Blonde on a Road Trip

As an incredibly recent and last-minute hire by The Friendly Gardener, I got up, showered and had coffee in time for an 8am departure from Anneke’s house to get to our first job of the day in Orewa. We stopped at Mitre 10 (homeware shop) for a pair of secateurs and gloves and a few coffees (cafe in their garden centre).

We rocked up at Anne and Clive’s in Paremoremo at about 9:20am and got to work on her weeds. We were also greeted by her springer spaniel Muddy, a great fan of fetch and anything ball-related. Anne and Clive are fellow poms, having moved over quite some years ago, but still in full possession of their English accents.

We got started on weeding a bed that was due to be knocked into later in the year to level out the wall below it a little, a bit like the recent works at Blagrove.

Their house was set on a hill with amazing views over the water in the distance. Once I’d finished pulling most of the plants out of the flower bed (hopefully mostly weeds), Anneke set me to work on tidying up the bottoms of the young trees in their orchard. The sun was definitely out and it was hot work, but enjoyable nonetheless!

We finished up at 1:30pm, tipped the green waste on their newly erected compost enclosure and set off towards Orewa to grab some lunch on the way to our next job.

We’d worked up quite an appetite in Anne and Clive’s garden, so lunch consisted of a Cajun chicken melt and chips of generous proportions. Vader may have helped with some of the chips…

We got to the next job at about 2:30pm and met Diane, a lovely woman who owns several other properties in the area which Anneke does the gardening for. But today we were at her home for some careful pruning and weeding. At first glance, it didn’t look like there was anything for us to do, certainly not 4 hours’ worth, because the garden was so well kept. However, Diane soon presented a list of things to do and they were above my pay grade, so I decided to take Vader for a walk before trying to figure out how to kill 3 hours weeding a seemingly spotless garden.

Vader had been in the pick-up all morning, mostly sleeping and being a very good girl, so I thought it would be nice for her to go for a stroll of the local area.

Off we went towards the beach, which was a 5-10 minute walk away. She seemed happy enough to come with me, although she did pause and look back several times to see if Anneke was coming with us.

Vader managed to do not one but two solid bowel movements on our walk. Should I take this as a compliment? Anyway, we returned to the garden and set Vader up in the shade next to the car. Anneke almost always takes Vader to work with her, so her clients are very used to her being around or sleeping in the pick-up while her owner toils away.

Diane’s husband came out to say hello and chat to us and thought that me and Anneke were sisters. We wish! Although we might as well be, we’re so similar at times!

The clients were very chatty and lovely and were happy for me to try and weed their spotless garden.

Diane even brought out some cookies and ginger beer for us, which were much appreciated in the heat of the sun.

At the end of our shift, Diane very sweetly handed me 40 NZ dollars, despite Anneke telling her I wasn’t expecting any money. This equates to about £20 for 3 hours’ work, which wouldn’t be liveable, but I thought it was very sweet of her anyway! The only trouble was, I only had a matter of hours to spend it before leaving the country, so that kind of forced us to head to a bar and spend it on drinks and food!

After a hot sticky day of work and being only 10 minutes from the beach, I was desperate to have one last dip in the NZ sea. So we took a quick pit stop at Red Beach and let Vader check her wee mails and I walked about 3 miles until it was deep enough to swim.

After getting back to Anneke’s we freshened ourselves up a bit, put some mascara on and headed for The Merchant bar in Albany.

Actually, that’s a lie. We didn’t have a plan until we were in the car and on the highway in that general direction. Anneke asked me where I’d like to go, but that’s like asking a dog which trick it wants to perform in order to get a treat. I didn’t really mind as long as the result was a meal somewhere with my friend!

We had some drinks and enjoyed the busy atmosphere, which was somewhat of a contrast from the week we’d left behind in Northland where fellow humans were pretty scarce. There was even a live band performing and evidence of a few work Christmas parties on the go. Vader had chosen to lie in the car after her dinner so we took that as a hint that she wanted to come with us for the evening. What choice did we have? She came in the car and then eventually up to the bar and snuggled up under a sheet to keep warm, still damp from having paddled in the sea with me at Red Beach.

We ate and drank our fill and then drove home and demolished some Whittaker’s chocolate before bed.

All in all a wholesome day and I’d gladly be Anneke’s assistant full time if a day at work looked like this! Dreading tomorrow… my last day in NZ.