The 10-Year Rewind – Part 10 – Watering the Garden

Every day this month I am looking back on the 10 years since I started this blog in June, 2008. Part 10 is this one — Watering the Garden — from January 2009, all about my adventures watering the "garden" I grew up in as a little boy.

As a minor family history project I've dug out all of my ancient black and white family photos, with the aim of scanning them, burning them to a disc and sending this off to the small band of family members here and there who might be interested. While doing this I came across a few snaps of the house where I grew up in the 1950s and 60s, and had a few thoughts about the garden there, and the contribution it made to my love of gardening now. It wasn't much of a contribution, mind you, as it wasn't much of a garden, but the seeds of my passion for plants and gardening were sown then.

Not entirely sure of the vintage of this one, but it looks like it might have been taken before my first-ever cricket match for the Lane Cove Under 12s, when I was about 10. They put the youngsters into the third under 12 team, named us the Lane Cove Colts, and it took the older lads about one minute to rename us the Lane Cove Clots. While cricket remains a great love of mine, I've chosen this photo because I'm standing in front of the hydrangea, about the only truly lovely plant in our very bare garden of mostly lawn and concrete footpaths. I loved watering the hydrangea and loved its big, generous blue flowers.

Classic Sydney suburbia of the early 1960s. We had a row of oleanders planted by the front fence. Dad's efforts at gardening amounted to grumpily agreeing to hack back the oleanders every year or so, immediately after the official notice from the local council arrived in the letterbox informing him that other residents had complained about how the oleanders had so overgrown the footpath that they found it difficult to get by. I also loved watering the oleanders and watching them grow so rapidly. I think Dad had a secret plan to kill the oleanders by over-pruning them, but that only seemed to make them grow and flower even more. I like to think that my watering helped them to bounce back each time.

Here's Dad and our family car, the Jaguar Mk V. All the kids from the opposing cricket teams thought we were posh and had a Rolls Royce. We could and occasionally did fit all 12 members of the Lane Cove Colts team into the Jag, too. But this photo is here not only because the hydrangea is in bloom in the far right corner, but also because the Jag is parked near the cricket pitch. I know, having a slightly downhill sloping cricket pitch isn't ideal, but it didn't prevent countless memorable Test Matches between my brother, who is four years older than me and always got to be the Australians, and me, who being the junior chap always ended up being England, the West Indies or Pakistan etc. Each time I ever amazed us both and came close to a win, he'd just start bowling faster. I didn't have that option, I was already bowling flat out.

And so with the reminiscences dusted off, the thing that I remember so clearly from these photos was my love of watering the garden. We didn't actually DO any gardening so to speak. The hydrangeas and oleanders had been planted before I arrived, or when I was so young that I can't remember them being planted. So all the gardening there was to do was simply keeping it all alive with water.

Apparently my love of watering the garden started at an early age, so my older sisters tell me. Even by the time I was four years old I was outside watering the garden. A leading socialite of the time (well, she was both head of the Mothers' Club at the local primary school and had a hyphenated surname) used to walk past our house each day. Apparently, one day while watering the garden I called out a cheery "hello lady" and she ignored me. So I hosed her.

Her shrieks alerted my mother and sister, so I hosed them, too. Apparently it got totally out of hand and as my sisters retreated into the house, I followed them in, hosing away. At that point someone got brave and disarmed me, and presumably I got into trouble (but I don't remember a skerrick of this episode and am prepared to deny it ever happened, except here on this blog, which is on the internet and you know what they say about the internet).

And so that bare old patch of ground with a lot of lawn and concrete and just some tough old shrubs laid the seeds of my love of gardening. I really only got into gardening in recent decades, when I started sub-editing a homemaker magazine. That led to me moving to this house, with its modest patch of ground, about 17 years ago.

But still, to this day, one of my favourite things is watering the garden. With our current drought-induced water restrictions I can only unfurl the hose on Wednesdays and Sundays now, but it's always great fun to do, a childish pleasure of which I am sure I will never grow tired. 

Good old Rain Gods!

Thank you Huey! It is so nice to wake up this morning to hear the gentle hiss of rain on the tin roof that covers the back part of our house. And to look out upon the garden and see the pathway covered in a shiny film, I know that finally the plants are getting a proper watering, a soaking of their souls that a mere gardener with a hose and a watering can cannot hope to provide. 

