The garden that keeps on giving

Just when I thought the sweet peas were about finished, more have appeared. Oh, joy! The scarlet runner beans which reappear each year, are flowering and tiny beans are forming. I’d already picked all the blackcurrants – I thought – but there are more! The gaura, ‘ballerina rose’ which I feared had succumbed to frost, is flowering.

The parsley has mostly gone to seed. I have parsley trees! But they look rather lovely with shasta daisies pushing up through the green canopy of parsley flowers. Tomatoes are ripening. Even though the bay tree seems to have died, it has shoots growing at its base, and its leaves have turned a lovely copper colour. The ‘sexy rexy’ rose, which I moved from the garden to a large pot a few years ago, is flowering brilliantly this year, underplanted with self-sown violas.

From my window, as I write, I can see the climbing rose ‘Cecile Brunner’ which I cut back with hedge shears after its first flowering, beginning a second flowering. I have also spotted the white-and-tortoiseshell cat, a frequent visitor, curled up on a cut-and-drop pile under the camellia. And it looks as if the hoped-for rain is beginning to fall.

You had to be there

This photo is disappointing. The beach this morning was much more vibrant in real life. The ships on the horizon seemed closer. The sea was sparkling and dynamic as the tide came in. And, of course, the photo can’t record the sound of the waves or salt-sea smell. While the scene looks calm, there are clues to the vigorous movement of sand and sea. What looks like an edging to the path was once a handrail and most of the timber slats which mark the path are under the shifting sand.

I often notice that photos aren’t what I expect. The eye seems to have a way of zooming in on aspects of a scene, which a photo does not pick up. A former colleague told me he never takes photos when he’s travelling. I think he meant it stopped him from being observant. Probably we cut ourselves off from truly experiencing the place or moment and some part of our brain dies off from lack of use when we rely on a camera to record our lives.

Picture this

There was a book due back to the library today and another to pick up by today so, after putting the washing on the line, I walked into town. By the time I was walking home again, I decided what I’d experienced was a sensory walk of sights, sounds, and smells…

No photos were taken, but I can picture it all (well, most of it).

What I saw: A long, twisting branch on a weeping elm. A row of people sitting cross-legged on a long bench with their hands in prayer position and eyes closed. The tempting covers of books on the Recent Returns shelves. Posters of a white dove with olive branch on the synagogue gate. A white waxy flower yet to open on a magnolia tree. White clouds against the blue sky.

What I heard: It was comparatively quiet with less traffic so the sound of the walk buzzer seemed extra loud. The rumble and clack of the Invercargill tram. Water splashing in a fountain. People saying hello in passing.

What I smelt: A dark, rich odour from the organics rubbish truck. The hot tar on the pavement. The cool fresh scent of a shading tree.

What I felt: The sudden coolness under a huge leafy tree. The weight of my backpack. The hot sun making my skin prickle with sweat.

What I tasted: Cool clean water from a drinking fountain.

Most of all, I thought about the huge trees which gave me shade. Under them I sensed unappreciated power in their change of atmosphere.

Gooseberry Buckle

When the broad beans from the garden finished, I was able to fill the gap with frozen broad beans from the supermarket. When a gooseberry crop didn’t eventuate, I thought a Farmers’ Market would be the only possible source, so I was delighted to find punnets of fresh gooseberries at the supermarket in the weekend. A search for recipes led to another buckle cake (three layers of cake, fruit and crumble, as in the Blackcurrant Buckle I made several days ago). I supplemented the purchased gooseberries with a few strawberries and blueberries to make up the weight stipulated in the recipe and the combination was perfect.

Macerated berries on top of the cake layer
Out of the oven…
…onto our plates

The cake layer is light – an almond sponge, rather than the heavier chocolate base of the Blackcurrant Buckle. The crumble topping includes rolled oats and flaked almonds.

Thank you, bbcgoodfood.com

Donner und Blitzen!

I put down the cutlery nervously and we checked our shoes had rubber soles during a thunderstorm at about dinner time on Saturday. A bolt of lightning shot down right outside the window and the television went off for several seconds. (I checked the weatherboards on Sunday morning and was pleased to find no evidence of singeing.)

