Growing An Angel In Your Garden

Hello there!

Well we've reached the chilly bit of our winter now. You know, when there's frosts & snow (well a day of it) & all the leaves have finally fallen off the trees and even I wear a hat & a scarf & a jacket to garden. I think that the Chinese have a good point about keeping your "wind points" covered. Scarves are a very good idea to protect your neck from rogue winds.

But it's also the time when we all start to go on about how we can't wait for the spring bulbs..but hold on, half the bulbs are flowering very nicely already.

My friend Ruth grows wonderful narcissus...many of them of the jonquil variety. Here are just a few, in all their lovely glory.

I thought I must show you our snow (since it's quite an event), up on Te Mata Peak just last week.

Wind chill factor kicked in making the temperature -6 degrees C about this point; brother's know these things!

One recent morning I happened to be in the kitchen looking out the window when I heard a great commotion & immediately thought that Whistle had finally captured Elijah, our visiting racing pigeon friend. Here he is, just yesterday...

He's still wandering around the neighbourhood visiting where-ever he pleases. We often spot him meandering along the footpath. But, no it wasn't Elijah at all. It was a Kereru, a native wood pigeon. I shouted quietly for Rob to come quickly, as this wonderful bird had landed in our olive tree right outside the kitchen window. The Kereru then dropped down on to a buxus bush below & promptly squashed it!

We've never seen a one in town or in our garden in all the 26 years we've been here, until now.

A little nibble of an old wrinkled fig,

a quick drink from the bird bath. Lucky he didn't tip it right over!

And then a wee rest up in the frangipani tree before departing.

 I am so grateful that I live in a place where I can be a Garden Fairy the whole year through. I love sharing my plants & seeds & cuttings & sometimes a little knowledge with others through Trade Me. Sweet violets are one of the most sort after of my listings. I love the little stories & memories that people tell me about violets; usually from their childhood & their favourite aunty or grandmother. The fragrance evokes the memory of connection in a heartbeat.

I received an email enquiry form a customer (oooh, I have customers!) a while back asking me for a little assistance as she had searched the internet for tips on growing the seeds that she had bought from me, but hadn't been able to find a thing. She'd been searching for a plant called "An angel in the garden". So funny & utterly delightful! On my seed packets I write the name of the seed & then where it says origin I write "An angel in the garden".
It's quite amazing when you keep your eyes open, what you find in the garden that does actually flower through the winter.

We both love cyclamen.

Every week I bring home bunches of rainbow chard from Gay & Robert, the organic growers at the Farmers' Market.

It doesn't grow like this in the summer! Such stunning colours full of goodness.

Finding a good movie to watch is such a treat. We loved "What We Did On Our Holiday" so very much. "We're all ridiculous, really", says Billie Connelly, as the grandfather. I agree!

In late autumn I harvested ginkgo leaves just as they were turning to yellow. Only trouble was...I popped in to a funny little park down the road where I knew there was a good big tree & as I jumped up & pulled down a branch to gather the leaves there was a loud crack & a large branch broke right off & nearly conked me on the head. Oh dear, what to do. I couldn't very well just leave it there, so I grabbed it back to my car & stuffed it in the back seat & drove it home to deal with it there. It took me weeks to get rid of all the leaves that fell off in the process & dispersed all through my car. However..I now have an almost mature ginkgo tincture that I plan on taking to see if it might improve my menopausal brain function. Now wouldn't that be something to look forward to!

I friend posted this wonderful turmeric milk recipe on Facebook a day or two ago. It is so delicious & really nourishing & warming. I popped the recipe in the kitchen blog just here.

As an angel in the garden I have even taken up the role of cupid...what fun. I had a random enquiry for assistance from one romeo looking for purple peonies for his sweetheart. It turned out that I could help with purple flowers (as they had to be live) & manage a delivery too. All just down the road from one of my gardens. There were some theatrics & a little drama but all ended in pure delight. It's worth remembering that a gathering of live plants can be much more economical than a picked bouquet. This little lot only cost $20 all up. The hyacinth was just about to come out & had 8 beautiful stems/buds. Good old Rob spotted it at Bunnings when he went to buy building bits.

