Month: June 2024

Seeing Stars

It’s Matariki and I’m seeing stars everywhere. There are gold stars on the top of the clock tower in Victoria Street. They glisten in the sunlight. I wonder who thought to add this light touch to the top of a solid Victorian monument. They go almost to the top of the decorative finial.

A tree near my house has star-shaped leaves which move in the wind as if they are twinkling like stars. The tree has spiky fruit. I noticed a tiny hanging nest high in the branches. It is smaller than a tennis ball.

At the beach, a driftwood sculpture seems to point to stars on the horizon.

I get out my Matariki book at this time of the year so that I can remember the significance of each star in the Matariki cluster. Some Māori celebrate this time of year as Puanga (Puaka in the south), watching for Puanga (Rigel) the brightest star in Orion which is visible slightly earlier than Matariki (Pleiades).

Matariki is a time of year to remember those who are no longer with us. I remember my good friend who showed me Pleiades and Orion in the clear night sky of Wānaka when we were teenagers.

Celebrating Matariki is a favourite time for me because it is special to this place – even though my book shows how it is celebrated around the world (the Subaru logo features the same cluster of stars). It is at the right time of the year for us in Aotearoa as the Earth turns towards the sun and the days get longer.

Art Takeover

The Colombo is a small shopping mall with interesting retail shops and cafes. There are several empty spaces which have been taken over as a series of galleries by artist Philip Trusttum. Each gallery has a title, such as ‘Urban Kinesis’ and ‘Manufactured Whimsy’.

The art works are for sale. There were price lists inside each gallery. Eye-watering prices – and some works had sold.

I browsed in several shops, especially my favourite, Nordic Chill, and also Trade Aid which is open until October when it, sadly, goes online only. The Trade Aid chocolate maker is also closing, so I bought some of their dark raspberry chocolate while I still can. Perhaps the empty spaces taken over for art are a sign of the struggling small business retailer, like Trade Aid. I’m doing my best to make sure Nordic Chill doesn’t go under. I love their Icelandic socks.

At the end of the mall I was startled to find the sparkly, opulent, colourful shop of Annah Stretton, a NZ fashion designer. This is art, too. I hovered on the threshold but did not go in. Later, I discovered her strapline is: Any woman, any time. So much for that!

All in pieces

I haven’t been inspired to do a jigsaw this winter – until now. The last one I did was in the winter of 2021. Then, a couple of weeks ago I came across a 1000 piece puzzle featuring the characters and places in Jane Austen’s novels. Mum has recently finished reading – and re-reading – every Austen novel we had in the house, so I thought she might find it interesting too. Yesterday I made a start. Felix came to take a look.

I quite like the beginning stage, where you search out the edge pieces. The good thing about this puzzle is that you can put all the pieces into the box and lid without having to lift the lid and peer at the picture. There is a large poster of the whole scene and, on the other side an explanation of the places and people.

So you can be putting together pieces of the Bath Royal Crescent, or Pemberley, or Lyme Regis or Jane Austen’s own home at Chawton and re-acquainting yourself with the inhabitants and their stories at the same time.

Today I’m continuing to pick out edge pieces while catching up on radio programmes I have missed, such as an interview about the importance of routines and rituals. Doing a jigsaw could fit into those categories. I’m not working at it obsessively, however. I don’t see it as a race but a slow process with time for thought.

Time to stop now and continue reading the Veronica Heley series a friend recommended in her blog. I’m onto the third book (thank goodness for library ebooks) having finished the second at 1.30am this morning! That sounds a little obsessive to me, but who cares? I’m hooked.

Rainy Sunday

It was too wet to walk on the beach today. Instead, we walked from my friend’s house, through gentle rain, to the library and then to Belle cafe on the corner of New Regent Street. We sat in the window at a huge round table with a tree in the middle so, although two other groups were sitting at the same table, you were private. There were interesting things to look at, including a chair suspended upside down with a violin.

We each had a huge scone; mine was blueberry and lemon, so our table number, 88, was most fitting (think Bingo calls) – although, of course, I can only speak for myself.

A Grandma Day Out

Our niece/grand-daughter Sam organised us to go to Akaroa today. This was a great thing to do at Winter Solstice, a moody time of year with dramatic clouds, hazy light over Lake Ellesmere, patches of sunlight on the hills, and a rainbow. Then there’s the breath-taking view over Akaroa (long harbour) from the summit before the road winds back down to sea level.

We stopped at the Little River Gallery which Sam and I explored. It was great to see the work of Robin Slow again, which I’d seen at CoCA recently in the pop-up museum exhibition Ngā Hau Ngākau.

We arrived in Akaroa in time for lunch. A whitebait omelette for Mum, seafood chowder for me and vegetarian quesadilla for Sam.

