Montbretia is abundant at this time of year.
I can probably only blame bad planning for our garden being bereft of flowers to pick at this time of year.
There are a few flowering grevilleas, some hibiscus and one perfect canna lily, but nothing that'd look any good stuffed in a vase on the dining room table.
So, yearning for something pretty to brighten up the inside of the house, I've been foraging for weeds, of which there are many and varied kinds all along the road verge and beside the stream. And, in our vege garden.
Happily, one of these is Montbretia, a spiky thing with strappy leaves and bright orange flowers.
It's everywhere at this time of year, but I'd be negligent if I didn't mention that it's classified as a weed and appears on numerous regional council websites with admonitions about how naughty it is.
Montbretia is a garden hybrid of C. aurea and C. pottsii, two plants of the genus Crocosmia, and was first bred way back in 1880. It grows from perennial corms that are often spread in garden rubbish, which probably explains why there's so much of it around.
Using weeds in floral arrangements is all about choosing the right foliage to go with them, and if you have time to experiment, you'll come across some inspired combinations.
I was alerted to the fact that Montbretia might look good with the right companion by a few bits of it growing up inside some broom we planted last year. (The broom is a pink variety so I'm very grateful that it and the Montbretia don't flower at the same time.) At risk of sounding like a Masterchef contestant, I think it would also work really well with gone-to-seed parsley, and it certainly works with dill. Considering our dill's in competition with the tomatoes to colonise the world, I'm glad I can use it for something that doesn't involve eating fish every day.
Then there's carrot weed, or parsley dropwort. It's an invasive pasture weed, especially in Northland, lowering the quality of hay made from infested paddocks. Animals won't eat it, so it can become quite dominant in pastures once it flowers. I'm helping by grabbing the flowers (they're mostly white but I've seen the odd pink one which is rather pretty) and teaming them up with olive leaves and agapanthus. It's helpful to spray the carrot weed with hairspray to stop it dropping everywhere.
Verbena bonariensis, or purple top, is a tall, slender-stemmed perennial with creeping rhizomes. It has vibrant purple flowers that appear from summer to autumn and looks a bit like the statice we used to hang from our ceiling rafters in bunches to dry. In a tall vase with a couple of seed heads and the dead bits I combed out of the carex grass, it's a very pretty arrangement.
Don't get me wrong, though. I'm not recommending we cultivate weeds for floral arrangements. But if you've got weeds, you may as well get some use from them. There are more than 2000 species of weed in New Zealand so you're spoiled for choice.
Then, of course, there are the plants in your garden that you didn't know were weeds, at least not until you ventured on to www.terrain.net, the Taranaki educational resource, research analysis and information network. It has a list of weeds and escapee plants that'll knock your socks off and, once you've been through it, you may be of a mind to pull out half your garden.
Where there's a gap grow salad
There was a time when I dreamed of a neat vegetable garden with all its plants growing in orderly rows. Now I'm faced with the reality that a person with two acres of land, a job, a partner, a share in that partner's small business, a dog and three cats has to be content with a disorganised but rather charming mess of vegetables growing in and out of their raised bed.
Our vegetable garden has now spread into several areas of the property, and choosing food and flavourings for the evening meal is a voyage of discovery.
We grow all sorts of salad greens but the ones that bite back are our favourites. Rocket (pictured) grows like crazy here and even though it goes to seed in the blink of an eye, there are always plenty of peppery leaves to spice up a salad. It's one of the fastest growing plants from seed so keep on sowing and you should have leaves for weeks to come.
Watercress is also easy to grow from seed. It likes to be moist, as the name suggests, and it also enjoys some shade from the hot sun - don't we all! Keep it in a pot in a lightly shaded area and give it a soluble, all-purpose plant food. A dusting of lime to the soil before sowing would be a good option, too.
Common cress isn't so picky about where it lives. It's another easy grower and gives a good, peppery bite to salads. Don't be too heavy-handed with it. Try a few leaves sprinkled on a salad to start with to see if you like it.
Endive and radicchio are also a bit on the bitter side and add a wee spark to other greens. Endive's good-looking, too - like a hearting lettuce with a curly head. Radicchio has reddish leaves. Grow them both with some nitrogen-rich fertiliser and plenty of water.
Sweeten up your salads with home-grown cherry tomatoes, chunks of fresh fruit and a dressing of oil, grainy mustard, garlic and fresh squeezed orange or tangelo juice.