"So...let's make this garden this year more lovely than it's ever been." Yes please!
As to the experimental present free with every order. Perhaps it'll be a packet of An angel in the garden seeds? Wouldn't that be lovely!

I am so glad that you popped in for a visit. Thank you!! Wishing you all a week with happy bits of learning something new...it's so much fun!
Much love Catherine x0x0x0x

Stolen Gold, Oh Happy Day!

Oh there you are!

Hello!!

Thank you for coming by to see me...

and my Stolen Gold.

You know, I'm not sure that I have ever bought a bottle of rum before in my entire life but I decided this week that I really, really needed some; to make my own vanilla essence with. Do you have any idea how easy it is to make vanilla essence!? All you need is vanilla pods, alcohol (vodka or rum) & a jar. You can make a little or a lot..either way it tastes amazing & lasts forever.

 Simply soak your beans in liquor for a few months & viola: magic! I will retrieve my beans quite soon & cut them open & pop them back in again to steep some more. I use a lot of vanilla in things like our instant banana ice-cream & baking so it's really worth while making my own. The last few batches have been small & made with gifted vodka. I feel sure that this brew will taste like Stolen Gold...wonderful! 

 I am also brewing some violet kefir water. Kefir water is probiotic, delicious & so easy to make. My kefir grains decided to make their own "mother" which was good of them. I have added violet flowers & honey this week. It tastes like spring!

 I couldn't resist buying the other kind of dragon fruit just to see the inside mostly. Aren't they intriguing? Not sure I'll ever grow one in my garden, however, they are just a really big cactus kind of plant.

I loved the view out my sewing room window this week.

Occasionally we had a little sunshine.

 And then Happy Day, my Katie & Daisy calendar arrived from the Book Depository. They are wonderful The Book Depository, they'll send anywhere in the world for free.

 I love the words on each page...

 And it's true I have seen wonders...
The man who never reads, or only very slowly & sometimes, has turned in to a Book Thief!
There, he just said it again: "Let's go to bed & read eh?"

Have you read the Book Thief?

We thought we might watch the movie quite soon.

I often buy books because I like the title &/or the cover.
I bought this from Connections a few months ago "Good to a Fault". Such an intriguing & original story it stayed with me for a very long time after I finished it. Sorry, borrowed this bit from Good Reads:
 "Clara Purdy is at a crossroads. At forty-three, she is divorced, living in her late parents' house, and near-ing her twentieth year as a claims adjuster at a local insurance firm. Driving to the bank during her lunch hour, she crashes into a sharp left turn, taking the Gage family in the other car with her. When bruises on the mother, Lorraine, prove to be late-stage cancer, Clara decides to do the right thing. She moves Lorraine's three children and their terrible grandmother into her own house—and then has to cope with the consequences of practical goodness: exhaustion, fury, hilarity, and unexpected love. 

What, exactly, does it mean to be good? What do we owe each other in this life, and what do we deserve? Good to a Fault is an ultimately joyful book that digs deep, with leavening humor, into questions of morality, class, and social responsibility. Marina Endicott looks at life and death through the compassionate, humane lens of a born novelist: being good, being at fault, and finding some balance in between." 

 I also found this lovely book for a dollar. Actually, I just liked the feel of it; it's colours & beautiful texture, but I'm really enjoying it beyond first appearances. I will share with you a little of this soon. 

I have been meaning to tell you about Alice for a very long time. Alice Hertz-Sommer is the most powerfully inspiring woman I have ever "met". She only recently passed away aged 109. I read her biography "A Garden of Eden in Hell" quite a few years ago. I found it in the library. She & her son were Holocaust survivors. As a pianist she could play Chopin from memory & gave many glorious concerts in the camp; a rare & sustaining nourishment & escape for those who lived with her, entrapped. In later years her son went on to become a world renowned cellist. Music was to sustain & saturate & bless their lives & all those who heard them play, so profoundly through all the years.

Interestingly Alice was a twin. She & her sister Mariana were born in Prague in 1903. Polarised at birth, Alice was born an optimist & Mariana a pessimist. Alice has her arm around her sister. Mariana died at the age of 75, as I recall & Alice lived to 109 in full positive strength.

