New Horizon

St Clair beach

The last blog showed photos of the Blackhead quarry with its horizons of mountains of quarry dust.

 I took this photo last week when we had a rare blue Dunedin day, an occasion to celebrate by going to the beach during this strange summer with its grey days of constant rain and snappy winds.  Bart and I enjoyed our coffee at the St Clair Cafe after I'd had my first swim of the year in the St Clair Hot Saltwater Pool.
This photo reminds me of the last few months, the waves and waves of possessions coming from all directions as we packed up our beloved home of forty years.  The banana boxes so lovingly packed with books and 'precious ornaments from living room' by Hilary Mills, Maggie Peake and Rona Chave.  I listened to them as they packed, I felt helpless but they knew exactly what to do.  Then there were Gary Dent who took trailers full away and Mick and Mary Strack coming over to help, all so willingly and lovingly supporting us in what they knew was a major event for our family.

 The next stage of packing was expertly done by our delightful young neighbour, Victoria Martin, no holds barred, she went full steam ahead, reminding me what still needed to be sorted and when that was done she made sure that each room was left in a clean state.  We were so grateful, again and again and especially for the amazing support we had from our front neighbour, Douglas Clark who expertly advised us how to deal with an overstocked tool-laden garage with lots of other 'things', taking trailer-loads to the dump, together with Victoria carting masses of banana boxes on his trailer to our unit at Summerset, storing them in the garage and in the house, advising us on hundreds of things and inviting us impromptu to a home-cooked roast dinner with all the trimmings.  Those roast potatoes, wow!  What a treat it was, and it was repeated again the next night when he suggested we'd come and help him eat the left-overs of the night before.  Some left-overs!!!!  Delicious and oh so welcome.  That last night as we sat in the house which we extensively renovated in the early seventies, we could look for the last time at the place where we lived, loved and learned for the past forty years and it felt good!  It gave us a buoy to hold on to during the next days when we were lovingly invited to stay with Trudy and Gary Dent while in the daytime we sorted and cleaned and tidied, again with impromptu help of Fiona Stirling and Tess Gilfedder.

 With all this love shown to us, and Kate Strack's delightful email saying: 'you can take the Hellendoorns out of Opoho but you can't take Opoho out of the Hellendoorns' - how lucky we have been to have had those years in this suburb.

 Admittedly, after the shift my horizon has been like the photo above - just a little bit above the railing, lots of flotsam (kelp in the photo) below, sometimes feeling a bit barred by lack of storage space but hey, we did it!  We've had our first Christmas here, Miriam and Ray came and we had a simple but lovely Christmas dinner.

What a treasure - a Hardanger Xmas cloth made by my sister Eef.

 Two days before Christmas Bart lifted a 30 kg piece of metal in the process of cleaning, wanting to leave the outside of the old house in respectable order for the arrival of the new owners. The result was that he had six very painful weeks with a pinched nerve, which now only is beginning to get back to normal.  It made for a complete rest as every movement was agony.

 And now I end with a photo I took from our living room here at Summerset. A totally different horizon now but at least it is a colourful one.

Summer 2014

CHANGES AHEAD

Ploughing on ...

We visited Miriam yesterday.  She is looking so good, full of beans, chatting away.  She'd spell the words we didn't understand, and if we still didn't get the meaning she'd write them down in the side column of her Word Find book.  She is resource full as ever.  The staff at the McGlynn Home have adjusted fantastically to giving Miriam an interesting gluten free diet. 

She'll come home for a meal next week.  That will be the last time for her to be in this house and it will be hard for her to accept this.  As hard as it is for all of us, slowly detaching ourselves from 'possessions', and I mean possessions not in a valuable way but of having been attached to them: some bits of simple furniture, e.g. a shelving unit with plate glass shelves and rimu surrounds holding a selection of vases on the top shelf and all sorts of things on the other shelves, cook books on the bottom one.  A garden table with four chairs.  We know they'll go to good homes.  And then there are the plants in the garden, the abundance of roses right now, so glorious.  The peony rose in flower for the first time, oh, how poignant to pick a huge bunch realising that for me the picking is not only its first but also its last time.  Our wonderful Freyberg apples, a tree planted the same year as I was born.

