I said goodbye to Port Hedland with some sadness and a little regret. I was torn between making a proper impact with my work and following my heart home. In the end the decision was made in favour of a return home, with staying a close second. The photo shows the last Indian Ocean sunrise from our balcony. The photo of me shows the best of my tan, already nearly gone of course. I've started work at Wairau Hospital, coordinating the Community Midwife service 4 days a week. Not exactly what I wanted and more hours, but early days yet. It's a massive pleasure to be back on familiar territory, amongst my mob.
The first of the four flights home was into Perth. Happily, Amanda was available for a lunch date, so that very pleasantly took care of some of the 10 hours wait for the next flight. Alexander joined us too, and plenty of good food and cheer was had. The family are soon moving inland to a Benedictine Monastery in New Norcia where Dimitri has found work. That'll be an interesting adventure for them!
We've been planning to get a springer spaniel puppy when we returned to NZ, and when a litter popped up in Blenheim, we decided to take the plunge straightaway. Bracken was born on 24th September and was just over 7 weeks when we picked him up. He's a bundle of joy, curiosity and menace and is keeping us on our toes day and night. Peter is taking on the lion's share of his care and is probably more exhausted than I am, maybe a touch of postnatal depression eh Peter? He is making some progress with toileting and basic commands, but very inconsistently. He has zoomie times when he has to relentlessly chew everything, in particular our clothes. He balances that off with cuddly snuggly episodes that are totally endearing.
Also new to the property is Calypso, Pandora's calf who was born a few days before my return. Pandora didn't have a good track record with her offspring, so no surprises when the feeding didn't happen and Peter had to intervene. However, that sorted itself out and at a week old, Calypso no longer needed any supplemental feeds from us. Those few days contributed to her being quite at ease with humans, and she's still partial to a scratch behind the ears. Kratos was dispatched before I returned home, and yesterday Triton also met his maker. So it's an all-girl herd right now. We hope to find a bull calf for sale locally for future calves, but in the meantime the girls will probably appreciate a rest.
Spring is such an uplifting season, despite the weather being unable to make up its mind. The spring colours are just so fresh and vibrant. It's been a pleasure to re-acquaint myself with all the plantings and gardens. Karyn and Billy have kept up the maintenance beautifully and it's been relatively easy to complete the remaining tidying up jobs, many of which are the result of spring growth anyway. The pics are some of my favourite views of the property.
And talking of Karyn, it's been a long time since there was a decent shot of her arse. She doesn't share my enthusiasm for this, so I do have to be sneaky unless a golden opportunity arises. Here she is planting the first crops of the season - sweet corn that she raised from seed. A worthy moment for an arse-shot I reckon.
Tending my vege seedlings is probably my happiest happy place, and fortuitously I arrived back in the nick of time to plant a vege garden. I will leave some of the beds covered in weed mat for another year to keep my workload down. At some point I'll gravel over a couple of the beds permanently too for the same reason. The main planting beds have been fallow for a good year, and optimistically that's a good thing for soil health. I've loosened the surface soil with my new forksta (broadfork) and added some blood and bone - that should be enough for this season's plantings, and I'll sow green manure seeds after harvest. Once the berries have finished fruiting, I'll be erecting a large (7x5m) fruit cage in the horse arena to house all my soft fruit in the hope of not totally feeding the birds with my crops. That's a big project that I'll need some energy and headspace for, hopefully it'll be fun to get on with later in the year.
I'd been looking for a tower planter that incorporated a worm farm for ages and had only found a US product, until I came across the Verdia planter whilst doom-scrolling - made in Wellington NZ and with impressive eco-credentials. Derryn was interested and her enthusiasm was infectious. She should be on the Verdia payroll for the number of followers she's influenced. The planter is also self wicking - once established it'll just be a case of topping up the base reservoir every week or so. There's about 3 weeks between the first and second photos, and even more since they were taken. I'm already eating greens, spring onions, celery, water cress and sorrel, and the plan is for these to be available for AirBnb guests when we get back started with that.
I remembered dad on his birthday by sending flowers from the garden down the Onamalutu River to the ocean. He'd have been 87 on November 21st. He'd have loved our little rural abode and I'm sad that he never got to see it.
Birds are singing their hearts out everywhere, adding to the ambience of spring time. The tui in the bottle brush is a frequent visitor, as are bellbirds and gold finches. Wekas have been around en masse and are very much enjoying digging through the peastraw on the flower beds and kicking it onto the path. Sometimes they argue noisily and have a go at each other. I'm suspicious that the sweet corn massacre (in the 2nd bed that I planted) was weka-work. Every single corn seedling laying nearly dead on the ground the day after planting. This has happened before and I've blamed rabbits or quail, but maybe it was wekas all along. Or maybe that's a gross miscarriage of justice. Good job they're cute. I'm attempting to revive the sweetcorn seedlings but alas it's not looking too promising.
Spring flowers and blossoms are popping up everywhere, more each day. The tulip tree is in full stunning bloom, as are the manuka trees in the woodlot. Peonies and dahlias are showing off, as usual, and these fab forget-me-nots are self sown. A great advert for not keeping too tidy a garden!
The biggest job was tackling hedges. I've trimmed them so aggressively that there's more on the ground than the plant, so they're looking a bit bare in places, like a bad hair day Karyn-style. There's one more teuchrium hedge in the vege garden that will meet the hedge trimmer one day soon, but otherwise they can lick their wounds before regenerating.
Peter has been stocking up on firewood from golf course jaunts with George. Billy had also been gathering old vines that make great fire starters - we're probably ok for a few years. Just a whole heap of splitting to do, and that's a huge job. It gets harder to split the longer it's left, so there's pressure to get on with the job. We've indulged the luxury of more fires than we need, and therefore more baths to use up all that hot water. It's also provided opportunities to make char in the new bio-char kiln. I'm stockpiling it for now and will bio-activate it for the garden next season. Bio-char is highly regarded as a natural plant fertiliser so it'll be great to have this addition going forward.
Our daily beach walks have been replaced by dog walks along the Ohinemahuta River. Beautiful wildflowers are blooming everywhere. Heaps of ox-eye daisies, purple vetch, monkey musk and fox gloves (charmingly re-named as Boxing Gloves by Rhi's son Rhys when they visited). We're gradually increasing the walk lengths to try and wear Bracken out, and they're a great tonic for me after work.
No more red dirt for me for the foreseeable. I'll just have to settle for lush, green and mountainous. Home sweet home 💜
