Auction expertise

I bought one single white poppy plant last year, and the seeds have spread through the garden.They are quite a sight just now, and last for days in light air. They open with the light in the morning, keeping their beautiful faces to the sun during the day, and then close at night. The white is quite surreal in the dusk.

  

I used to cook to relax. I still relish my cooking, but the garden is my retreat. To walk around and see the changes each day, each little movement in the plants, the comfort of the great big worms in good rich soil, the return of the bees after so many barren years, it gives me great joy. And just to sit...

The bees love borage which is great news for the early broad beans. I love this white variety, but keep thinking I must get a blue as well - it is striking in the garden.The leaves are great shredded into a salad, a little like cucumber.


The flower auctions in Mount Wellington are amazing, and will take some serious focus to keep abreast of what is happening. Sally says she will send up some flowers and foliage from her beautiful garden at The Ridges too, which will offer some variation from the usual commercial varieties. Hopefully I will be able to get other ardent gardeners to do the same. 


The Cadbury auction was great too. We bought some lovely old stainless containers; buckets, shovels, ladles, allsorts. They look great, and will be perfect for showing flowers in the shop. We also bought a lot of trays, beautifully made in hormbeam and copper beech. There were made in Germany and are really strong, but not required as Cadburys are making all their confectionery in Australia now, I am told. Apparently they were used for sorting the sweeties when they came out of the moulds, and many still have a bit of sweetie stuck to them! We will use some for storage in the shop, and I have been the butt of considerable jokes about how many uses there are for trays ( hats to keep the sun off while carrying important items, leaning on while chatting to people, to mention a couple), but I think they will sell well at $10 - a little piece of Auckland's history.

The trays are large, and very sturdy.