Remembering Elwin

Remember, Remember
the Fifth of NovemberThe Gunpowder Treason 
and Plot,

But that was yesterday, 
and today 
- 6 November - 
I remember that Elwin has been gone two years now.

Remember

How we danced together;

Remember 

Working-late for Carters Steam Fair;

Remember 

Life on Narrowboat 'Ben'
And those Towpath parties;

Remember how you sewed lace on our wedding morning ...

Remember our weddings;

And our anniversaries

Remember how you would make music anywhere

... and on anything, even dandelion stems!

Remember birthdays in exotic places;

Remember patient Mary and our Irish caravan holiday.

Remember making babies

and watching over them through their growing years.

Remember those last precious weeks with you ...

The Neglected Garden in Flower

There are daisies and irises.

There is pink may,

and Mexican hawthorn.

There are velvety clematis buds,

and old world honeysuckle twining with New Zealand's forest bridal veil.

There's heady-scented mock orange blossom,

and lingering longer this year, with regular rainfall, 
are the forget-me-nots by my doorstep.

Daisy, common lawn daisy  Bellis perennis
Iris  Iris sp
Double pink may  Crataegus laevigata 'Rosea Flore Pleno'
Tejocote, Mexican hawthorn  Crataegus mexicana 
Clematis  Clematis 'Niobe'
Honeysuckle  Lonicera caprifolium
Puawhananga, Native (NZ) clematis, Bridal veil  Clematis paniculata 'Bridal Veil'
Mock orange blossom  Philadelphus var

RIP Florence Akins

I would have loved to meet Flo Akins: New Zealand's - possibly the World's - oldest Morris Dancer: until today that is.  She celebrated her 105th birthday in March this year, with Nelson Morris in attendance. Their Squire, Steve Rule, rang me to let me know that she died this morning.

A quick dip into the annals of the NZ publication English Folklore Dance and Song*, reveals her interest in the crafting of instruments as well as her musical and dancing ability during the years that she was an active member of the New Zealand Society for English Folk Dancing.

Another dip - this time into Google (the link above is to the Christchurch Art Gallery blog) - placed Flo soundly in the Christchurch and Nelson artistic scene alongside fellow dancers and musicians such as Francis Shurrock, Leo Bensemann, William Allen and Caroline Oliver.

This artistic trail lead me back to my own book shelf, and The Arts and Crafts Movement in New Zealand where Florence's accomplishments as student, teacher and artist/craftwoman are detailed.  Her writing conveys a sense of interest in people as much as her observation of her surroundings, though I haven't come across her own words in the EFDS magazines. But there are regular references to her talent.

From Rangiora Morris man, Courtney Archer, comes an account of her playing the pipe and tabor. For me that sums up her approach to life, because for those of you who are unfamiliar with pipe and tabor - it's like rubbing your head and patting your tummy at the same time. Flo strikes me as a woman who was always up to a challenge.

*English Folklore Dance and Song was edited between 1938 and 1944 by John Oliver. It not  only provides an account of New Zealand's English Folk Dance scene but a poignant record of the effect that War in Europe was having on NZ. 

Holiday Round Up

What with getting my Drama Queens 

to the stage door on time  

Kitty as Cinderella's Stepmother

and cleaning up after the mice:

stepping warily through a zombie movie

in the making ...

 oh, and fitting in a holiday outing to Gore Bay,

 Banded Dotterel nesting, Gore Bay, NZ

Seaside planting, Gore Bay

it's a surprise to realise that my garden has been getting on quite well without me.

Grand designs may be a thing of the past but little efforts I had forgotten I'd made, 

flourish in delightful ways, and greet me on waking.

Sixty: Reasons to Visit Wellington

Of course I didn't go to Wellington just to look at the tulips.

Two weeks ago now, Andy turned Sixty. 

Even on his birthday he can't help being Handy;  

here is my first attempt at a birthday portrait - Andy at the kitchen sink after breakfast.

There were plenty of distractions though, as there always are in a city so doubly blessed with natural beauty and cultural extravagance.

Henry Moore's Bronze Form is a jewel in the Arts crown.