This is my favourite picture (it was in the back of the library book) of Alice with Raphael in the background.

 She, along with her son, survived the Nazi concentration camp Theresienstadt.

Alice's life long passion for learning was given to her by her mother:

"Alice’s mother had a love of learning and instilled in her children a desire to hungrily pursue knowledge, “to learn, to learn, to learn, to know, to know” Alice remembers. All through her life, it is the strength of Sommers’ mind that sustained her. She believes in putting something in your mind everyday that no one can take from you. Up to the age of 104, Alice would make the trek three times per week to a nearby university to study history, and philosophy. Even now, every Saturday, she keeps her intellectual brain limber by playing Scrabble with a friend."

"When asked the secret to her long life, Alice responds, “in a word: optimism. I look at the good. When you are relaxed, your body is always relaxed. When you are pessimistic, your body behaves in an unnatural way. It is up to us whether we look at the good or the bad. When you are nice to others, they are nice to you. When you give, you receive.”
This info found here.

Alice's story The Lady in Number 6 is now available. Here is the trailer if you're interested:  

The Lady in Number 6 is one of the most inspirational stories ever told. 109 year old, Alice Herz-Sommer, the world's oldest pianist and oldest holocaust survivor, shares her views on how to live a long happy life. She discusses the vital importance of music, laughter and having an optimistic outlook on life. This powerfully inspirational video tells her amazing story of survival and how she managed to use her time in a Nazi concentration camp to empower herself and others with music.

 I do love the cover of this book The Language of Flowers.
 I wonder if any of you have read it?

I think that will be how I live my life...a life lived & expressed through the language of flowers. The optimism I am working on....a little every day; changing the energies & the legacy of defeat & struggle with all my strength & best grace. 

Happy Day to you, my friends.

Have a lovely week.

Thank you for your friendship & presence.

Much love Catherine x0x0x 

Love, Faith & Compost

When all the world breathes more deeply, come year's end, when the timetables & routines loose their defining grip, there is sometimes a chance to take other paths & rest the soul. On Christmas day, Rob & I walked through this valley found at the top of Tauroa road. The tall trees are draped in fragrant garments of honeysuckle, ivy, blue morning glory & banana passionfruit vines.

There are hills to the east, a brook running through the centre of the gully & wild fruit trees dotted along the road back to the car.

Christmas red & bird friendly.

Dandy puffs along the mown burms...

morning glory as if lit from within.

At home we had cups of tea with our Lucy..

and listened to The Wireless Station the the Bush radio.

Rob kindly devised a new kind of quadpod so as to record the event.

A day or too later we had a delightful visit form my bestie & her mum....heading south to visit family.

In preparation for the ending of 2013 I swept out all the birch catkins that had weasled there way in every possible crack in Lucy & picked new flowers to grace the transition from one year in to another.

We celebrated together & reflected with gratitude all that we had been blessed with & got through over the past 12 months.  

I am so glad of the flowers, to have my own bit of earth & all the new changes that each season brings.

These hyacinth bean flowers are quite lovely. The pods will soon develop, flat & shiny deep purple.

And the begonias are happy here on the corner of the back porch. I don't recall planting the orange one but welcome anyway.

As I tidied up odd piles & discarded useless bits & bobs I came across a little folder with a theatre voucher still tucked in to it. Remembering that there was still some credit on the card (I was so kindly given) I looked to see what was on at The Globe Theatrette in Ahuriri. I was delighted to find that this interesting looking film/documentary was screening on Sunday afternoon. So I did something most unusual for me, I booked a seat & went to the movies on my own. 

Here is the lovely trailer:

  
Several days later I read this New Year's news item: "When Sister Loyola Galvin received a letter from the Government, she thought it must be a traffic fine. The 91-year-old nun examined her conscience, before discovering it was from the prime minister, to tell her she was becoming a member of the New Zealand Order of Merit. It is a recognition of her long career as a nurse, and latterly as a gardener at the Island Bay Home of Compassion on Wellington's south coast. "I think it's rather amusing and I'm very grateful somebody thought about it," she said. "If I'd known it meant all this publicity, I would have said no."She modestly describes herself as "a very uninteresting person".
I have known about Sister Loyola since 2008 when I first read about her in the New Zealand Gardener magazine.  I recall falling in love with her story & her garden & trying to figure out how I could make my way down to Wellington to visit her.

