This here little gardening blog completely failed to mention last week that Australia’s best loved gardening god retired from television. The blog also failed to mention anything about Peter Cundall’s final episdoe of Gardening Australia, primarily because its author was cooking dinner for her outlaws when it aired and the tv was on Scrapheap Challenge for father-son bonding time (uncle and cousins were highly entertained, auntie was less thrilled).
So other people have written marvellous things about Peter Cundall and his work first, and done it well, and I will add merely that (apparently like many of current young presenters on the show) I grew up watching Peter Cundall’s veggie garden taking over the Botanical Gardens in Hobart and thinking he’d make a pretty cool extra grandfather (I wouldn’t have trade either of my actual grandfathers). My mother is a keen gardener and has watched nearly every episode of Gardening Australia, I watched many of them with her while eating our Saturday evening meal before I left home. She may be their only committed viewer who is determinedly anti-compost heap*, who redesigned the garden and eliminated the veggie patch** and who was less than excited about being provided with free worm castings. I may never succeed in convincing my Mum to keep her own worm farm, or grow edibles beyond the basics***, but all those years of watching GA means I don’t have to explain what the hell it is I’m doing and look like the only person in the world who’s doing it. So perhaps GA deserves a medal for bridging the generation gap. Or at least for encouraging mother-daughter bonding over strawberry plants.
* she’s convinced there’ll be rats. I think there’ll be rats with or without the compost heap, they’re vermin, they’ll find something.
** I retaliated by planting my broccoli and red cabbages amongst the roses, she called me Cabbage Girl for a few months. She didn’t object to eating the bounty.
*** I think she’s slipping though. Last year she made cumquat marmalade from all the fruit on her (previously ornamental) cumquat, I can’t remember the last time she threatened to cut down the lemon tree, and she’s been debating whether to prune her plum tree for maximum fruit production or let it grow for less fruit and more screening. It may surprise you that I argued for screening, but two people don’t eat that many plums.
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August 2, 2008 at 10:03 pm
shula
I tried one in St Kilda, once. I wound up with a rat plague to rival Luna Park at the end of the street. Come to think of it, they may have all simply migrated to my joint. Took me two years to get rid of them.
Having said that, I am still staunchly pro compost, though I can’t have one here. I grieve every time I put fruit and vegetable peelings in the rubbish. SUCH a waste.
August 3, 2008 at 11:49 am
Stomper Girl
Our compost heap was the reason for the Great Mouse Slaying of ’04 when Mister Fixit single-handedly and armed only with a spade as a weapon sent 17 mice to rodent heaven.
These days we have a compost heap and a cat.
Love Peter Cundall.
August 3, 2008 at 1:23 pm
innercitygarden
We had mice when we first moved here, we’ve been rodent free since we got the compost heap going.
Next door’s cat is a bigger problem for our garden than the mice were (they weren’t much fun in the kitchen though). Now we have a plague of ants. For some unknown reason they are attracted to our bathroom/laundry as well as the kitchen. Perhaps all the toddler vomit from last night will make the laundry basket less attractive. It’s certainly made the entire house less attractive to me.
August 4, 2008 at 10:22 am
Iona
Toddler vomit makes everything less attractive.
Said uncle taped and later watched Scrapheap challenge this weekend. I can’t say the auntie involved was anymore impressed second time round.
There’s a reason generations of English authors make fun of Devon farmers’ accents.