Porcelain flowers

A wide shot shows the extent of the plant from far left to far right, and up to the roof.

There’s a sweet honey scent in the garage; the hoya is flowering. Its flowers are sometimes called porcelain flowers, which seems apt as they hardly look real. There are three clusters of flowers this summer. You can see nectar dripping from the centre of each flower.

I have had the plant since the late 1970s when house plants were all the rage – as they are again now. It’s still in the same small pot and macrame hanger. Long ago, I decided to divest myself of indoor plants (but do enjoy a couple of small ones I have been given) particularly when the monstera deliciosa grew monstrous (think Little Shop of Horrors) and the spider plants looked tired. They ended up in my classroom and in the department resource room for years. I liked to think they removed pollutants from the air, but apparently, you need to have a room crammed full of plants for that to happen. I would bring them home over summer, not into the house but into the garage or sheltered spots in the garden. One, a Fatsia Japonica, didn’t make it back to school. It is now about three metres tall and about as wide, growing happily in the garden – despite at times attracting blackbirds (for the seeding flower heads), scale, aphids, whitefly, sooty mould and ants.

The hoya remains on the laundry side of the garage where it seems to be thriving beside the window, growing in and out of electrical cables and the laundry stuff. I try to remember to water it, feed it occasionally and wipe the leaves with Conqueror Oil sometimes. When it threatens to spread itself around the garage I cut it back but, undeterred, it sends out new tendrils with ambitious intent.

When life gives you plums …

Actually, it was my sister who gave me a bag of plums from her tree yesterday. She’d already put 14 bags of plums in her freezer and had more to give away. I planned to put them in a fruit sponge, but in the meantime I decided to make muffins this morning. There are still plenty left to make the sponge pudding.

The plums turned out to be a bright red inside

Notes on the recipe, should you be interested: I used less than a cup of sugar (as we do these days), and I used raw sugar. Instead of ‘margarine’ (yuck) I used rice bran oil. Plain yoghurt with a dash of vanilla added did the trick as I didn’t have vanilla yoghurt. To moisten the mixture a little I used sparkling elderflower instead of milk. I also used a cup of wholemeal flour and two of plain flour, with baking powder added (1 tsp per cup), as I don’t have self-raising flour. I have previously used this recipe to make blueberry muffins. The recipe says it makes 12 muffins; I managed 20 – perhaps my muffin tins are smaller.

Source: More Muffin Magic by Diana Linfoot

When life gives you marrows …

After a few days of rain, much appreciated by the garden, I looked under the leaves of a courgette plant and found a courgette well on the way to being a marrow. I had the perfect use for it, a favourite recipe cut from a magazine a few decades ago: Carrot and Courgette Kugel.

The most used recipe in my book of collected recipes

Outside again

This morning the rain dried up, the sun came out and I took a look at progress in the garden. First, some of the edibles:

The more it’s picked the more the rhubarb grows

Then the flower garden:

Nothing appears to have suffered from the rain and, for me, it’s a relief not to water most days. Everything looks green. Most plants look healthy. As will I, no doubt, after trying some of these recipes:

An inside day

It’s nice to have a rainy day to catch up with inside things. I caught up with the newspapers, cleaned the oven, read a book, admired the fresh green of the garden from the windows, listened to music, did some diary planning … and worrying news kept filtering in from the north about torrential rain, flooding, slips, peoples’ homes and lives in danger – and the shocking news of a large slip hitting a campground. Rescuers are still searching for the missing.

I finished Wild Dark Shore this week and it continues to haunt me, particularly as stormy weather escalates in real time – drowning out the news of bush fires in Australia. The subantarctic island setting of the novel is a microcosm of climate change across the world, haunted by the plundering of whalers, sealers and doomed expeditions of the past – read into that what you will. In fact, there is a lot of symbolism such as the lighthouse which has long since stopped sending out warnings, and the seed bank underground which is inevitably flooded. As storms increase in severity and the ocean level rises, its inhabitants scramble to rescue what they can before being evacuated and, although they are hopeful, they are prepared to face more extreme weather wherever they end up.

I saw a museum exhibition once about Aotearoa’s beginnings, with a video representation of our islands emerging from the sea. It was unnerving – time was sped up making the land seem fragile and temporary.

I like to be cosy inside in rainy weather, perhaps slightly annoyed by being inconvenienced and, despite some anxiety, so accustomed and attuned to my comforts that I can barely imagine ending up on the roof waiting for rescue.

How to be cheerful

Occasionally one or other of us can’t make our weekly beach walk. This was the case today, so I decided a change of scene was in order and headed to Sumner Beach. It was an excellent choice. I enjoyed the drive along Ferry Road which has a scattering of interesting places such as antique shops, cafes, bakeries, schools with colourful playgrounds and murals, op shops and little shopping centres – a mix of traditional, quirky, run-down and aspiring-to-be-upmarket; all with community character.

