After early
October’s beautiful rain, the garden looked great and as the weather started to
warm up, we poured the tank water into the garden.
The result
was a beautiful garden for our 716 visitors to enjoy.
Early
November I had a procedure done in Hospital, 74 years old and my first ever hospital
visit, doctors and nurses could not believe it.
Weeks of
hard work from both Judy and I went into the preparation of the garden and the
plants, resulting in the garden looking it’s best and some really beautiful
plants for sale.
I did make
a mistake by putting pictures of plants on the internet, the result was being
inundated with requests for a Hoya ‘Kerrii’, we sold them far too cheap and
learnt a valuable lesson from that and will not do that again.
Most garden
related Facebook sites were fantastic by letting us post about our opening with
one exception, I have since left that site. It’s their loss as I answered many
questions from people.
We could
not do it without our helpers, so thanks to the two Peter’s, Trevor and Erica.
Scott,
Eliza and Margaret manned the gate and our Grand Children Luke and Sophie sold
the Black Sapote fruit and did quite well out of that.
The day
started with a big rush and many plants went out in the first hour or two.
We had a great
coffee van on the front lawn which also did well, lots of scones went on the
Saturday and cake on the Sunday.
The whole
weekend went off without a hitch, but one of our rare plants in the garden
disappeared, probably in someone’s handbag.
Absolutely
bone weary at the end of the weekend and on the Monday started the cleanup,
that took four days.
This year
we decided not to take our usual break after the opening, just going on a few
garden related day trips.
Now the
heat has really started to put it on and NO rain for almost two months and
all our seven tanks are almost empty.
Just really
hoping we do not get a repeat of last summer where we received NO rain
at all from December to late March.
Will we do
it again for the 19th year?
Probably YES
providing our health keeps up as we are not getting any younger.
No pictures, but you may go to Facebook 'The Giving Garden' where there's lot's of photos of the open weekend.