I’d been planning to check the letterbox, but the metal latch on the gate made me think twice. I could imagine the voices of people in the past who had been struck by lightning warning me: ‘Don’t do it!’ The week before I’d heard a survivor interviewed on the radio. The lightning strike had blown a hole in the sole of his favourite red band gumboots.

When the storm had passed, the sun came out even though it was still raining. The garden was vibrant with bright light.

A closer view of the red flowers on the ake ake tree

Painting the past

Having finished reading A Great Act of Love by Heather Rose (Allen & Unwin, 2025), set mainly in the 1800s, it occurs to me that its style is like that of Petrus van der Valden’s paintings of about the same time: dramatic, thickly layered and full of pathos. The extracts of poems, most notably Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, add to this impression.

There are domestic scenes
There are voyages
There are foreign ports
There is wild nature

The ‘big picture’ of the book is how fortunes can be overturned or reversed, you can end up in immense suffering, undergo incredible dangers, discover ways to survive all hardships and remain enriched in mind even in death. Sounds a bit grim, and I suppose it is, yet beneath our comfortable lives are the unknown lives of our ancestors who endured and perhaps reinvented themselves to build a life from which we have unknowingly benefited. This is what the author found when her sister uncovered stories of their ancestors stretching from the French revolution, to Scotland and London, then on to Van Diemen’s Land – now Tasmania – where the author lives. The story could hardly be less dramatic considering the trajectory it covers and just stops short of crossing the line from expressive to over-written. Imaginative and well-researched (the details could inspire you to set up your own apothecary’s shop or become a wine maker) this work of historical fiction is gripping and impressive in its breadth.

Gifts from the tree

When our Christmas tree arrived I found three ladybirds shortly afterwards and wondered if they’d come with the tree. It’s now nine days since we’ve had the tree and I’ve found three unusual ‘butterflies’. Two were fluttering against the windows yesterday morning and I let them out. There have been Monarch butterflies, lots of white butterflies, and the occasional red and yellow admiral butterfly in the garden, but the ladybirds and ‘butterflies’ were inside the house. Felix was playing with this one on the floor this morning. I thought it was dead and picked it up to photograph it for iNaturalist which identified it as a Magpie moth. I also found it in City Nature.

Source: City Nature, A Guide to the plants and animals of New Zealand cities and towns, by Bob Brockie

While I was doing all this, it revived and flew up to the window which I opened so it could fly away – whilst restraining Felix.

What else is lurking in the tree? What do they make of their altered habitat? And do they come in threes? Three wise men, perhaps?

Memory Lane

It amused me to take a detour to walk down Memory Lane as I went to meet friends for lunch today. I spotted it on the map, running between Tuam and St Asaph Streets. The lane itself was pretty nondescript, but I found a cool little bit of street art on St Asaph. Later, when we came out of the restaurant in the Salt District, there was a depiction of Johnson’s Grocers. Both of these places: the Dog House which used to be in the Square, and Johnson’s which used to be in Colombo Street, do take me back down memory lane.

Blackcurrant Buckle

Chefs must be up against it thinking of with new words for their creations. Recently I’ve come across ‘shrub’ as a drink – and now ‘buckle’ as a cake. Anyway, I have now made both using fruit from the garden. I made two shrubs in autumn: grape and cranberry – now languishing in the fridge waiting to be used in a mocktail, perhaps. A lot of effort for little result, really. The buckle, on the other hand, is rather delicious as a dessert. It consists of a chocolate cake base, blackcurrant middle and crumble topping.

I found the recipe on the internet (thank you tinandthyme.uk) and made slight alterations: I used all the blackcurrants I picked this afternoon rather than just 250g, and added crumbled weetbix to the topping.

I used to bake my blackcurrants in a shortcake using the gooseberry shortcake recipe from the Edmonds Cookbook, but it’s nice to have a change.

It would be nice to have gooseberries. Sadly, although I have four gooseberry bushes, there was just one solitary gooseberry this year. What am I doing wrong? I thought maybe they are too shaded, but there was a very productive gooseberry bush right underneath an old pine tree in a place where I lived once. Looking on the internet, I can see that lots of people have the same problem and there are lots of suggestions – some of which I’ve tried in the past. I’ve become too afraid to prune them in case I cut off the fruiting wood.