At Sumner, I managed to find a park on the Esplanade where I admired the traditional houses dotted among the new and the dungers – surfies’ hangouts with what look like unconsented additions.

There was a steady stream of cars heading to Sumner, no doubt for the weekend vibe. The beaches weren’t crowded, however, such is the extent of them, and there are loads of cafes which were busy today. After walking to the Scarborough end of the beach, I walked back to the Sumner end and had coffee at the bar/restaurant where I recall having brunch on my 50th birthday. Two fondly remembered aunts were with us.

I headed back along the beach to my car, stopping to watch a surf lifesaver attending to a young surfer. Two other surfers came along to offer assistance.

I passed two lots of parents each of whom had a 10 or 11 year old boy dragging his feet and full of complaint. It made me wonder how you counter negativity. Wouldn’t it make you happy to be on the beach? One of the boys was wearing crocs luminous against his tanned legs. Wouldn’t that cheer you up? (Jury’s out on that one.) And so young! Wouldn’t that cheer you up? Look at Mum this week, celebrating her 97th birthday and always looking on the bright side. That’s what makes her easy to live with. Imagine having complaining people whingeing around the house all day.

My brother and sister-in-law took us out for lunch on Mum’s birthday this week.

I certainly felt cheerful on the beach. It was an overcast day, but warm, and the clouds were amazing. The air was fresh. There were joggers, surfers, walkers with babies and dogs, little kids with bikes and scooters. Pairs of young women were talking earnestly together – remember doing that? Well, we still do, but the topics have changed! There was plenty to be cheerful about.

I drove with the window down heading home so I could make the most of the ozone and the seaweed smell of the estuary. Not to mention the sight of people enjoying themselves. I saw queues of people at coffee carts with seats in the shade nearby, and flags out at the yacht club where mainsails were hoisted as sailors waited for the tide.

Firsts

The peach was delicious and juicy. As I cut it open I was reminded of a favourite book from childhood which ends with the dramatic arrival of Little Peach – as in the Japanese folk tale.

Whatchamacallit

Is there a word for that lovely feeling you get when you remember a happy event? A frisson, perhaps? That’s the feeling I get when I look at the first page of this year’s calendar which hangs on the back of the kitchen door.

I got the same feeling when I walked into this garden in September. It’s the Katherine Mansfield garden, a reconstruction of the scene in her short story ‘The Garden Party’. There are now 18 enclosed, themed gardens at Hamilton Gardens. I’m looking forward to seeing the new one in November – the Medieval Garden – and to seeing the English Flower Garden which was closed for renovation (replanting?) when I was there.

Sad case of flat rat

New Year’s Resolution: close the door to the hallway firmly to keep Felix out of our bedrooms at night. Every night before bed I pull the door to so Felix can’t interrupt our sleep. Recently, he’s found he can pull the door open. This has happened when his food bowl needs filling and, last night, when he wanted to show off the rat he’d caught. I endured some hours of thumping and clawing at the carpet and bumps under my bed, then long periods of ominous silence, before Felix hopped up on my bed (minus rat, luckily) and, seeing I was not impressed, went away. But where was the rat?

A quick look under the bed revealed some things were in disarray. Shoe bags had been pulled out of the suitcase I keep under there. I gingerly extracted the suitcase (which I store open, with a smaller case inside) lifted the contents and found a poor flat rat. It must have squeezed under the smaller case which was then jumped on by Felix – repetitively, if I recall all that bumping correctly.

I’ve reduced the size of the image to reduce the shock it might cause the viewer. As I tipped the wee flat rat out onto the garden under a tree I could see its white tummy. It had emptied its bladder on a shoe bag (which I binned) and didn’t seem to be quite dead. I left it to expire in a friendlier environment, under a blanket of grape vine leaves, not being able to bring myself to finish it off. We watched Stuart Little on TV last night.

Some random two-legged rat vandalised our green bin which was out on the street for collection this morning. The lid was partly ripped off and garden waste strewn about the road.

Once the bin was emptied, I attempted a repair with Gorilla glue. Meanwhile, the suitcase has been wiped down with Dettol and is airing on the deck.

Refreshed

The last two days (the last day of the old year and the first of the new year) have brought a good amount of rain. It was nice to be mostly indoors reading and puzzling over the jigsaw I was given for Christmas (it’s hard! It will take me months! Good-oh!). The garden is refreshed; there’s evidence in the kitchen window sill full of sweetpeas – and the scent!

	Ruth on When life gives you marrows…
	anneinabsentia on How to be cheerful
	Ruth on How to be cheerful
	Ruth on Sad case of flat rat
	anneinabsentia on Sad case of flat rat

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