Up the Garden Path

Time has been flying along in its normal fashion these days. I've handed in my Work Visa Application - $270 + $350 Medical + $70 Police Certificate - just so that I might be able to stay in NZ long enough to get my Residency Application approved. And so it goes. The pile of paper on my desk indicating a pressing need to delve into my personal life and show I am who I say I am is haunting me. But I have to do it. Scrounging up a birth certificate and proof of each individual work experiences I've had in my life should be a hoot. Can't wait. Can't wait until it's all over and I can stop having a date of termination virtually stuck on my forehead.

As it stands, I've been preoccupying myself with other tasks - part procrastination - part distraction. Obsessing over the status of my boxes I posted to myself from Canada has become my new hobby. Current status? Still in the hands of some customs officer. Don't they realize that my 6 boxes being sent to the same address with bits and bobs so obscure even I don't remember what's in them are in no way suspicious? Fingers crossed I didn't accidently pack a piece of dirt in one of the boxes -- that's one sure way to never see my things again.

In my time of waiting for my power cord to my laptop and the second shipment of my published book, I have taken up planning my garden for this spring. Turns out to be a little bit more like going back to school than it does in picking up a new hobby. For some reason it seems relatively terrifying to have to learn how to grow something living that I will one day hopefully be able to eat than it does to pick up a crochet needle and design a cozy throw. Even still, I press on with the mere hope that perhaps I will somehow discover I have a green thumb hidden under all this nail polish and that the amount of work put into caring about the acidity level of my homemade raised flower beds will one day pay off.

So far - the plan is there - now it is just implementing it. Who was it that decided that gardening supplies should be so expensive? Who would have thought that a bag of dirt could cost so much. Go figure. Regardless, I am keeping up the hope that come summer time I will be well on my way to a year round veggie patch. Plus a couple of flowers thrown in there too.

I've started things off in the vain hope that I can somehow keep two indoor pots of herbs going. Parsley and Coriander have become my new plant babies, sitting up proud on my kitchen ledge in front of the window. Fingers crossed they manage to catch enough sunlight to continue growing. That and that I don't sporadically water them too much or too little, causing their immediate demise. I've recently been told that Coriander can be quite difficult to keep alive and so given that I have managed to not kill it in its last 9 days of living with me has been reassuring. At least more so than my reputation of somehow managing to kill my cactus plant as a child.

And so it goes - the rain appears to be settling in for the last part of winter here and I only hope this means good things for the garden I have yet to grow. Perhaps I can manage to convince a few people to grow things with me and then weeding won't seem so much a chore in the next few months.

Garden or no garden - Kaeto continues to walk around like the little black ninja that he is - even taking to following me down the main road for a kilometer before waiting 2hrs in the bush to walk me back home. Jess continues to be my running buddy - or at least when I finally get out of bed and am motivated to run in the rain. Again. But above it all, I still have to sort through my Residency Application. Who would have thought that trying to get into a country would be so demanding. Surely there will be points given for walking the length of the country right? Fingers crossed.