Ever since I knew my flower business was moving up to Kapiti I started thinking about how I was going to get my flowers to the people. When I was in Karori I set up a flower shop in my garage with my friend Sophie. The customers came to us. My house in Paekākāriki isn’t on a main road and Paekākāriki has a small population compared to Karori. The region of Kapiti is long and thin and the population is spread out. The answer was a mobile flower shop. I would take the flowers to the people.
For months I looked at affordable ways to have a mobile flower shop. I looked at caravans, I looked at pop top caravans, I looked at electric bikes with trailers, I looked at vans and utes. In the end the pop top was top of the list. Then I set to work finding one. The right one. The right one turned out to be a 1978 Hardtop with a dark orange body and orange and yellow canvas walls.
The week before last, my husband and I picked up a pop top caravan from a gorgeous family near Hamilton. The family were really sad to see her go. I felt bad for taking away a caravan they’d restored and loved and had so many good memories in. I named her Marigold. And I hope they can follow her on instagram and see she is adored by many.
My next challenge is learning how to back her in a car. I've never backed a trailer before. I can’t even parrallel park my car, and it’s got a reversing camera. See the predicament I'm in.
I found Basil Brush’s cousin Bobby Brush in the op shop last week. He’s the resident pop top fox.
This week it was fine until Thursday. As in it wasn’t raining and pouring and blowing a gale in every direction, like the last couple of weeks. It is winter after all. The rain returned on Thursday and again on Friday. We’ve had terrible floods in the north of the South Island. The weather is changing. This is hard for anyone who’s living relies on the weather.
Lots of things have happened since my last blog. I made business cards using potato prints and a typewriter. I made labels using potato prints and my favourite black pen. My son helped me clear the back garden and make a pop top caravan pad out of concrete pavers. When the pop top arrived it was a lot bigger than I thought. So my husband and I made some more space. We moved 3 raised beds, a big pile of soil and all the concrete pavers. We’re still short of 30 or so pavers, but at nearly $30 each we’ll get them bit by bit.
I recently weeded and made fences for two main areas in the back garden. The second area (below) has a special path for the dogs, which they like, but they also like taking short cuts under and over the fences. I’ll need to make the fences more dog resistant. I finally finished digging out the giant agapanthus growing into the pohutakawa tree in the middle of the photo (below). That was hard work.
I bought 3 more roses and they arrived last week. I love roses but I have limited places to put them given they love sun and moist fertile soil. You can see Rambling Rector in the photo above. I had this rose in Karori and its flowers are stunning. It’s also very hardy and being a rambler it rambles up and over fences. You can see my compost bins in the photo. It’s a fairly unconventional composting system that I run. But it works and it’s rodent free. I’ve buried the bins near my fruit trees and roses so that they can enrich the soil. I’ve drilled holes in the side and bottom of the bins. The bins are full of worms. Wall to wall worms.
I’ve painted a sign to hang on the back of Marigold. I’ve got no idea how I’ll attach it. I’m sure I’ll figure something out. This attitude of mine comes from years of relief teaching and having to adapt very quickly to crazy last minute changes, but having to appear as if I have everything under total control.
Here’s and example of the sort of thing I’m talking about. Things like being told you’re not taking the class you planned to teach, but another one, a new entrant class you’ve never taught before. A class where the only kid you know the name of is the one who always has to walk with a duty teacher at playtime because they have poor impulse control (they hit people who upset them).
You’ll be taking this class of 23 kids to the swimming pool, which is 2km away and you only have 1 parent helper. And this parent helper isn’t very helpful. He keeps getting the kids to high five him while your giving out instructions and getting the kids to punch him in the stomach.
The trip involves taking a bus to the pool, getting the kids to change into their togs by themselves (some of the kids put their togs on over their underwear), getting the kids to listen to the swimming teachers (who aren’t much older than the kids), making sure the kids don’t drown, getting the kids to change out of their togs and put their clothes back on (most kids haven't a clue that you need to dry yourself before you put your clothes on). You have to console distraught kids who discover they swam in their underwear and now its wet and other kids are laughing at them. You have to line all the kids up in pairs to walk back to school only to find one of them is missing (after a frantic search the kid is found taking a shower, which their mum had told them to do even though the kids had been told not to).
And finally, after the kids have put on hats and sun screen they walk back to school along a busy main road. It’s not an easy walk. The kids are tired, one sits down on the footpath and refuses to budge. The kid with poor impulse control hits the son of the parent helper and the parent helper takes matters into his own hands. Some of the kids make a game of kicking the empty recycling bins that litter the footpath. Some of the bins end up on the road.
Somehow despite incredible odds everyone gets safely back to school. The moral of the story: things usually work out if you just keep trying.
I’ve been experimenting with setting up Marigold as a shop, but I haven’t made it work yet. My son and his girlfriend are coming to stay tonight. I’ll get them to help me set up Marigold tomorrow. I’ll also get them to help me set up a Tik Tok account. I watched a webinar last week for flower growers in NZ. The social media expert reckoned we all need to be on Tik Tok. Tik Tok is where it’s at for small businesses. Apparently. Very soon you’ll see me there. Dancing and singing in a field of sunflowers.