Pictured below is soggy land this morning, bathed in the dull light of low grey clouds.

I am sure I must have mentioned it a few times before on this blog, but I love watering the garden. Even though we didn't have much of a garden in the home where I grew up, as a little boy I still loved watering the garden. All we had then was two hydrangeas, a lawn and a row of unruly oleanders that didn't need any help whatsoever from wistful little boys. But for me even then, watering the garden was a lovely time of quiet contemplation and daydreaming.

Despite my lifelong love of watering our garden, some mornings I do get a bit sick of it. As the weather cools down (finally!) this autumn, the garden's established plants don't need extra water, but we always have some new crops that need a regular drink. And so yes, some days even one of my favourite things can become a chore. Sigh. Being a grown-up can be so boring sometimes ...

And so here's truly heartfelt thanks to our Rain Gods, for doing a wonderful job and also letting me have the morning off.

Well washed gardens

Pam and I enjoyed a lovely night last night, eating a great meal while sitting outside in the thriving garden of our friends Paul and Jolanda. During the evening, Jolanda's mum, Elina, remarked that the rain that had fallen so plentifully over these last few days had "washed their garden" so it was "sparkling clean", and that comment really hit the spot with me. 

You see, it's one of my secret unscientific hunches about watering gardens and rain. All gardeners will tell you that their gardens seem to spark up magically after rain. No matter how much we stand there with a hose, or leave the sprinklers on, nothing compares to the wondrous effect even just a few minutes of rain can bring. What's inside rainwater that makes it so special?

Well, here's my grand unifying theory about rain's magic effect. As well as providing vast bucketloads of clean water to the soil, I believe rain simply washes the leaves clean.

I think we sometimes forget how "dirty" our urban air is. There's dust and dirt aplenty for starters, but then there's soot and chemical residues from trucks and trains and planes, and whatever awful compounds that lurk within the smoggy air we breathe. All of this lands on our garden foliage and covers it with a fine film of filth.

Rain washes all this away, the leaves breathe freely again and can get on with the main game of how they live: photosynthesis via their leaves. Leaves are plants' lungs, and they need clean, clear lungs to breathe life into themselves.

So, when I'm out in the garden watering plants, I like to wash their leaves as well. I like to pretend that I am not just watering the garden, I am raining down upon our plants from the skies above.

Now, I know the gardening experts will utter cries of "shock, horror" because there's a risk with watering gardens this way, and it's fungal problems such as powdery mildew, which are particularly abundant here in Sydney during our humid summers. So I do try to pick my days to wash the plants (and of course I don't do it all the time). I choose days which will be sunny and the "washing" water will soon disappear once the sun, once again, shows the world who's the boss.

I'm sure it works, I have no solid evidence whatsoever that it does, but that's my little unscientific theory, and I'm sticking with it.

Splashing out on herbs

It's amazing what a difference a pot can make to a plant's personality. In the case of my traditional 'Mediterranean' herbs such as rosemary, thyme, oregano and bay leaf, they have turned out to be very different plants to care for, compared to how they grow in ordinary garden soil. Yes, of course they need more maintenance in a pot, but I am surprised how thirsty they are. They all love a drink (well, at least in springtime they do).

Let's put this discovery another way. Since I have started watering these potted herbs a lot more often than I ever did in previous years, they are much happier. And yes, I am slow on the uptake sometimes. (Just ask Pam!) 

Much happier now that it is being watered
every morning, the rosemary is lush, deep
green and very fragrant to be around.

As I water the rosemary now, I can smell its 
sharp scent wafting around in the air.

Same goes for my potted bay tree. More water
this season has produced more growth, and
much nicer looking foliage. 

The thyme is flowering its head off at the moment. It needs the
most clipping to stay bushy, plus, you guessed it, water.

I've already done a blog posting recently on this potted oregano
patch, but it needs lots of watering as well.

Though hardly classic Mediterranean herbs,
the two pots of mint (common mint in the
foreground and basil mint behind) lap up the
water like a pair of thirsty hounds. 

