Yesterday Mr. Munro and I were listening to the radio while driving down the motorway. Hubby listens to a fuddy-duddy station with lots of chat, but it turned out to be interesting when the discussion turned to bonsai trees.
The lady speaking about them made growing bonsais sound very easy. Hubby and I like projects, so this weekend we’ve done some research.
Although bonsai is a Japanese word, bonsai trees were first known in China back in 1000BC. They were grown as gifts to give to the wealthy and were called pun-sai.
Bonsai are grown in shallow pots and usually kept outside. They should be kept out of direct sunlight because there’s not much moisture in the pots. Quite a few varieties of trees are suitable to turn into bonsais, including several New Zealand natives such as the pohutukawa and kowhai. The lady on the radio mentioned Japanese maples are very pretty since their leaves turn color with the seasons. Basically you choose a seedling or small “junior-sized tree” from the plant nursery. Trim one-third of the roots off the tree and also trim the leaves so you gain a nicely shaped tree. The branches can also be wired to attain an attractive shape. Special soil is required – check at your plant nursery – and of course you need your special shallow pot. Once the bonsai are established, they require yearly root trims and shaping.
We have lots of small seedlings underneath our hedge, and we thought we’d try growing a pohutukawa bonsai.
We decided it’s never too early to start getting our new puppy used to traveling in the car and went for an outing to our local Botanical gardens. Bella had a ball exploring, despite the heat of our summer.
This is Bella exploring one of the rose gardens.
I really liked this lily. I thought it was very pretty and took a photo or two.
A wedding party turned up as we arrived. It was a Samoan wedding with a huge number of attendants. There were six bridesmaids plus groomsmen along with flower girls and little boys dressed in suits. The groomsmen wore black trousers and had lavender vests to match the bridesmaids’ dresses.
I mentioned pohutukawa trees over at Berengaria Brown’s blog the other day and promised I’d post a photo.
Pohutukawa trees are known as New Zealand’s native Christmas trees since they come into flower during late November/December. They have scarlet flowers and tend to like growing near the sea on clifftops. Our street sidewalk is lined with pohutukawa trees and it looks very pretty at this time of the year. This photo is the tree outside our house.
A pukeko is a swamp hen, part of the rail family. While some of our native birds have become extinct because of introduced predators such as rats, cats and stoats, the pukeko has adapted easily and is very common. They happily live in town and city reserves where there are swamps and ponds, living on vegetation, insects and frogs.
I’ve always thought of pukekos as stupid birds. When we lived on the farm I used to watch them flying into power lines and fences. They do fly, but are not strong flyers and usually only travel short distances. They also make a high-pitch shriek – it’s not a particularly musical sound. The pukeko chicks are very weird looking and cute at the same time with big feet – watch the ad below to see for yourself. It’s an ad for an electricity wholesaler and has won heaps of ad awards. It always makes me smile.
What is the strangest bird you’ve ever seen? Do you like bird watching?
This week I have photos of two different critters taken during my recent holiday in Phuket.
I think this is a type of Kingfisher. He sat very still while we kayaked around him and took lots of photos.
We hired a tuk-tuk to go the a restaurant and watch the sunset. This was one of the elephants we saw on the way there. He’s bedded down for the night with his dinner at his feet.
Our local council runs a program called Women on the Move. Each month they organize a day trip to help women get out in the great outdoors, exercise and have some fun. I took a day off writing today and joined their day trip to Tiritiri Matangi.
Tiritiri Matangi means “looking to the wind”. It’s an island sanctuary in the Hauraki Gulf, not far from Auckland. Not that long ago Tiritiri was farmed and the original forest cut down to make way for grassland. The Department of Conservation took over the island and hundreds of volunteers replanted native trees to reforest the island. All pests such as rats, cats, mice and stoats were eradicated. Once this was done some of New Zealand’s rarer birds were introduced to the pest-free sanctuary.
Before we arrived at the island by ferry we were asked to check our shoes and remove mud etc. We also had to check our bags and remove any rats or mice or other pests we found. Luckily I was all safe on that score!
The weather has been horrid for the last couple of weeks but today it was a gorgeous morning. We walked through the bush, stopping regularly to check out the birds we saw.
They have kiwis on the island, although they’re nocturnal so we didn’t see any. They also have tuatara but the winter sun wasn’t enough to entice them out of their burrows.
It started raining just as we headed to the lighthouse for lunch. There’s a takahe called Greg. He’s 16 years old and is very bossy and cheeky. He hovered under our tables and tried to grab our sandwiches if we held them within his reach. He wandered inside the coffee shop, much to the amusement of the group of school kids and tried his luck in there before one of the ladies shooed him outside.
After lunch we explored a little more, checking out the birds at the feeders before we headed down to the wharf to catch the ferry back to inner Auckland. I really enjoyed my day on Tiritiri.
This is what a normal takahe looks like. They normally graze on grass not sandwiches stolen from lunch boxes.
I’m busy with edits at the moment. As luck would have it, they’ve all arrived at once, which means I’m going to be a little quiet for the next few days.
Tomorrow is the start of my spotlight week at Long and Short Reviews. Here’s the link. I’m giving away a few prizes, so come along and check it out.
On Friday a young female orca washed up on the West Coast. She was loaded on a trailer and taken across Auckland, with a police escort, for release from Takapuna beach on the East Coast. Boat traffic seemed to confuse the orca, and DOC staff are asking the public to ring them in the case of a sighting. Here’s the full story here.
A kakapo is a New Zealand flightless parrot. It’s an endangered species because of its vulnerability to predators and of course, the inroads made by man into the parrots’ natural habitat. Until this week there were only 86 living kakapo but after a bumper breeding season five chicks have hatched on Codfish Island (a sanctuary for the birds). Kakapo need special conditions to breed and plentiful food, which means that not every year is great for breeding. The last good year was 2005. Here’s the story here plus a photo of a kakapo.
In a small promo, I included the kakapo in my very first book, Aislyn. The baddies were conducting a scavenger hunt and one of the items they needed to collect was a rare kakapo egg.
In writing news I wrote the last words on my first draft of another Middlemarch story. It’s tentatively called Cat Burglar. I’m going to let it sit for a couple of weeks and start yet another Middlemarch tale – this time it’s Leticia’s story, a character from Stray Cat Strut. I’m really thrilled with my progress, because after stopping the Sven challenge and taking almost a week off writing, I’ve still managed to write 50,000 words.
Tomorrow Christina Phillips is my guest blogger and we’re giving away a prize. I hope you’ll pop back to say hello.
When we first moved to our current house the section was bare, and the soil consisted mostly of clay. After throwing around some ideas we decided to design a potager garden.
A potager is French and it’s a raised bed garden, normally for vegetables and herbs. Hubby built three box squares out of timber and filled them with good quality soil. We made a decorative path between them so it’s easy to plant, water and harvest and not long ago, Mr. Munro planted a hedge of shelter trees because it seems to be windy where we live.
Mr. Munro spends hours out in the garden and periodically, I have to go out an inspect his latest improvements and crops. This year we’ve had fresh potatoes, lettuce, zucchini, red onions, leeks, green beans, basil, radishes, beetroot and the tomatoes are starting to ripen. It’s so handy just wandering out to the garden to pick whatever vegetables we’ve decided to have for dinner.
Here are some photos of Mr. Munro’s garden:
I have to confess I’m a bit tired of zucchini but I’m really enjoying the green beans and can’t wait for the tomatoes to ripen so I can make fresh tomato sauce to have with pasta. Do you grow your own vegetables? What do you grow? And if you don’t have a garden, what is your favorite vegetable to eat?
