Firewood Days

Last winter we had a tornado go through our area: this tree was ripped in half. It's pine nut tree, and it was the first year it had cones on it. Being a type of pine, the fallen part will presumably be good for burning, and we got a good trailer load from it.

A few days later we cleaned the driveway up  bit. Mac used the tractor to pull some of the big gorse out by the roots, and chainsawed up some of the bigger stuff. It's fantastic wood as it burns really hot.

The tornado also ripped a large kahikatea out of the ground, but when we went to look at it, found it was going to be just too hard to cut it up, and to get the wood out of the bush would need a lot more people and effort than Mac and I have.

 So, under the supervision of the flock of cockatoos, we sawed up a fallen gum tree instead.

 It's incredibly satisfying to cut your own firewood, and to clean up gorse and fallen trees at the same time. Sure beats doing housework! And best of all, my health has improved sufficiently for me to do some of the chainsawing again, for the first time in 3 years.

  We parked the trailer of wood under the pohutukawa tree for a couple of days before transfering it to the wood shed.

  Such glorious trees.

 They even make the old trailer beautiful!

Weeds and Wood

Today we chopped out some big gorse from beside the driveway. As I walked down, I enjoyed plants that others would have pulled out as soon as they saw them. I leave them: there is so much joy in them, some 'weeds', some 'plants' gone to seed.

 Wild carrot - I love the little speck of red on some of the flowers.

 Silverbeet - isn't it gorgeous?

 Parsley.

 Parsley and dandelion.

 These were my favourites when I was a child.

 A little bit of loveliness between the garage and my bee shed.

And though gorse is indeed a weed, it has its uses: a nursery plant for natives; a food source for bees, and eventually, firewood. The gorse, combined with pine from a pinenut tree destroyed by the winter tornado, filled a trailer with plenty more to come. A good afternoon's work.

This morning I weeded the asparagus garden, It has been sadly neglected pretty much always - maybe next year I'll have kept it weeded and we'll get more than a taste. Mind you, I've said that every year!

Simon and Zea headed off to the far north for New Year, and Jeff and Konny went into Hamilton to catch up with friends. It's been lovely having them all visiting, and good to see so many of their friends, and mine, over the holiday season. However, I was feeling shattered today until a visit from my oldest close friend, Eileen, meant a relaxing afternoon with no energy expended because I am so comfortable with her.

Meanwhile, the oldest goat lay down in the sunshine for a sleep today, and didn't wake up again. RIP Auntie, you were the nicest of the goats.

Mac attached the front-end loader to the tractor in order to bury her, and then followed up by filling with dirt, the old boat we acquired months ago from his brother. I dug the weak peppermint roots up from their spot under the pineapple sage and replanted it. Hopefully I won't have to buy any more peppermint tea ever again!

Solstice, Procrastination, and Good intentions

Today it actually feels like summer at last. It is also the solstice, so it's about time it felt like summer!

Yesterday I went and collected 40 kumera tupu from Liz, our local permaculture guru, who lives just a few minutes away. The season is late here: last year I planted them in November. They grew well and now I know how to do it, they stored well too, and we are eating the last of them now.

I have not done well with producing food this year. I have been focused on getting healthier, on what I can and can't eat now I am diabetic, and have been fairly dispirited about growing food as a consequence. I am so disappointed that our fruit trees are not bearing much fruit this year, the ones that I can eat, anyway. I had planned on bottling lots of apples and pears, but we have no pears on our three trees, and not many apples.

I only recently decided to grow kumera again. Potatoes are definitely out for me, so haven't grown any, much to Mac's disappointment. However, I have found that I can take kumera in moderation. Of course, being both an impulse buyer (Hey I think I'll grow kumera again, I'll go get some tupu now,) and a procrastinator (I don't know what to grow in that garden so I won't prepare it for anything,) I got up this morning and knew I had to work hard in the hottest day of 'summer' so far (26C)

Of course, like all procrastinators, I am easily distracred. On the way to the kumera garden, I realised that the basket willows were lost in weeds so stopped to clean that mess up, 'pruning' some with the scythe in the process. I took this before I'd finished just so I could see what a mammoth task it was!

 My vege gardens have been similarly neglected, but the bees are loving it. There are actually young pea plants in there somewhere.

Anyway, I did manage to get the bed dug and weeded, but needed Mac's help after work to hit the warratahs in for the extended windbreak - not just to guard against the wind, but also in the hopes of keeping the pukeko out. I have only about a quarter of the shallots and garlic that I originally planted left, after the wretched birds kept pulling in out. They didn't like it, but had to keep trying, just in case the next one was different!

It was very hot, and hard work. I'm tired and my joints in my hands are throbbing from all the pulling of over-size weeds, but still, I feel incredibly privileged to live and work in this beautiful place.