But we have many things to be grateful for and I will be glad when those intense waves of sadness of leaving behind 53 years in this lovely suburb will be replaced by hopefully happy and new experiences when we move into our unit at Summerset Bishopscourt. 

A few weeks ago Bart had to make concrete and needed to get sharp sand at the quarry down the road from us.

Blackhead Quarry Logan Park.

The new Dunedin Stadium in the background.

  We drove up the hill and as I got out of the car I was amazed to see the end result of the variety of the processes after the initial drilling and blasting of rocks out of the steep rock face.  After blasting, the rocks are transported to different crushers and finally are sorted into different stages of crushed material.

 While there I felt as if I was in a hot and windy alien world. I took some photos and added them to this blog as the processed 'heaps' reminded me of what we're doing right now.   We did cut our tie with this house when it was sold, gradually we cut deeper and deeper with giving away some of our possessions to different organisations, or throwing away things we thought might come in handy one day.  We even had a garage sale.  And now there's going to be the final cut very soon, the house full of bags and boxes selected to go with us.  Bart complains I've taken too many books.  He's right.

 Life has taught me enough lessons to know that not everything will go smoothly but I know too that there will be strength to cope when the rocks are a bit rough or uneven. 

Is this Dunedin or Mars?

GARDENS AND OTHER THINGS

It's only one story

I ended my last blog with a photo of the sign that said that our house was for sale.
Craig Palmer, of Metro Dunedin, asked me if I would write something about my experiences of having lived in our house for nearly 40 years.  And so I did and have decided to blog this little story.  Craig sold the house within a week!  He fulfilled his promise to make the sale as painless as possible and I can thoroughly recommend him.

Kowhai in full bloom, October 2013

In 1966 we bought our first house.  A rambling roughcast house which needed a lot of renovations.  We were not daunted.  We were young.  The main attraction of this house was its quarter-acre garden.  We wanted a garden where our Down syndrome daughter Miriam and our twin sons Foster and Ray could play and run around to their hearts content.  This garden became an adventure place for our children, initially playing in sandpits, using the swing in the huge chestnut tree, then moving on to climbing trees, running around chasing each other, always having friends around.

Photo on right was taken in December 1966

 Unfortunately, Doodle, our black, shiny 'sheep dog' was hit by a car.  She loved to chase cars and people on bikes, perhaps training for the sheep that might eventually wander into our street!  At that time we had a white kitten. Doodle's favourite pastime was to pick up the kitten, run to the bottom of the section with the kitten in her mouth, run back and deposit the poor wee thing in the dust under the house.  Whatever we did, she had to follow her hunting instinct.  The kitten survived!

We did extensive work to improve the inside of the house, taking out walls and chimneys to create an open living space.  The garden stayed the same, an open place to use trikes and play soccer and other ball games.  Our whippets, Dody and Muffin joined in the fun. 

Miriam with dogs and Ray and Foster on trikes

In 1973 we decided to have a two-storied house built on our back section and it was a special moment when in September 1974 we moved into our new sunny house.

Foster, Ray and Bart creating a new path alongside our old house (1975)

Bart built retaining walls, for us a priority to keep our house safe.  Later, surrounded by bags of cement, sand and a pile of grey uneven shaped rocks we created rock walls close to the house.  Water and a fine mixture of cement and sand bonded the stones together.  I remember thinking: these walls won't move once the mixture between the rocks has dried.

We created a garden where we could rest and relax between bouts of work, either indoors or outdoors.  Using Kokonga stones Bart made a terrace.  We planted shrubs and trees and flowers that gave an intensity of colours.  There was no organised colour scheme but the texture of the plants created their own images.  I planted a climbing rata against a bank, thinking of the day when I would see its red fluffy flowers amidst the dark glossy leaves.  Near the letterbox we planted a kowhai.  A hamamelis found a place in a corner where it displayed its yellow tendrils in the middle of winter, just before the first spring flowers shot through the winter earth.  I knew that whenever I planted a tree or shrub, a small part of myself secured a stronger hold on living in this new land.

