it is daring I will admit

when every other morning we discover fresh assaults on  the garden,

but Shelley , an osteopath who practices from her home on Verona Road offered me some berry canes .

She is a self confessed mad food grower committed to growing every sort of food plant imaginable.

She is also  farms  hundreds of goats,  cows and  assorted breeds of chooks..

How does she do it we often ask?

And those hands that love the soil so much can take on a twisted body , unravell the kinks until the breath comes easier and you feel taller straighter and lighter.

pure magic!  but I hear there is a science behind it.

even kingston has had a turn of Shelley,

his knee he cried, knee.. sore.. especially at night when we all want to dream but also any other  time .

so off he went with his mama and sure enough Shelley discovered an ankle had rolled over at some point and set things out of kelter as well as a fall that had tilted a hip in the wrong direction .

would he actually let Shelley touch him was what Jess wondered?

And that very day just minutes before the appointment Shelley got a call from Quaama school to come and pick up her son who felt sick.

I think he  wanted  a day at home was his Mums comment .

So six year old Connor who loves succulents like his mum loves food plants and has his very own succulent garden sat and held Kingstons hand thruout the manipulation.

Shelley said to me the universe was looking after Kingston because I have no doubt that I would not have been able to touch him without Connor being there.

last year  she gave us strawberry runners and they started in a garden bed, did alright  for a while and then got lost among  other stuff, were weeded , loved up a bit and then wallaby took them out.

so Jess produced  a very large purple pot which she put at the bottom of the kitchen steps, the idea being closer to the house equals safer.

what do you know, they got snipped .I draped some  fishing net around a few sticks,  they recovered and moved into production mode.

everyday watching them change from a little blush to more red.

did I spell it up talking about them that evening?  ready in another day or two I said imagining Kingston picking his first ripe  strawberry .

the next morning blinking in the grey dawn out the kitchen window I did a long deep groan as I realised the net had been breached and all leaves were missing.

I was able to rescue one berry  and  when John came into the kitchen I burst into tears.

I know I know.  what a big suke,

and while I am sure it is character building  I did want to ring the neck of that young wallaby.

yes I immediately apportioned blame

it is the teenagers,

they have no respect not that their parents are innocent but they take it to another level.

the other day I picked up raspberry, youngberry, slyvanberry, boysenberry canes  from Shelley where I noticed they grow  unfenced and predator free.

I squashed down my jealousy because it really isn’t cool and constructed a  netted garden. Jess finished it off today and we moved the berries in.

as I said it is a daring move because while they waited in pots to be planted out and I had them in a safe place, a possum took a shine to a few of them .

too many of them too many of them.

I am beginning to understand overpopulation now,

and so far my only answer is to keep planting while I have the will,

and when that fades or I retire defeated ,

I will hopefully content myself with the thought that I provided for a lot of happy and well established colonies of wallabies , possums, bush rats

and birds

hopefully…