It's been a funny week. I've spent time thinking about my parents, as my mother was diagnosed with terminal cancer 28 years ago yesterday, and died just 11 days later, following on from my father's death 8 months earlier. I've been thinking about my sons who have been through some hard times this year, but also some good times. I've been thinking of my personal difficulties with diabetes and depression this year - I've managed not to succumb to depression, but it's been a struggle nonetheless. But I've also been looking forward to seeing all my sons on the 25th, and to various 'happenings' coming up next year.

From my health problems has arisen a deep gut knowledge that I am going to die. I always knew it intellectually, but now I know it. This coming year I want to tell people if I love them. And what I love about them. Actually tell them, rather than wait and say it at their funerals. In the last week two people have said kind things about me, to me, and it felt so good. But it is also important to express the bad things if it is important to you and if the person is / has been important in your life. I never told my father anything other than I loved him. I tried to talk to my mother about the issues that have taken me the 28 years since her death to almost come to terms with - she refused to discuss or listen. I did tell her that I loved her, and thanked her for some of the positive things she had done - but only as she lay on her death bed. As I finished, she took one last breath and died. I don't remember her ever saying she loved me, or that approving of anything about me. I wish she had been able to talk to me, and to hear me.

I hope that people, my sons, friends, whoever, don't procrastinate, and will talk to me about what they need to say to me before I die, rather than saying the good things at my funeral, and the bad things to their therapists.

Today, in the garden, on this summer solstice day, I worked hard and didn't think much at all, just sat with the present. And it was good.

The Morning Rounds

In the morning....

...... breakfast at the outside table overlooking Mt Karioi

...... while Spike has his drink of water from the boat which will, soon, I hope, become my peppermint garden.

After breakfast I take my daily walk to feed the ducks and chooks. On a sunny, early summer morning it is beautiful, almost enough to make me forget my very wet, miserable, head-down-and-run November.

This year we have a reasonable number of plums on the trees,

but not many apples, and no pears at all on any of our three trees.

In the chook run there are Cape Gooseberries (and yes, that is blackberry creeping in there, but I try to keep it down)

and figs

and two avocado trees, that grew from scraps thrown to the cooks before I knew they were poisonous. They are gorgeous trees, and the chooks prefer to perch in them at night rather than use their chook palace, but no fruit yet. This year they were covered in flowers, so maybe we will get fruit set next year, or the year after, or....

The hareheke is finally flowering - later than usual - and the tui have been visiting for the nectar.

The grape vine is flowering, and the chooks seem to have forgotten that they love to eat the young leaves, so it's looking prettier than usual.

The run looks like a hippy jungle, but it keeps the kahu from stealing the eggs from a couple of nesting spots.

The boysenberries are running wild: we don't get many as the chooks and other birds are happy to eat them long before they are ripe enough for my taste.

I love the wild carrot, and they are always covered in pollinators. I notice bees collecting grass pollen too.

There's plantain everywhere, and I love that too - so pretty, and instantly relieving when a crushed leaf is rubbed on an insect bite.

My favourite chook, Chicky, who always comes for a pat, and to peck at my feet. She became tame when she lived outside the back door when she was sick, and now, if ever she gets out of the run she heads straight up to Bob's kennel to see her best friend.

Still small and pretty ratty, the sugar cane I planted 4 years ago has survived frost and drought, and maybe one day we'll get to taste the sweetness.

The nashi trees are not as ridiculously covered in fruit this year, so maybe we'll get some of a decent size this time round.

The scented geranium are supposed to deter codlin moth: I don't know if it's that, but we have never had any bugs in our fruit.

 It doesn't deter one of the chooks, which has made a nest in it.

 At the moment, once I've collected eggs from three outside nests, plus the nesting boxes, I'm getting 12-13 eggs a day from fifteen chooks. The older ladies don't lay daily, but they live out their natural lifespans, as I figure they have given service and deserve it.

 Nastursiums go crazy, and as well as being a visual delight, are tasty in salads, both leaves and flowers.

 It's looking like we will have a good feijoa crop this year.

 The elderflowers are blooming, but I have to be very careful not to pick wild carrot flowers by mistake!

 I love elderflower cordial but with diabetes I thought that treat was gone for me. However, I have soaked them, along with a lemon, and frozen the strained liquid in ice cubes. A couple of cubes in a glass with a couple of drops of stevia liquid, and sparkling water from the Sodastream has proved rather nice.

 The manuka flowers aren't food for us directly, but make healthy honey, and are just such delightful little flowers.

 A quick water of more work needing to be done,

 watched by Bob

 and Spike, waiting for me to come inside for a cup of tea and a cuddle.