Change of Life to Include Gardening (I may have this paragraph elsewhere, but could not find today. Gone...)

My escape from 'dog persecution', to rural life had a hidden big bonus - GARDENING, plenty of water here - I struck gold! (This was at Rangari)

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I will begin before Rangari, when I first moved out to the farm at “Rowan Leigh”, west of Gunnedah, after moving back up to Gunnedah from Sydney, I was still paying off my car, and unemployed, so I basically had no money for food, and was forced more or less to start gardening and growing my own food. Dad said he would pay for about 15 packets of vegetable seed for me from Eden Seeds. And so I began, how I managed to survive, I’m not sure, because I wasn’t too keen on vegetables anyway, and my cooking skills back in those days weren’t doing the vegetables any favours. It was over a long gradual process, of about 10yrs, growing and picking, where I learnt how to cook fresh vegetables, and how to make them taste really good, (with a little help from MasterChef, and The Cook and The Chef!). So, I’m by no means a vegetarian, but learning how to eat properly, and eat vegetables, is something I had to do, and it seems I could only do it, by having limited money, so I wouldn’t be tempted to purchase all the good treats – got to eat your greens (or bad things happen). I can tell you, the first plant I purchased, after I planted it out near the garage, it died. I didn’t really have any gardening skills whatsoever, and it was a good thing Eden vegetable seeds, came with a detailed catalogue with growing advice! And I’m a fairly inquisitive person, and so I read up quite a lot of books. I remember reading the whole series of that wonderful organic magazine, “Grass Roots”, that my lovely neighbour Vera gave me, it involved a lot of stories about people who packed up and moved into the bush so they could live an organic Sustainable lifestyle. I found it really interesting, as I hadn’t come across any such people at all in my life. Unfortunately, the farm where I lived only had dam water, and the dam ran dry every summer, my vegetables soon became non-existent. Fortunately for me the owner sold, and I moved to another farm on the other side of Gunnedah, East, called Bulga, where there was a fair amount of water, and so continued my gardening survival experiments! I took my 15 packets of seeds, and I turned them into about 40 packets, by seedswapping with the Americans - the Americans were the only ones online at that time, the internet was still being created. There were a few Australians, like Telstra people, but, for some reason no Australians wanted to trade seed, it was only the Americans who would. (I find Australians really weird like that, what’s wrong with them?).

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By the time I had established my wonderful big veggie patch there, I had encountered (in the library) coloured books about gardens, and from those, and looking at plant reference books - I discovered Australian native flowers. And talk about having my socks blown off! Absolutely amazing! And the more I got into it, the more I wanted to get into it. As a child, I often had holidays at my aunt Di’s. One holidays, all of a sudden, she started going on and on about her recent holiday to WA, and the Western Australian flowers. Plus, she started painting them in her Folk-Art business. Now I know why she was so excited! - maybe it’s just an artistic person thing, we notice the beauty? They are TRULY AMAZING; and any garden that doesn’t have, you know, at least 50 different varieties and species of native plants in it, well, you’re missing out on life. True beauties. I scrimped and joined the Australian plants online group. Part of the subscription fee included free native seeds, if you sent them a self-stamped addressed envelope, they will send you 2 packets of native seeds. So, I was thrilled about this, I recall eagerly waiting for the mail, for my seeds to come each month. {I felt like there must’ve been a whole bunch of old men doing it, because, as a keen young healthy 27yr old, I seem to have spent in eternity chomping at the bit, just waiting and waiting for my native seeds, come onnn!} - when you’re on a budget, that’s what you have to do! (actually, there was not even any native seed retailers back then either except in WA, in tourist shops!). So those people got me into growing natives for my backyard, thank you.

 

I kind of reached a point there at Bulga, where I wanted to do more with plants, and get more involved in my plants. I experimented with some bulbs, and some English Cottage Garden flowers. Ranunculus bulbs were only 25c back then. I ordered 5 along with my seed order, and I had been creating a compost all year long, so I made up a compost bed under a ornamental pear that was already there, and OMG, you should have seen my Ranunculus! They were HUGE! The whole plant, huge, each flower head, huge – the best looking Ranunculus I have ever seen, still to this day. There could be no more inspiration than that! {kitchen compost; LIQUID GOLD FOR YOUR GARDEN. The worms in that bed were 30cm long and fat! - I remember visiting my brother in Sydney once, and he said he's had it up to here with composting, and he's no longer going to do it! He’s not going to compost anything, he's just going to throw everything out in the main rubbish bin! Well, I thought, each to their own, he's obviously not a gardener. LIQUID GOLD. And even though I have since been relegated to an outlandish unit living situation, with no garden of my own, I still compost, and use it in my pot plants, still with tremendous results, and people often ask me secret to my healthy pot plants - well, that's the secret – compost. I should point out, the farm at Bulga wasn’t just a typical Australian farm, this farm was very special and unique, in the fact that once upon a time, many many eons ago, a huge big river used to run down the Bulga farm, and so all the soil on the Bulga property is this amazing Super silt soil, that most Australian farmers could only dream about. For instance, I received a packet of free Rainbow Chard from Eden seeds, and I grew some. Typical rainbow Chard reaches 30 to 40 cm in height. But the rainbow Chard in my vegetable patch, I kid you not, it reached 140 cm high! And that’s without any fertiliser too. I kind of didn’t really have much bad luck when it came to gardening - whatever I planted it would grow. Which in itself prompted me to start gardening seriously. (I’ve since lived elsewhere and experienced other soils, particularly soils up here in Queensland; OMG, so bad! nothing grows in it, and good thing I did not start my gardening path there, or it would have started and stopped pretty quick.)