The countdown to leaving has started.  I'm dreading having to say goodbye to our special suburb where we've lived for more than 50 years.  As I move from room to room - sorting, tidying, cleaning - I think of the good times we've had in this wonderful part of Dunedin, the many friends we've made, the old-fashioned caring attitude of people around us.  The changes we've observed in half a century.

And now our apple tree is in flower again.  The beginning of a new cycle, new growth.  I am sure the new owners will enjoy its beautiful apples.  Our Dutch habit of often eating appelmoes (apple sauce)  will have to be modified.  But ... there's always the fantastic Farmer's Market!

Apple tree in 1981

 

MEMORIES

This is the last spring we celebrate in this house.  More to follow in my next blog.  Yesterday  I took a photo of our yellow plum tree.  It's a bit like a Christmas card with its radiant display of white, green and red.  In late afternoon I sat on the balcony and absorbed the bridal beauty of this gorgeous tree with the rata and red camellia in the foreground.

Plum tree, native rata tree and camellia bush.

 During the past week our family has been absorbing memories.  Memories of being together as a family with Foster and Frances arriving from Thames in the North Island to take part in the 50-year celebration of the Survey School at the University of Otago.  Foster and I enjoyed being part of Basil Jones' party at The Link on Friday night, a special occasion for both of us.  For Foster it was good to meet up with his 1984 entrance class mates, and for me to see so many students I met during the nearly quarter of a century working at the Survey School.  It was delightful to catch up (and recognise!) people I knew as young students and to be recognised as well.  A warm and sincere time.

 Foster and Frances enjoyed the special Survey School celebration dinner at the Toitu Museum on Saturday night.  This is such a lovely photo of them, dressed up to party.

Foster and Frances ready to celebrate.

 Earlier in the week we had another special memory occasion when two couples visited us, all connected through the School of Surveying.  Ever since I retired we've stayed in touch with Allan Blaikie (Acting Head for several years) and his wife, Mary.  They moved to Rangiora and we have lovely memories of staying with them and being totally spoiled.  We spend a lot of time going back to the old days.  The other special couple to visit us came from Auckland.  As always, so lovely to see them too and to bring back the old days but also focussing on the moment.  Sylvia and Norman Sloper are in the same position as we are: moving house.  Norman's first wife, Pat, was my colleague at Survey School.  She died tragically in a car accident.  Sylvia's husband, Gus, died several years ago and now it is wonderful to see how Norman and Sylvia have found happiness together.  Our children have known these couples for many years and it was a special treat for them to meet up with both couples.

ltr: Mary, Sylvia, Norman, Allan, Ray, Bart, Foster and Frances

 I end this blog with the Metro For Sale sign in our drive.  The start of ending forty years of living in our 'brown' house with its glorious views and more than fifty years in this wonderful suburb.  Howie, the photographer, came on Tuesday afternoon and I saw myself as a 'snow plough', removing unnecessary items before the photos for the internet were taken.  But, he made a beautiful job of those photos as he managed to get my 'certain hill' (a previous blog) in many of them.

DIFFERENT BALANCES

 It's an unsettling time, clearing and sorting Miriam's bedroom, her Scotch Chest, her large cupboard which holds photo albums as well as boxes with old photos.  And then there are the coats we have gathered over so many years.  Some quite worn, but oh so comfortable.  I ask myself, how many coats does an old woman need?

 No delicate branch acrobatics for me either while I'm trying to balance my time, appointments, working on Tipping the Balance, a novel for young adults.  It's good to be back 'inside' that historical novel again. 

During day time the kereru is busy in the tree outside my study.  It's wonderful to see the huge bird, trying to balance itself on fragile branches.  The flowers aren't out yet and I hope our neighbour won't cut down this safe haven for birds.
How I love watching this gorgeous creature with its proud chest and delicate colouring.

Kereru

 At night I look out of my window and see the new moon.  It moves so fast within my dark window, 'sailing' from the upper right hand corner to the middle left.  It inspired me to write this simple poem.

Closer to the moon

The new moon hangs outside my window.
A bleached pumpkin,
peeled, cut, sliced,
processed into soup or stew,
added to an avocado salad.

Do astronauts think of white pumpkin soup
while occupying orbits?

Do they think of wives in kitchens on earth,
taking kids to school,
putting pumpkin pie in lunch boxes?

