Roger Moroney says it is important to give cats a resting spot for their internal toils and somewhere for insects to head for when some fresh broccoli or cauli leafage is required. Photo / NZME
Roger Moroney says it is important to give cats a resting spot for their internal toils and somewhere for insects to head for when some fresh broccoli or cauli leafage is required. Photo / NZME
Like the cats, I think of the freshly dug, composted and newly planted garden quite a lot.
But they think of it for different reasons, but I don't want to go there ... although they do, if you get my drift.
I guess that's part of the compost factor soone can't be too disheartened I guess.
And the insects are also aware that Mr Non-Green Fingers is at it again.
Year in, year out, the stumbling, hoe-bearing oaf is back on the job ... planting vegetables that, when the time for harvesting comes, are effectively dirt cheap anyway.
But that's not the point, as I have droned on about before (like this time last year I suspect).
The point is, it is important to give the cats a resting spot for their internal toils, and somewhere for the insects to head for when some fresh broccoli or cauli leafage is required.
And it is the sheer satisfaction of being able to say to folk "yeah been a bit busy today ... getting the old garden under way."
The green capsicums we nurtured all the way to the dinner plates last year were sublime.
So now then, there I was last weekend checking on the newly planted forest of veg when I started to think about some stuff I'd read last week ... about terrible climatic upheavals in parts of South America.
No kidding.
I'm not making this up just to spend more wordage, I did start thinking about what I'd read and as I looked upon our humble, but nicely soaked and sun-laden little patch, I felt genuinely sad ... for people I have never seen nor shall ever meet.
Places like Chile and Paraguay pretty much have no water.
No water ... no watering.
Roger Moroney
No watering and crops succumb to the dry earth and pass away.
Which means the growers and their workers, and the markets and their customers, start running out of what has always been a traditional part of life.
Bolivia's also hammered by drought ... to the point where some people are forced to travel long distances just to bathe.
So watering the capsicums is way off the menu.
It rattles me, because I like the land and I adore the people who work it and nourish it.
Mother Nature, and Father Climate of course, have no vested interests in gardening or horticultural crop industries ... they just serve up whatever weather they deem to be on the menu.
So there I was last Tuesday moaning like a typical stumbling, hoe-bearing oaf because the wind had got up a bit and it was barely 14 degrees in the shade (as there was no sun) and the rains were drifting through.
I looked up into the grey and blustering skies and looked back down at the shaking and bending young cauliflower stalks and the shivering young lettuce things and then sort of muttered "at least you'll get through this blip of meteorological vandalism".
Knowing that parts of this planet won't ... for another season or two.
Watching a puddle forming, I thought about what I'd read of the current river levels in Argentina ... where they are down from rivers to dying streams.
Nothing can be grown and even the river barges are now in jeopardy, meaning supplies will no longer make it to what few markets are left.
Yeah, there are parts of this globe where the weather is in what appears to be a worsening lockdown ... and other parts where, ironically, floods have torn landscapes to shreds.
So I wandered back out to the dampened, and flourishing, veg patch yesterday evening and started singing (again, no kidding and I'd only had a couple) that great old Fred Dagg anthem… "We don't know how lucky we are mate."
Well for now, at least.
• Roger Moroney is an award-winning journalist and observer of the slightly off centre.
