round by a team of 30 gardeners, who must finish their work before the first visitors arrive at 9am every morning.  The gardens in front of the hobbit holes are refreshed with flats, troughs and pots of plants, changed out regularly for year round blooms. Yet this seems entirely appropriate, for the containers are all weathered wood or faded pottery so they look like what Hobbits would use.



These tiny cottage gardens (which could be replicated in a tiny balcony or courtyard) are complemented by larger community gardens which really reminded me of favourite permaculture gardens I have known. They look like a pretty jumble of plants in polycultures, with great a diversity of not only edible but beneficial insect attracting flowers. These larger gardens are not renewed with pots and flats, but I could see succession planting evident everywhere.  Patches of plants abutted in various stages of growth from seedlings to ready to harvest.

The lush green abundance of the whole set is maintained by more irrigation than anyone in town has been using during this recent drought.  It was a welcome rest for eyes seared by my sad dry garden at home. I was also glad my cousins got to see the unique lurid green grass of home that is more usual for the Waikato.

Hobbit swing

Fake as it all is, I still got inspiration, or at least aesthetic affirmation, for my own garden design aspirations: all curves, no hard straight smooth lines or surfaces.  Lots of edges, lots of bee friendly planting.  Flowers, herbs, vegetables and fruit all together filling every niche.

bee and butterfly sharing pollen

Mill with row boat and fishing rod

We got an hour or so to wander through Hobbiton, either at our own pace or following Aiden, our well informed guide. The tour finished at the Green Dragon pub, across a charming stone arch bridge next to the thatched and half timbered mill with working water wheel.  There we supped a free cider served in beautiful hand thrown pottery mugs. Sitting by the (real) fire, we looked out across the mill pond, back to Hobbiton.

Hobbiton across the mill pond

The Hobbiton experience is expensive ($70 adult, $10 child) but I think its good value, even for a non-fan like me. I was utterly charmed and delighted at every turn. After an hour and a half I didn't want to leave.  My Lord of the Rings-fan cousin was satisfied on even more levels.

Charmed

Blossoms in a vegetable garden

Thornless blackberry, like tiny rosebuds

The blackberry a few weeks later, developing drupes

Southland Sno Pea, a heritage pea generous with its sweet crisp pods and pretty as a sweetpea.

A brown onion getting ready to burst into bloom (these were supermarket onions that sprouted, so I planted them in a pot to see what would happen).

 

Sweet smelling jasmine, one of the few 'proper' flowers round here.

Borlotto bean blossom (with fennel)

Celery going to seed

Chive flowers

The rambling red rose that I was so grateful flowered before anything else, and is now rain battered to death. When the rain finally stops I'll cut it back and see if it comes out for another round this summer.

Nasturtium for my salads

Pretty potato flowers

Mine is not a 'flower garden' but at this time of year it is full of blooms. I wouldn't pick most of them though as they promise fruit and vegetables to come.  Many are small and subtle- I'm letting spinach and other greens go to seed in the hopes they will self seed around the garden and save me some planting work later.

Abundance

Eating from the garden every day. Is it possible to overdose on leafy greens? Because I've never eaten so many in my life before, I'm sure.

Oh dear, I keep forgetting to blog. And then remembering but not knowing what to say. Or having some idea but not feeling ready to share it here. The growing and changing is not all in the garden right now.  There are lush developments inside and out that are still too new and tender to expose to the harsh environment of the internet. Also I'm really really busy and not often by my computer.

before (a polyculture of carrots, mesculun and red onion;
with dill and beans coming on in the background)

after (a month later, thinning for salads every day)

Growing things (seriously) is still enough of a novelty for me to feel like I am witnessing miracles daily. I am awestruck by seeds germinating.  Every leaf and tendril is a wonder. The humblest blossoms delights me. Fruit forming from flowers is amazing.  Consuming food that I've grown feels like a sacrament.

Pretty pea flowers by the borage

I love sharing my yield with friends and family, nourishing them with the unqualified goodness I have nurtured.   If you come by, you will find a bag of salad pressed upon you, as the race is on to harvest before this unseasonably hot weather makes all the greens bolt.  Soon there will be peas, beans, zucchini and tomatoes to share. But the strawberry harvest is just (almost) enough for me (and the birds and slugs). Only my beloved father gets to also eat one now and then.

One of the daily salads of 15+ different leaves and flowers, all picked a minute ago.

Denniston Sampler

In the spirit of the crocheted coral reef I made a few years ago, I'm working on a vocabulary of stitches to represent the mosses, lichens and ferns of Denniston Plateuau. The fragile and unique ecosystem, which seems likely to be lost to opencast coal mining soon, is too delicate for yarn. Instead, I'm working with embroidery floss and stitches, and fine crocheted lace. 

I've been playing around with the stitches on a felt rock that I made for the purpose, a deliberately misshapen slab imitating Denniston's flakey sandstone.  Most of my mosses are pretty straight foward knots, French and Bullion as they are perfect for imitating this kind of low velvety moss.

I also played around with a long looped stitch, cut like a shag pile rug for a spikey moss like the one in the centre of this little clump.

This is the little clump that Robin looked at while we were on Denniston in June, and she said, can you make me this? And I said yes but it turned out a bit sparser than the real thing. Partly as I was impatient to finish it for Robin's birthday (and then I missed it anyway) and partly because I've been distracted by the house and garden that I'm moving to in two weeks.



