So, today is my best friend's birthday; he is more like a brother to me really, since his family sort of 'adopted' me some twenty-six years ago. Yet this year he is in KwaZulu-Natal with work deadlines and a leaking geyser to contend with, so I will not be baking him his usual batch of chocolate brownies. His parents are quite elderly and frail by now, so there's just some things that tend to go backwards in his absence, like the pool and the garden.
So I figured, fixing up a garden bed for him, may be a good way to celebrate his birthday at a distance - something I know he would genuinely appreciate. Now I'm not a muscle girl; a potted garden is more my domain, but I figured I'd give it a try, none the less. As it is, there were some potted roses that could do either with a re-potting or a transplanting into mother earth herself.
I found an ideal bed, but it would need some preparation work first; so I started by wetting the soil, then I demarcated the bed with a spade, before tilling the soil with a fork. Next I did some quick work of removing the easy weeds and the grass roots. While taking this photo, however, I was shaking like a reed - low blood sugar, it was clearly more strenuous than it felt.
Next I took a quick break to remedy my sugar levels and took a moment to appreciate my company as well.
Besides, I knew the part that was next would probably be the hardest...
I have no idea what the actual name of these dastardly plants are - the locals call them 'cigarette trees', perhaps because they smell like tobacco when you crush the leaves - all I know is, they spread like a wild fire, and are incredibly hard to control, once they take root. Unfortunately while living in KwaZulu-Natal they clearly had time and room to grow unchecked, and multiplied beyond control. The thing that makes them especially difficult to manage, are their roots.
They seem to creep under the soil and new plants sprout wherever they do, but they also seem to reach right down deep, into hell, from where I'm sure they are fed. The whole process of preparing the bed and planting five potted roses took me two hours, yet a whole hour was spent simply trying to uproot these five seemingly small plants, just in that one bed.
After that, I dug five holes and transplanted the roses... there is a lot of space around them still and I hope to plant up some lavender behind them, chives between them, and some thyme in front of them - but that is another day's business. I can say without a doubt, a woman's body was not designed to wield a pick, spade or garden fork. Today, I missed a manly man, the sort that does the masculine digging so I can be feminine and prepare him food, instead.
WORDS: rhodenel©2SEP2024
PHOTOGRAPHY: rhoderuth©2SEP2024
I have no idea what the actual name of these dastardly plants are - the locals call them 'cigarette trees', perhaps because they smell like tobacco when you crush the leaves - all I know is, they spread like a wild fire, and are incredibly hard to control, once they take root. Unfortunately while living in KwaZulu-Natal they clearly had time and room to grow unchecked, and multiplied beyond control. The thing that makes them especially difficult to manage, are their roots.
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