A talent for fixing things

The wind-ravaged greenhouse has been tidied up and secured with shade cloth, pegs and ties. However, the ridgepole was discovered to be rusted right through and crumbling.

My sister, who just has to look at a problem to come up with a solution, fixed it. She had a piece of rebar which was being used as a garden stake. She cut it to length, wire-brushed it, rust-proofed and painted it. Today she put it in place, with wedges of cork to make up the for narrower width.

Old rusty ridgepole
New ridgepole wedged in place with cork

The talent for fixing things is longstanding with my sister and her family. All the children are practical too. For example, an earlier post ‘All hands on deck’ (12/12/22) shows my nephew’s work – helped by other family members – to fix the underpinnings of the deck.

In 1993, my sister and brother-in-law (just before they were married) made the woodshed out of timber from the old porch. You can see from my last post that it is still in use thirty years later.

In an old album (pre-digital) are photos of the work underway, the careful measuring, while the photo above shows the partly constructed woodshed.

The last time I was at their place, my brother-in-law and two nephews were up on the roof solving a problem with the plumbing to the water butts. There’s always a project on the go!

After the wind

It’s nice to put some order back into my little piece of the world after the scary gales we had on Monday and into the night.

Stacked firewood
Mowed lawn – with sunbeam
Dandelions and forget-me-nots

The greenhouse plastic, already sun-damaged, has been shredded. Luckily, all the plants are okay. Mending it is a job for today.

The Groke

The Groke is a character from Tove Jansson’s Moomin books which evoke characters and landscapes of Finland. As she glides across the land, the ground freezes. She is drawn to light but lives in perpetual disappointment as her cold presence extinguishes the flames. She is an embodiment of the long Scandinavian winters.

Today there was sunshine, but a chill wind; too cold to sit out on the egg chair. There was no point in removing its cover. It sat on the deck like the Groke.

The Groke was sitting there. Her round little eyes reflected the glow, but otherwise she was just a large shapeless greyness…She went straight to the fire. And without saying a word she sat down on it. There was a sharp hissing sound, and the hilltop was wrapped in mist. When it passed away, no embers were to be seen. Only a big grey Groke blowing snow-fog about her.

Moominland Midwinter

Set for summer

Here’s Mum testing the hanging egg chair which I bought and assembled today. I opted for a smaller, fold-away model which, with a bit of a squeeze, fitted into my Suzuki Swift. It doesn’t overwhelm the deck as a larger chair would. Assembling it was not difficult. Ironically, now we don’t have chooks taking over the outdoor furniture, it is possible to have an ‘egg’ chair. Felix is giving it a wide berth, so far…

It is very comfortable, particularly with the addition of two cheerful outdoor cushions which have been languishing in a storage box in the garage all the time we’ve had chickens.

I sat in it for a while, enjoying the gentle movement, but today the temperature has dropped and I would need a woolly jumper and a knee rug to be comfortable for more than ten minutes. Otherwise, it’s the perfect reading chair for sunny mornings, and for hot afternoons in the shade.

Light and shade

There was a long list of trees and shrubs to be trimmed by the arborist today. It was such a relief to have it all done that I was practically ecstatic. It’s always difficult to decide what needs doing, particularly at this time of year when everything is sprouting and flowering and birds are building nests. I have cut the odd thing back myself now and again, but arborists know what they’re doing and can be relied on to do a great job. And they have the tools, like the little chain saw on a pole. And they can climb.

Safety first: holding the ladder steady
Thinning the beech tree

There were four arborists with, not only tools, but all the safety gear and procedures to make the whole operation go smoothly for the three hours they were here. They could thin out a tree to let light in but still allow dappled shade. One of them told me we will need shade for the coming hot summer.

The abutilon has been a concern, sprawling and almost falling over, and continuously flowering so I didn’t know when to prune it, let alone figure out how to make some sort of shape. Somehow, they managed it, and I rescued some of the flowers before they were fed into the mulcher.

What went in the mulcher
What was left of the abutilon
Rescued abutilon/Chinese lantern flowers

Felix came home some time after the arborists had left. The blackbirds were soon back too.

Energy to burn

I intended to tidy up the back lawn a bit this afternoon, but after a morning battling the wind on the beach, clambering up and down sand dunes, and dodging reckless cyclists who never ring their bells to tell you they’re behind you…I felt a bit tired. But, after lunch and reading a couple of chapters of my book, I headed into the garden.