I wonder whether thoughts of fear and failure still circle them
while being closer to the moon?
Are there racing thoughts of urgent bills to be paid,
of fragile relationships that need mending?

Perhaps they too dream of pumpkins growing
while staying on the ground.

HH 2013

BIRDS AND BEES

 This morning's front page of the Otago Daily Times (our local paper) shows a fantastic photo taken in the Dunedin Botanic Garden of a kowhai tree in flower with a kereru digging into the goodness of the flowers of this beautiful tree. There are also two smaller photos of a tui and a bumblebee enjoying the flowery nibbles on a mild July day.  Mild?  Middle of winter?  Daffodils in a white vase inside, windows wide open, bell birds singing outside while they, together with tui and wax eyes, wait for their daily dose of sugar water.  More details about our unusual weather in this afore mentioned article.

 During the past year I've posted photos of tui sipping sugar water from a large plate on our balcony, photos of kereru sitting on branches of the Vergilia trees outside my study, but unfortunately have never tried to take a photo of a bumblebee.

 The ODT photographers are very good and it's always fascinating to observe how they find special areas in our town that need our awareness.  Daring too!  When in early 2000 Miriam had her exhibition in the Moray Gallery, Stephen Jacquerie (ODT) stood on the pergola rafters to take a photo of her sitting down in our garden surrounded by dozens of her paintings. 

Back and cover pages of book about Miriam

 Tonight Bart and I went to the launch of Raymond Huber's stunning children's book Flight of the Honey Bee with amazing illustrations by Brian Lovelock.  Claire Beynon launched the book in a witty and thoughtful speech.  It was wonderful to be with our friends at this happy occasion.  The book is dedicated to Raymond's and his wife Penelope Todd's first grandchild, Spencer Bond.   What a lucky child he is.  The book has already been translated into the Danish language.  Let's hope it will be translated into many other languages as well.  This book deserves to be treasured.

THE SEASONS COME AND GO

Time to prepare

The Helleborus is out!

 We are still in the middle of winter, so far having survived a few snowstorms, high winds, heavy rainfall and, in the centre of New Zealand earthquakes with massive aftershocks.  We think of the people in Wellington and Christchurch, having to cope with these scary rumblings.

 Each year I'm excited when I see the first flower of the Christmas Rose (above).  I planted it nearly 40 years ago.  It's surrounded by several other Hellebore with purple and lilac colours, and taller stems but I just adore this little one.   Here in Dunedin we've had beautiful spring days, temperatures up to 15 degrees C.  and Bart has been in the garden, clearing and tidying as he goes.

 Clearing and tidying is going to be our main task for the next few months as we are now preparing for our big move early next year to the Summerset Bishopscourt Retirement Village in another part of town.  I don't really want to think yet of leaving our very special suburb of Opoho after having lived here for 53 years but we cannot afford to stay here any longer.  In the meantime our focus will be to concentrate on clearing this house with its five bedrooms and keep enough furniture and 'chattels' to fit a small apartment with two bedrooms.   So, after having emptied cupboards and wardrobes we already have left various bags at the Red Cross and other second hand outfits.  There are more to follow.

  Then came a small challenge.  The photo I'm inserting below shows a clean version of a carboy.  You should have seen it before Bart put the hose in it.  When we moved into this house in 1974 I filled this carboy with soil, charcoal (to keep the soil moist) and pebbles in which I planted begonias and tiny ferns and other green bits and pieces.   After a few years, life's hectic pace took over and I totally ignored the carboy and the plants (shame, woman, shame!).  Gradually the plants withered and all that was left was a dark mass at the bottom.  But we cleaned the glass jar with sand soap and garden hose and hey presto: here it is.

Clean Carboy

 When we shifted from the front house which we bought in 1966 to this newly-built house I thought of the John Lennon song 'Imagine'.  And as we carried our few possessions down the drive I hummed 'imagine no possessions' and thought how lucky we were to move into our new home.  Now the time has come to let go of some of those possessions, and I feel grateful that a sense of detachment is slowly taking over.  As long as I've got my family, friends, music and books I'll be all right.

 Now off to the next project: clearing another wardrobe in a room that looks out onto this glorious camellia.

Here's to a spring day in the middle of winter.