My umbrella on the flower stand keeps blowing inside out. On Thursday I put it back together again and sewed the plastic ribs into place with a needle and embroidery thread. I needn’t have bothered. Within 20 minutes it had blown apart. I guess umbrellas and wind don’t go together. Especially beach umbrellas and an unrelenting northerly.
Spring in New Zealand is a time of wind and rain. And I mean wind. Galeforce, tulip snapping, decicating wind.
It’s that time of the year when young seal pups, who’ve started out on their own journey, end up on Paekākāriki Beach exhausted or dead. It breaks your heart. How I hated wildlife documentaries as a kid. The lions always hunted and ate the baby antelope. The injured ape always got left behind to die. I mean there were an entire film crew who could’ve changed history but didn’t. WTF.
Spring is tumultuous, but it’s also full of scent and colour, and a particular shade of green in the leaves of just woken up trees. It’s my favourite time of the year. It’s the Christmas Eve of seasons. After a long dark, damp time light arrives. And everything wakes up. Like Rip Van Winkel. Like Cinderella. Like a seed.
And here’s me in Marigold (my pop top) 3 Saturdays ago at the Paekākāriki Market. My first ever time selling flowers in my mobile flower shop. My oldest friend Sal was visiting that weekend, and helped me out (she took the photo and made my apron!).
Last Saturday I tried my luck at Paraparaumu Beach, but after 2 hours (and a terrible weather forecast) I realised it wasn’t the right place for me and Marigold. So I packed up and left. The next day (a Sunday) I set up shop in Paekākāriki Village and sold lots of bunches of flowers.
And yesterday I was back in Paekākāriki and loved chatting to locals and visitors…and selling flowers. I’m going to stay in Paekākāriki most of the time. But do I sell flowers on a Saturday or a Sunday? Is one day a better flower selling day than the other? How would I even measure this? How long is a piece of string? 24cm or three and a half thumb lengths or two dog whiskers?
I’ve added 2 new raised beds to keep up with all the seedlings. Probably too many seedlings. I’ve padded out the beds with prunings and old potting mix and cocoa bean mulch. I’ve also been buying and planting lots of foliage plants and getting tangled up in hose. I’ve started laying drip hoses in my long garden beds. It has to be the most frustrating job I’ve ever done. I probably should’ve done it in winter, but I didn’t know I needed it then.
It’s tulip and daffodil time. It’s a bight plentiful short-lived rainbow of scent and colour. And then it’s gone. The squeaky tulip leaves, the viscous daffodil sap, the tangled freesia stems. And I cross my fingers, hoping, that my hardy annuals will leap and romp and flourish. And fill the gap once the tulips and daffs have waned.
And now to the jiggery pokery part of the blog. My flower stand. I started with a painted table, wooden boxes and an umbrella. That didn’t work. I bought a cabinet from the Salvation Army and painted it. I put the cabinet on top of the table and kept using the umbrella. That didn’t work.
My latest plan is to paint a big piece of plywood I have, and nail it to the top of the cabinet. Will it work? Will it keep the wind, rain and sun off the flowers? Will it just become a hazard that people walk into and smack their head on? Who knows. It’s anyone’s guess.