Rather than just mowing the lawn, I somehow found the energy to re-shape the brick mowing strip, do the edges of the paving stones, and weed the path. While I sat on the deck admiring my work, the blackbirds came down to throw the newly exposed dirt about as they hunted for worms.

Although it was a warm day, I lit the fire in the evening. Elderly bones need to be warm and I like the ambience. We’re down to the big logs at the bottom of the wood pile which can make starting the fire a little tricky, so I tried the ‘upside down’ technique: big logs first, then smaller logs, kindling, and paper. The theory is that it burns down to the big logs to establish the fire. I’ve tried it unsuccessfully before, but this time it was more urgent that it worked, and it did. Cabbage tree leaves helped. It was two hours before we needed to add any more logs.

Political placard pollution

It’s that time in the election cycle when our city is littered with political billboards. Cheesy, fake grins of politicians in suits are pasted up along our city streets. It’s a mystery to me how such blatant insincerity and spin win any votes at all. Inevitably, many billboards are defaced. I saw some being removed and replaced this morning – on a site owned by a property developer.

Someone had gone to a lot of trouble on a billboard next to these. It is beside a busy road and I wonder if they worked in the dead of night, or in daylight with impunity and a Sharpie. I was reminded of Virginia Fallon’s column in The Press this week about the more creative defacing of billboards.

I feel sorry for the people living next door to this field of sprouting billboards, with their river views impeded by the visual pollution. At least they see only the backs of them.

Some parties choose a more modest sign.

The simplicity of this sign seems to fit what ‘being green’ is about – as does the backdrop.

Present and future proofing

When Mum toppled into the bath again last night in the process of toilet dismount, the family went into action. A trip to the hardware store revealed some options of which this fold-away rail proved to be ideal.

While Mum protested that she’d just be more careful, it’s better to be safe than sorry. Imagine if she was home alone and couldn’t get out of the bath, or if she hit her head on the tiles! I do Nymbl exercises a few times each week to improve my balance, but I have the odd wobble at times too, so the rail will have long-term use particularly if I am still living independently and make it to 94 like Mum.

A radio interview this morning with tech billionaire Bryan Johnson outlined his efforts to reverse his own aging. Good luck with that. I’m just grateful to have family with excellent DIY skills – and all the tools!

Felix inspects the work

Te Rā

Today, I went to see Te Rā at the Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū for the third time. This time, I had the space to myself mostly and was able to chat to the attendant who was very knowledgeable about the 200 year old Māori sail and similarly in awe of it. She said that lots of people, like me, have wondered if the sail is upside down. The small yacht I used to have had the pointy ends of its sails at the top. Having the larger part at the top would have made my yacht capsize (which it did anyway, as my mutineering brother would tell you). Sails of the kind we are more accustomed to are shown in this John Gibb painting of Lyttelton Harbour in 1886 (site of said mutiny nearly 100 years later) which is in a nearby exhibition space.

The attendant and I agreed that Te Rā would have been on a double-hulled vessel and perhaps the vessel would have been heavily loaded for stability. A model in the nearby exhibition demonstrates a similar sail: broad end at the top, pointed end down. It is of an Hawaiian wa’a kaulua, a working model, used ‘as a teaching aide for techniques in deep sea voyaging’. It was ‘collected by [a] naval officer…in 1791 during a provisions stopover’.

This makes me wonder how Te Rā was ‘collected’ around the same time. Was it plunder? It seems unlikely that such a valuable item made with painstaking skill would be willingly sold. This close-up shows the zigzag pattern which eased the force of the wind against the sail. The horizontal creases show where the sail was folded for storage in the museum.

A book about Te Rā, which I bought last time I visited, shows two sails. Were there two on one vessel? This beautiful illustrated book tells Te Rā’s story in verse in the first person, personifying Te Rā in traditional totemic narrative as an ancestor.

There is, apparently, no record of how Te Rā was acquired by the British Museum. The sail has been studied in detail by expert Maori weavers who travelled to London and a replica was made (it is currently in Whangārei according to my research) which will be displayed with the original when the exhibition moves to Auckland in November, the attendant told me.

It is very hard to think of this beautiful taonga returning to storage in the British Museum, so far from home.