Also, my crocheted lace green ferns looked ridiculous on the felt rock so I'm using them for something else.  And I couldn't resist adding my own favourite bit of Denniston flora, this low white fluffy thing that I am not sure whether its a fern or a moss or a lichen. If you know, please tell me, I hate my ignorance.

Mysterious Denniston species 

My version of the Denniston white fluffy thing looks like this. It's crocheted lace in a stitch I invented (of course someone probably already invented it, but I was following my intuition rather than a pattern so I can't acknowledge anyone else's version).

Denniston lace on the rock

I made short lengths of the crocheted lace, then starched and pinned it to dry stiff, then ruffled it as I was stitching it to the felt rock base to get the clumpy effect of the original. I do think its a pretty lace stretched out and I might find some other use for this easy and attractive pattern which allows it to be seen better.  Perhaps a gift for a soon-to-be-bride that I know.

Denniston lace: starched and stretched.

Denniston Moss

Denniston lichens and mosses

The day after our tour of Stockton Mine, Robin and I visited the next plateau south: Denniston. The rich seams of Denniston coal were extensively and famously pit-mined for nearly a century. Denniston's mining history has been romantically immortalised in a couple of popular novels which in turn support some excellent visitor resources on the Plateau.

Top of the Incline (once touted as the 8th wonder of the world!) at Denniston

I like looking at bits of rusty old mining kit as much as the next girl but I really wanted to get a feel for the natural landscape that is (probably) soon going to be open cast mined like Stockton.  The landscape is very similar to what Stockton would have been like before Solid Energy started blasting the surface away. I also really wanted to meet one of the famous snails. 

Looking South from Stockton onto Denniston Plateau

The Arctic has polar bears. The Sumatran rainforest has orangutans.  Every endangered ecosystem needs at least one charismatic megafauna to rally support for habitat conservation. The Buller coal plateau (which includes Stockton and Denniston Plateaux) is an endangered ecosystem so harsh that the most charismatic megafauna it can offer is a giant carnivorous land snail that sucks up live worms like spaghetti.  Unfortunately, as defenders of the plateau have found, snails have a repuation that make most people consider them a slightly ludicrous animal to bother saving.  It's difficult, even for a lifelong greenie like myself, to not secretly snigger just a little about saving snails.

Powelliphanta patrickensis (photo from Forest and Bird)

Of course its not just unique and remarkable snails that are at risk, but an entire unique and remarkable ecosystem (of which snails are a near-top-level predator, much like the polar bear in the Arctic, but infinitely less cuddly-looking). Denniston Plateau's environment is based on a layer of concrete-like sandstone with almost no soil; 6m p/a rainfall with no drainage, at a high altitude between mountains and sea, blasted almost year round with icy Southern winds. 

Typical Denniston landscape- exposed rock with a few short tough plants clinging to tiny nooks and hollows

The tallest trees grow to about knee height in most places.  Most of the animal life is invertebrate, with a few rare birds and lizards who survive there because it is too harsh an environment for the kind of pests that have demolished most of the rest of NZ's native animals. 

My favourite Denniston plant

I didn't see any snails. Or other insects, though I turned over a few rocks looking. No birds, no lizards, nothing but the most enchanting clumps of moss and lichen. We did meet lots of mining vehicles thundering along the narrow twisty gravel roads to and on the Plateau. Bathurst (the company granted consent to open cut on Denniston Plateau) is already open cut mining out the back at Cascade Mine, accessed across Denniston.  

Reminds me of the saucer gardens I used to make when I was a child

This environment is so fragile, so tenuously maintained on the hard sandstone cap that lies above the coal, that I just can't see how Bathurst  can possibly pretend they will be able to restore it after mining.  Like Solid Energy's efforts at Stockton Mine, they may go to a great deal of trouble to make sure the landscape looks green and tidy, (which is admittedly an improvement on pre-RMA mining companies leaving a big toxic mess as at Tui). I mean, look at these pictures.  The ecosystem that is there now is unique to the sandstone cap and can't be replicated on top of blasted rubble with manufactured soil, grass seed and native plantings.  It may very well be a parkland afterwards, but it won't be much like it is now.

Charismatic microflora.  Could a Save the Moss campaign work? It is kind of cuddly looking. 

Coal mining in the bad old days was difficult, dirty and dangerous. Miners died underground in explosions, fires, collapses and gassy pockets. They died overground in machinery failures. If they survived the immediate dangers many still died young of black lung from inhaling coal dust.

Denniston Miners (photos from the interpretive boards on site)

Today coal mining continues to be difficult, dirty and dangerous.  I'm still stitching my memorials to the men who died at Pike River few miles from Denniston not even two years ago.

New Zealand Coal Mining Disasters remembered at Denniston

An open cut mine in a regulated industry is undoubtably less dangerous for workers who spend most of their days inside the comfortable cabs of heavy machinery. But the dangers to the environment from coal mining are both localised and global, immediate and long term. Blasting a landscape, filling the air with dust and acidifying streams are bad enough but burning coal into greenhouse gases is inherently dirty. Clean coal is a dirty lie.  The only clean coal is in the hole.


The difficulty is overcoming the greed of coal mining directors and shareholders who deny that climate change is their problem (yet Colorado burns up as I write this).  The difficulty lies in changing a whole global economic system entirely based on digging up sequestered carbon and releasing it into the atmosphere.

"As new processes evolve, future generations might wonder why their ancestors wastefully burnt so much of this rare and precious fossil fuel."