First up today I went to *Tanya. Her garden is looking great but she said the silverbeet just doesn’t stop!!! We talked about sharing the harvest and at worst pulling off older eaten leaves and laying them down as mulch. I explained a couple of ways to use it up, like quiche and she shared that her mental health hadn’t been so good and she’d been made redundant 2 weeks ago. I talked about feeling overwhelmed and when we aren’t in a good space, just coming outside and feeling the sun, doing a bit of weeding, just being outside and doing something…no matter how little, is helpful, and even if all we ate was spinach cause we can’t manage anything else, we are nourishing our body and mind and this will help. She agreed and said she does love silverbeet so just that is actually appealing. She had an appointment at WINZ this afternoon to discuss where from here, so I hope that’s a help and not a hindrance for her going forward. I will touch base again tomorrow with a recipe I had mentioned and see how she is.
Next stop was Ana. Her backyard is absolutely tiny and we asked for tubs there, which were delivered all planted up. That would’ve been fine but they didn’t have holes drilled underneath to let the water escape. This reminded me that I had seen this happen before with Kiani’s delivery and it’s such a shame as it just will not work like this.
They delivered them in the rain and they promptly began to fill with rain. Ana said she wasn’t sure if that was meant to be like that but it didn’t look right. Ana has 2-3 times lifted them to pour as much water off as she can, but they’re blimmin heavy and she has a young one that she’s always carrying. With 5 children, it’s the last thing she needs to be worrying about. She had emptied this morning but of course they were full again with the rain. She said they had a drill and she’ll try and get hubby to help her drill some holes in them. It was raining as we spoke so I’ll check in with her to make sure that gets done and we may need to replace some plants this time and change this for any more small gardens in the future.
Then to *Sally who wasn’t home, but answered my call and returned home, so we planted up her bed. She has gardened before but is very grateful for the full set up. She has 7 children and 10 mokos and currently 8 in the household from 16 yrs down so she is very appreciative of the extra kai. She has a problem with cats so is going to try and fence it in with trellis and stakes and an old wire wove bed. She was chuffed and keen to try the bokashi bin and fridge bags.
Jo got a call from Rachel, to say she was now home in time if I was able to drop by and fortunately I could and had seedlings etc. Rachel is lovely and often has her 2 yr old moko, but also works, so life is a juggle. Having never gardened before she is super excited at the end result of it all planted up. She’d never heard of bokashi but keen to try and rapt in the fridge bags. We dashed in and out of the showers to get this planted up but it looks great.
*Names changed for privacy reasons.
Rākau Tautoko 