Afterwards, we took a look at The Giant’s House, but Mum would never manage to climb the steps. Instead, we headed for the museum. Mum decided to stay in the car (really??) – even though we found a park right outside. Oh well, maybe if I get to Mum’s age I’ll be reluctant to go into the past yet again – or perhaps I’ll worry that I’ll be mistaken for an exhibit! Sam and I enjoyed the extensive collections including the oldest cottage in Akaroa on one side of the museum and the court house on the other.

My sister-in-law recommended The Cake Room. Again, Mum declined to join us (sigh!) even though we got a park directly opposite (see photo below – that’s our red car) so Sam and I took a quick look and bought some cakes to take away. There was a bookshop in the same restored villa – with a resident dog.

A gallery took up another part of the house, with the delightful Cake Room in another part.

Ornate cash register and delcious cakes
Teapots for sale. Sam admires some tiaras in a cabinet
Tea is served in china cups

It was time to head home. Google maps invited us to to take the scenic stock route, but we took the more direct road and enjoyed spotting all sorts of stock anyway: sheep, horses, belted galloways, goats, shetland ponies, alpacas and chooks. A great day out, thanks Sam!

Finally, the day is topped off with The Cake Room lamingtons for dessert. They are delicious, lightly dipped in raspberry syrup and finished with shredded coconut, a dab of cream and a pansy flower. Sweet!

Green tomatoes

Optimism is needed when you grow your own food. I bought a pack of six ‘Moneymaker’ tomato plants when it was really too late in the season, but my garden rotation diagram suggested tomatoes were good to plant after the beans had finished and, generally, I’m optimistic. It was the last pack in the garden centre, and the stems of the plants were bent sideways. Warning signs. However, I planted them with stakes and the plants straightened up in a few days and grew quickly.

By the end of summer, there were large trusses of fruit – all green and showing only slight signs of ripening. Since then we’ve had several frosts. I’ve been picking the tomatoes which are beginning to look yellow and putting them on the kitchen window sill. Many have ripened: good to use in casseroles and soups and in the frittata I made yesterday.

Frittata is a great way to use garden produce. This one has kale, spinach and silver beet from the garden as well as sliced (formerly green) tomatoes.

The stems of the tomato plants have turned to mush almost – as I expected the tomatoes would too – after all, it’s Winter Solstice and the shortest day tomorrow. Many tomatoes were on the ground before I rescued them today and put them on the windowsill.

These tomatoes remain after I picked up the ones on the ground.

Intermittently, over the next hour or so, we began to hear little thuds. Some of the tomatoes were rolling off the windowsill onto the bench, into the sink and one made it as far as the floor. And they’re not the variety called ‘Tumbling Tom’!

Nola’s nursing days

I took a picture of this painting in the From Here on the Ground exhibition at the art gallery this morning. It shows the Nurses’ Home where Mum lived while training in the early 1950s. She remembers the beauty of the building with its terrazzo floors and elegant arches. More recently, we would admire it when we visited the heritage rose garden which was planted in 1950 in the foreground of this painting. Mum is sad the Nurses’ Home was demolished to make way for the hospital extension. However, she enjoyed very good care in the new part of the hospital after breaking her hip.

Sunlight aka The Nurses’ Home, Hagley Park 1938. Artist: Cecil Kelly

The Nurses’ Home was built in 1931 in Spanish Mission-style. Mum doesn’t remember connecting it with the buildings in Santa Barbara where she visited family in the early 2000s. She has these souvenirs.

Spanish Mission buildings in Santa Barbara are distinctive to the place, as are the ‘painted ladies’ to San Francisco.

Here’s part of Mum’s year group of trainee nurses. They wore pink uniforms to indicate they were in their first year. Can you spot Nola?

Nola: third from the right in the second row with Adrienne on her right and Eleanor on her left.

Today, Mum has taken up knitting again after many years. We found some bags of wool in the back of the wardrobe and a roll-up knitting-needle holder, and here she is casting on the first row on very small needles, following a pattern in a book I found in the library for her.

Feijoa and apple crumble

Today, I was concerned that the feijoas I had picked up from under the young feijoa tree were going to be wasted. I needed (yes, really) to make a dessert, and was planning an apple crumble when it occurred to me that the feijoas might go well with it. I googled, and before I could put even a single letter, or even a space, after ‘feijoa’ up popped a feijoa and apple crumble recipe. Can it read my mind? I wondered (one of those spooky internet moments). I guess there are simply thousands of people all over the country looking for easy ways to use their feijoas which are abundant at this time of the year. I used the first one in the list, but there were hundreds of them. I had a cup less of feijoa pulp than the recipe required, but it is delicious anyway.