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So, initially I just wanted to take some photos of my plants, as the internet was just taking off (If I recall, I had to purchase a Botanica reference book because at that point there was no information on plants at all, on the Internet - can you believe that! and that reference book was extremely expensive, I would have sacrificed at least a week or twos’ worth of dinners, just for that book!!) So, I wanted to create a website with plants. I wasn’t quite sure at that point what I wanted to do. But I didn’t have a camera even, it all seemed like I would have to pack up and do something to get some money so I could buy a camera. Unfortunately, I did, (partly due to some manipulations by outside people forces, which I was too young to see) But after a huge negative ordeal in Melbourne, I did get my camera (I mean I probably should’ve just asked dad for a camera on my birthday - would’ve saved me a whole lot of bother) But in the end I moved out onto another farm, which had even more water, so it was kind of a good thing, maybe, probably not actually?…. I spent the next 10 years growing all my food, herbs, ornamentals and natives, there were literally thousands of plants in that garden, and a huge vegetable patch and orchard with about 35 fruit and nut trees..... I had plenty of water which was the biggest blessing of them all. So, in 2018 when I was told I have to leave the farm because the owner had sold it, I was devastated to say the least, I felt like my whole world had been snatched away from me, and I would have to leave my babies behind. Indeed I couldn’t find anywhere else to live in Gunnedah, shame on all of those people involved. (See, I should have stayed at Bulga, they have not sold…plus, I don't recall I had any thefts while I lived there in those 4 yrs. WOW. But, I do recall; One time I purchased a steak. It probably would’ve been the only steak I had in the whole 4 years I lived there, I was completely broke the whole time. This steak was soo good, I am a beef girl, or had been.... I looked at the label from the steak packaging, it said ‘porterhouse steak’, I’d never had porterhouse steak before, it was a new thing, there was no such thing as ‘porterhouse steak’ before then. I was so impressed with it, I cut the label part off and stuck it on my fridge with a fridge magnet, to remind me to save and spend money on steak - that’s how good it was. One day I went into town, I came back home, looked at that label, but, it certainly wasn’t the porterhouse steak label that I had put there. In its place, was a label that said ‘broccoli’.  This is the kind of disrespect that I have to put up with, as a single woman renting, people just coming into my house, when I’m not there, and doing things like that. DISGUSTING. And while there was nothing taken at that place, at my next place, as you know, from the blog, I had hundreds of items taken, and it would’ve been in exactly the same manner) Landlord related. oh, wait, I just remembered my solar pump fountain for the duck pond (story below) -but someone broke it while I was intown. So I consider that a theft.

There is a page pull of photos of my Super Wonderful Garden at Rangari, here;

I will also put the link to my shared Album on Google with same photos: (Its called: PROOF!! I actually did it! Garden Photos of Rangari, near Gunnedah, NSW Australia)

https://photos.google.com/share/AF1QipPsd23Pj6Tb2-47EJCC9H9LzLsg5YPWbV0zWytnscvy3O9ylIcHkV53WutP-sBrfw?key=XzFwenlQNUJHOEk5VHJUTHB4Rk1lQWtQWnVPbHFR

Had I known I would have to leave, I would’ve got heaps more photos, especially that last spring, it was really just starting to look quite beautiful. I also would’ve collected a whole heap more seed. I also would’ve left quite a lot of plants and equipment behind, because when I moved, I packed up basically everything, thinking I would start over on the Kesby farm, but unbeknownst to me, I would have to move 5 more times that year, as well as change state, and move up to Queensland into a teeny tiny 5x7m² unit! But I guess none of us have the beauty of foresight, do we? I am now 'spent' and permanently pissed off with everyone, not just centerlink cunts.

Since I’ve left my garden, (5yrs now) which I’m still sad about, occasionally I come across new spectacular native cultivars, on Pinterest, and I practically go berserk with angst, I truly miss my garden, and feel like it was such a shame that I had to leave, and the people responsible for forcing me to leave were so foolish, as, if the garden was left to thrive, at least by this point, it would be so stunning, it would actually be a great asset to the landowner. I feel they lost, just as much as I did, in the end, unbeknownst to them. Plus, I would be making money at this point, with so many species – why, they would have called me up to speak at “Business Woman of the Year” ! J

{btw, stage 2 of my garden, was to construct the Horse and Carriage Garden J}

......and hey, what’s your legacy (and no, your kids don't count – although if you do that, important to get that part right). At first, when I started my business, I developed a green tree logo; a picture of a green tree, I screen printed it up on a white T shirt, and I came up with my marketing strategy which was; for every tee I sold, I would plant a tree. My target market was people in Gunnedah back then, and so of course I didn’t sell any! People in Gunnedah don’t really care about trees, back then they certainly didn’t. This was 2007. However, this didn’t stop me from planting trees. I have indeed planted hundreds in my time, which is more than I can say for the average non thinking, uncaring, lazy Australian who mainly make it their aim to mainly clear land, cut trees down, poison them and or run over them with their lawnmowers. I see now, quite a few other businesses have adopted this marketing strategy to - I do wonder if they have planted trees from sales, and or if this technique increased their sales!!

 

By the way, if you’re an Australian Gardner, experienced in growing a lot of plants, specifically  natives, plus you’re familiar with the land, nature, so to speak; then when you see a lawn of kikuyu, you can really see that it just stands out like a sore thumb. It isn’t a grass that really belongs in Australia. I say, stick to Couch! (NSW couch, it does not get as high as the QLD couch).