Gardening tales

A garden! I have visions of peaches, fresh lemons, lobelia in shady corners. Our garden – we can sit outside and sip cider under our tree in summer, and swing in our hammock in the mid-morning winter sun. I grew up in the country, and my grandmother features regularly in the ‘Open Garden’ sessions. My mother grows her own parsley and my father makes jam from his raspberries. We could do a garden in our new inner bayside terrace house – a garden!

We start with a garden bed and mature tree. The previous tenants had a dog. They must have thrown plates at the naughty thing, because we clean up bone fragments and ceramic pieces from the dry dirt under the tree. There’s a lily (‘Gasp! The plant of DEATH!’ says a friend of a friend) and a native grassy thing that we refer to as ‘Johnny Rotten.’ There’s a baby passion-fruit struggling in the corner, and an outdoor toilet that we will use as storage. The gate is wedged shut above the top hinges with a pale blue tin bucket –if it works, who are we to question? Oh, and the hot water service is in the garden bed.

Our landlord says “You-a do-a whatever you-a need-a to. You-a drill-a holes in-a the walls if-a you-a want-a….”and my brain hears “Build a garden!”

I find an overstuffed chair with a bad leg out for rubbish collection and scavenge it home. My boyfriend won’t sit on it. I think he thinks he might get germs. He thinks I think he’s a bit of a wuss. I think he’s right, but he’s keen to visit Bunnings and buy plants.

We do the two-income-no-children run to Bunnings, and take the trolley towards the Nursery section. Mr Stunningly Handsome gets in amongst the herbs.

“Wow.” he says. “Wow! I didn’t know you could grow basil!” I laugh.

“Wow!” he says. “Wooow! Garlic. Chives. Chillis! Capsicum!”

“Okay,” I say. “Funny. What are you buying?”

“Wow!” says my boyfriend. “I didn’t know you could grow this stuff!” He’s serious.

We start him with tomatoes, sunflowers and strawberries. I buy a passionfruit, a blueberry, a chilli and some flowers. I experiment with the pots, and my partner avidly watches me shifting the plants. I explain that things are dying because even though the label says Full Sun, it doesn’t really mean Full Sun In Australia. It means Full Sun In Winter And Maybe Some Morning And Afternoon Sun In Summer (And Definitely No Swimming Until 45 Minutes After You Have Eaten.)

It’s November and Melbourne’s on water restrictions. We bucket water outside from our bath. We buy ridiculously expensive organic liquid soap from a shop in Belgrave. The shop owner tells us that we’ll never go back once we’ve tried the soap – and she’s right, we’ve not been back to her shop since.

The strawberries in hanging baskets are going nuts, and Mr Stunningly Handsome catches some of the parrots that nest in next-door’s-tree eating them. He’s torn – they’re so pretty and friendly but they’re eating his goddamn strawberries.

A pigeon nests in our tree. She may be a pigeon, but she’s our pigeon, and we feed her. She lays eggs and broods when we hang out the washing. I talk to our pigeon about her speckled neck scarf and my boyfriends laughs.

One day, we bucket out water to give the garden a drink, and there’s a pretty blue lovebird sitting on the capsicums. My boyfriend waters, and the bird dances under the watering can. It sits on my hand. We don’t catch it.

Disaster strikes. The sunflowers are dying. I shift them around, out of the sun, into the sun. More water, less water. The tomatoes get sick. The leaves start to curl and I call my mother. “Leaf curl,” she says as I Google ‘sick brown tomato leaves.’

It turns out to be whitefly, encouraged into our garden by the slashing of the overgrown rights of way on both sides of our house. I’m devastated, and I try pest repellent herbs, foil and finally, chemicals. Nothing works, and I lose the sunflowers and tomatoes.

During winter, we let the garden go – I’m changing jobs and Mr Stunningly Handsome likes to see things grow, not die. We start again in Spring.

The garden is sprouting. There are tender leaves everywhere and Melbourne experiences a wild, wild hailstorm. Our plants and battered and bruised and people takes photos of hail the size of golf balls. We buy straw and a compost bin this summer.

My boyfriend is mystified by the straw and bark, and I tell him to turn over the garden bed so we can dig the straw in. He weeds out my mint. I make him put it back, and we go around the garden, naming all the plants so it doesn’t happen again. The garden hibernates during winter.

This Spring, we dig over the garden bed. The mint is firmly in place and climbing the walls. I point it out to my boyfriend.

“That’s mint!” he says immediately. “I’ll dig around it!”

Water restrictions have eased, and he plants capsicums and cucumber again. They failed last time, but he’s not giving up. We kick the old stump. It’s riddled with termites, and my foot goes into the spongy wood. We remove the stump and fill in the hole. My rosemary loves the soil here and is growing into a bush. I let it. I like rosemary.

This year, we’re a little ambitious. I pruned my blueberry and can see the bud of new growth starting. I get a bay tree for Christmas. The tomatoes get whitefly again – what is it with these insects? I can’t stop them, but there’s less this year. I squash as many as possible. We grow lobelias, tomatoes, a dwarf lemon tree, cucumbers (they worked!) mint, basil, mint basil and more. I take parsley to work, there’s too much for tabouleh at home. I live in hope that my passionfruit will flower. The garden floods when the downpipe falls off the wall and I string chillies in the kitchen. Mr Stunningly Handsome refuses to weed on the grounds he’s a vegetarian. I tell him I refuse to fix anything because I’m a woman. He weeds. I fix things.

There may not be peaches, but there’s lemons and lobelia in sunny sheltered spots. We swing together in the hammock. In our inner city terrace, we hold hands and grow a garden.