I am always enchanted by the enclave of Arts and Crafts gardeners' buildings in the Botanic Gardens;

and the little gazebo set beside water at the edge of indigenous woodland.

In the children's playground an old tree stump has been given new life

Catching up with friends in the city I finally placed an enigmatic façade; 

I used to admire this Art Deco detailing from Elwin's desk on the sixth floor of DeLoitte House. I could never work out where it stood in the street scape until this recent visit. It stands on the corner of Brandon and Featherston Streets.

Another handsome building in Brandon Street is this one, with its decorative metal panels.

Metal of a different ilk featured in Stainless (by Judy Darragh), an installation at the Dowse Art Museum. The stainless steel kitchenware is just visible in Andy's reflective photo. Something about the concentric discs and Andy's stance with his pocket camera, as well as the rectangular, reflected frame brings to mind a photographer using a twin lens reflex camera. 

There's some kind of resonance there with the era of popularity for that type of camera alongside a sixtieth birthday.

And what of that elusive birthday portrait? 

Really this is it in my eyes.

Happy Birthday Handy Andy.

Tulip Time

What has happened to the tulips here?
I suspect they have been wrenched and unsettled like so many other creatures in this quake ravaged province. It seems quite believable that bulbs, naturalised in the ground, could be stressed and disrupted by constant seismic activity. Last spring - the daffodil blades came through but were very shy with their flowers; they seem to be back to normal this spring. But a prize group of red tulips that has moved about with me for nearly twenty years, surviving naturalisation and re-planting, has sent up one single specimen this year. The photograph, taken in another part of the garden, shows a very stunted 'Apeldoorn' tulip. This could be a result of competition with a cabbage tree rather than earthquake stress.

In Wellington a fortnight ago, I glutted on the annual display of tulips in the Botanic Garden . . .

Varieties are chosen to provide display throughout Spring. The dwarf 'Pinocchio' tulips below were already going over, though they still looked striking, and the interplanting of forget-me-nots will continue to colour the bed until the whole area is replanted sometime in November.

'Daydream' tulips, inter-planted with matching calendulas, were full of sunshine but just beginning to flop,

while some varieties still held their promise furled tight.

This subtle mixture of pink toned flowers was my favourite planting.

But this Van Eeden mixture was my lesson for the day.

Close up it was just a motley collection of colours and types - the sort that hold no appeal for me at all, when presented in packs of five, or even ten, on department store racks.  

From a distance though, and en masse, this was fabulous with the tall pink variety floating in the light while the shorter varieties gave depth and texture to the vision.

Imagine, I think to myself, planting great swathes of my own special tulip mixture across the open reaches of the Secret Garden, utilising the contours of the land and defining the copses.

And then the Nor' Westers would come, hot-breathed, just at bud burst...

Oh you spoilsport, Lady Mondegreen. I will just have to make do with little sheltered groups of supermarket five packs that don't even come with proper names.

Cabbage tree, ti kauka, Torquay palm Cordyline australis

Tulip spp

Forget-me-nots  Myosotis hortensis vars.

Calendula, pot marigold  Calendula officinalis vars.

Lucky 13

A pink and blue Dawn and Kitty knows it was especially for her. My youngest child becomes a teenager today, as my eldest steps into the sky on a red-eye flight to Wellington: soaring away to possible futures.  We cross the Ashley Bridge at 6.20 am and marvel as the sun casts low shadows off greywacke pebbles and marches the bridge, on long, long legs, towards the mountains. Surreal. Kitty sits with her sister in the back of the van, opening her presents and reading the labels out for me. There are squeals of delight. What a relief.

And then Bryony is gone; gone too quickly - without a proper goodbye - for three days of work experience in the textile and costume department of our national museum.

Kitty and I breakfast in the airport on pain au chocolat and coffee, and are back in time for school at 8.30. It feels like a full day already. But of course there are more treats, messages, friends and gestures of celebration...

including a visit to see Grandma.

"This is the best birthday I've ever had", says Kitty.
I'm sure she has said that before, but the highlights of a day seem to take on special significance when it's your birthday and there were plenty of highlights for Kitty today.