I really HAD intended to spend the month of September, after my giddy global tour of Cyprus and the Netherlands, slashing, trimming, tidying, digging and planting back in my Chiang Mai garden, here in Northern Thailand.
I don't know WHICH part of me forgot it would be the business end of the monsoon season. It's not like Chiang Mai hasn't flooded with rather monotonous regularity every September for the last 20 odd years I have lived here. That's sidestepping the "real flood years" of 2005 and 2011 where the streets of many parts of the city near the river were a meter under water.
Do I love near the river? Yup.
And has it basically RAINED almost non stop since I arrived back in Thailand? Yup.
Did my gardening go to plan? Nope - cos this about sums up September.
The house and garden, haven't flooded per se, but been under several inches of water making most anything one does more harm-causing than good. Compacting soft mud by tramping about isn't helpful, and one has to appreciate that the MUD revitalizes the garden once the water recedes, so it has its place in the grand scheme of things. Notice how bowed my 8 foot tall galangal plants are bowed by the relentless rain!
The undergrowth around the property may just as well have been soaked in steroids during my absence.... 😆
All I physically managed to achieve was warming up the brush cutter for an hour and slashing across the front fence line to deter snakes. 🐍
I'm lucky in terms of the flooding - the village closest to me - Nong Hoi - wasn't quite so fortunate. This is how it looked on Wednesday afternoon...
It was only about 5 days after I returned that I was awoken by what sounded like an explosion at around 4.30am. It took me many minutes to determine it wasn't an earthquake or someone breaking the front door down. In the 5am light, in between rainy deluges, it turned out that the endless monsoonal rain had finally claimed a victim: my lovely dead tree that Weston the Woodpecker has so enjoyed, and which yields me so many gorgeous Reishi mushrooms.
Luckily it only took out 4 roof tiles at the edge of the front porch!! Yup - I have ANGELS.
Pondering the rotting, incredibly fascinating dead tree up close, I started to realize what a unique garden this could be... albeit with a little rearranging. Cos it would be criminal to burn it and it is rather a lot to be composting.
CURRENT PLAN??
To drag the triangular apex of the dead tree fallen tree over to the wet, shaded area under the banana trees, along the concrete fence. I'm planning to get is some serious machete time to hack up the dead tree into small bits to fill the underneath space. which I will also back fill with local leaf litter. I'm thinking to rehome random local ferns (which pop up EVERYWHERE here) and maybe to splash out a tiny bit of money on some baby bromeliads.
The ENTIRE strategy? Celebrate the local environment instead of fighting it.
I look forward to showing you some steps in next month's journal as my Mycology Garden takes shape, and also maybe to do some fungi identifying posts too. I have so much to learn!
September's gardening may mostly have been observing, thinking and learning to release western concepts of what a garden should be or look like, but in the end that's HEALTHY - not unlike leaving a garden bed fallow for a season and allowing the compost to do its thing.
If you're planning to visit Chiang Mai, please remember to pack some rubber boots if you come in September. 💦
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