Summer times
As we head towards the summer season, Tony Milne from Rough and Milne contemplates the changing landscape of a garden in bloom.
As I write this, the warmth of a Canterbury nor’wester makes a hazy IPA seem the logical mid-afternoon choice. Particularly, as I am cheering on Otago in their defence of the Ranfurly Shield. To no avail, they relinquish, unfortunately barely firing a shot.
Unlike the spring equinox. Hopefully, in another few weeks, we can bid farewell to the relentless easterly zephyr that accompanies it. Each year, a gentle daily reminder that, for reasons other than climate, we have chosen an eastern seaboard South Island city in which to call home.
But it is undoubtedly the time of the year, during which we scrape off the barbecue tools and look for the swimming trunks. The derris dust is sprinkled, and the doors of the bee hotel are thrown open as we ready ourselves for the prospect of summer. The squabs for the outdoor furniture have come down from roof storage. I have even mixed up a concoction of organic neem oil and sprayed the ornamentals in our garden. Unfortunately, I planted the mega toms a little too early.
The Pittosporum ‘Midgets’ are clothed with bright green growth, inviting a little shaping to return them to their ball-like form. Contrived some may say, but I do like the juxtaposition with the seemingly random planting that surrounds it. The Penstemon and Salvia are starting to push through the overhanging Libertia formosa.
The lancewoods continue to surge towards the sky and our Coprosma ‘Lobster’, a divaricating beauty with a mass of distinctive red foliage stands proud, as it always does, guarding the gap in our front wall. The family wait for a gate, apparently the landscape architect in the house is wanting to design it. Their patience is waning, a proprietary gate is being threatened.
The gate can wait. As spring morphs into summer, and those things that nap during winter awake, I am readying myself for my ongoing battle with the local precocious exhibitionists. And no, it’s not Kevin and Destiny down at the local park, rather my old mate Helix aspersa or Cornu aspersum if you may, the common garden snail. I am not sure why they choose our place, rather than our neighbours Chris or Derek.
It’s not quite the giant African land snail invasion of Cuba, Brazil and Venezuela six or so years ago. This is a snail which can grow to the size of a rat and will seemingly devour anything in its wake. In the dim moonlight of my nightly raids, I’m not so sure. Aside from the 1986 Quail Island mouse infestation, from which I have yet to recover, I have never experienced anything like it.
Nothing seems to dissuade them. Following light drizzle, we can pick up 120-plus of these terrestrial gastropod molluscs as they slither and sucker onto the freshened foliage of the vegetable patch. Its little radula, a toothed ribbon of a tongue, reaping the leaves of our leafy greens. We have yet to try eggshells and chickens, but we have been liberally spreading coffee grounds and yet they come back. Our beer bait traps do not make it past Lulu, our ever-inquisitive black Labrador.
This summer I am hoping a liberal planting of lavender, rosemary, mint, thyme and sage will head them in Chris or Derek's direction. However with a maximum adult speed of 0.047km/hr they are not going too far.
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