When I grew rosemary, oregano and thyme in the ground I never watered them. Sydney's relatively abundant rainfall took care of all their needs for many years. And so I always thought of them as almost drought-proof and definitely not thirsty. I knew that transferring them to a pot would mean I'd have to water them more often, but I have, until now, underestimated how much water they need.

And so, Aussie gardeners, if your potted Mediterranean herbs aren't looking too terrific this spring, think about giving them more water more often. It might be what they desperately need. 

I'm not sure what they want once summer comes around, but my new hunch is that it will be more water than I gave them last summer...

Watering the garden, way back when

As a minor family history project I've dug out all of my ancient black and white family photos, with the aim of scanning them, burning them to a disc and sending this off to the small band of family members here and there who might be interested. While doing this I came across a few snaps of the house where I grew up in the 1950s and 60s, and had a few thoughts about the garden there, and the contribution it made to my love of gardening now. It wasn't much of a contribution, mind you, as it wasn't much of a garden, but the seeds of my passion for plants and gardening were sown then.

Not entirely sure of the vintage of this one, but it looks like it might have been taken before my first-ever cricket match for the Lane Cove Under 12s, when I was about 10. They put the youngsters into the third under 12 team, named us the Lane Cove Colts, and it took the older lads about one minute to rename us the Lane Cove Clots. While cricket remains a great love of mine, I've chosen this photo because I'm standing in front of the hydrangea, about the only truly lovely plant in our very bare garden of mostly lawn and concrete footpaths. I loved watering the hydrangea and loved its big, generous blue flowers.

Classic Sydney suburbia of the early 1960s. We had a row of oleanders planted by the front fence. Dad's efforts at gardening amounted to grumpily agreeing to hack back the oleanders every year or so, immediately after the official notice from the local council arrived in the letterbox informing him that other residents had complained about how the oleanders had so overgrown the footpath that they found it difficult to get by. I also loved watering the oleanders and watching them grow so rapidly. I think Dad had a secret plan to kill the oleanders by over-pruning them, but that only seemed to make them grow and flower even more. I like to think that my watering helped them to bounce back each time.

Here's Dad and our family car, the Mark Five Jaguar. All the kids from the opposing cricket teams thought we were posh and had a Rolls Royce. We could and occasionally did fit all 12 members of the Lane Cove Colts team into the Jag, too. But this photo is here not only because the hydrangea is in bloom in the far right corner, but also because the Jag is parked near the cricket pitch. I know, having a slightly downhill sloping cricket pitch isn't ideal, but it didn't prevent countless memorable Test Matches between my brother, who is four years older than me and always got to be the Australians, and me, who being the junior chap always ended up being England, the West Indies or Pakistan etc. Each time I ever amazed us both and came close to a win, he'd just start bowling faster. I didn't have that option, I was already bowling flat out.

And so with the reminiscences dusted off, the thing that I remember so clearly from these photos was my love of watering the garden. We didn't actually DO any gardening so to speak. The hydrangeas and oleanders had been planted before I arrived, or when I was so young that I can't remember them being planted. So all the gardening there was to do was simply keeping it all alive with water.

Apparently my love of watering the garden started at an early age, so my older sisters tell me. Even by the time I was four years old I was outside watering the garden. A leading socialite of the time (well, she was both head of the Mothers' Club at the local primary school and had a hyphenated surname) used to walk past our house each day. Apparently, one day while watering the garden I called out a cheery "hello lady" and she ignored me. So I hosed her.

Her shrieks alerted my mother and sister, so I hosed them, too. Apparently it got totally out of hand and as my sisters retreated into the house, I followed them in, hosing away. At that point someone got brave and disarmed me, and presumably I got into trouble (but I don't remember a skerrick of this episode and am prepared to deny it ever happened, except here on this blog, which is on the internet and you know what they say about the internet).

And so that bare old patch of ground with a lot of lawn and concrete and just some tough old shrubs laid the seeds of my love of gardening. I really only got into gardening in recent decades, when I started sub-editing a homemaker magazine. That led to me moving to this house, with its modest patch of ground, about 17 years ago.

But still, to this day, one of my favourite things is watering the garden. With our current drought-induced water restrictions I can only unfurl the hose on Wednesdays and Sundays now, but it's always great fun to do, a childish pleasure of which I am sure I will never grow tired.