I found this reported on Stuff.co.nz concerning Sister Loyola being awarded Gardener of the Year:
"She's been voted New Zealand's top gardener, but Sister Loyola Galvin, 86, admits to a little help - she prays for divine intervention to ensure her plants are the best they can be.

"We're dealing with God's creations and I often ask that our efforts be successful because we're dealing with such beautiful things."

Though slight of build and at risk of being blown over in a stiff northwesterly, Sister Loyola can be found seven days a week, rain or shine, tending her vegetables behind Island Bay's Home of Compassion.

"I love it, and anything you love grows. Children that I've loved grew and I've done that all my life.

"So now I'm doing it with plants."

Sister Loyola, a former nurse, was named New Zealand Gardener's 2008 Gardener of the Year yesterday. She took up gardening in her early 70s, tending the home's four-hectare grounds. At 81, she took a permaculture course, learning the finer points of holistic and sustainable gardening."

And then this article that I recall reading at the time. imagine being blown down the bank!
"At age 81, Sister Loyola Galvin was blown down a bank by a gust of wind while tending her vegetable gardens at Our Lady’s Home of Compassion in Wellington’s Island Bay. The sprightly sister wasn’t going to let a double pelvis fracture and ruptured right-arm tendon stand in the way of her ministry to the four-hectare grounds, however.
Now 88, the former nurse ignored the doctor’s warning to take it easy while recovering. “I may be over 80, but I’m pretty fit”, notes Loyola, a Sister of Compassion for over 60 years who calls everyone “dear”.
Forget walking, just get gardening, she told herself at the time of her injury, and promptly commandeered an old wheelchair and fitted it with a battery. At first she could only motor around on flat areas, but soon she was careening up hillocks in order to tend every corner of her domain. “It was a question of getting past the pain barrier,” she says matter-of-factly. In five months, Loyola was back to full mobility and full gardening duties.
Since “retiring” 15 years ago, Loyola has gradually transformed the home’s grounds into a green oasis. While her fellow sisters enjoy the sight and smells of their favourite blooms, Loyola’s speciality is vegies: broccoli, beans, cabbages, cauliflowers, carrots, celery, potatoes, lettuces. “Everything you can grow for a salad”, and most other vegetables you could think of, feed the 20-or-so nuns and their guests – such as midwives, who use the rooms for conferences.
Any extras go to the Suzanne Aubert Compassion Centre’s soup kitchen. Run by the nuns in the city centre since 1907, it serves up a hot meal each evening to 60-100 people. Recently, when past-their-prime potatoes were donated to the soup kitchen, Loyola chopped up the tired vegetables for compost and replaced them with spuds fresh from the ground.
Once she’s finished her daily prayers, Loyola is usually out in the garden from first light until dusk, seven days a week. Gardening according to permaculture’s holistic, sustainable philosophy, Loyola never uses chemical pesticides or fertiliser, and recycles materials wherever possible to spare both the planet and her meagre budget. Stacked bottles and tyre “fences” are windbreaks; cardboard is a base for raised beds; and plastic milk bottles (with bottoms cut off) shield small seedlings. Five colossal compost bins are perpetually refilled with everything from seaweed gathered from the nearby beach to horse manure scooped up from neighbouring stables, then covered with an old carpet and left to “cook” for four to five months. “It’s layered like a club sandwich,” says a proud Loyola, who’s happy to pass on the recipe to anyone who asks.
What Loyola relishes about gardening is the creativity it unleashes – and the palpable sense of life’s endless cycle. It also helps keep her strong. “I’ve met a lot of people gardening in their 80s and they’re fit, healthy and enjoying life.”
Six years ago, at Loyola’s request, the Home of Compassion employed an intellectually and physically handicapped man in the garden full-time. “When you’re 40-something and you’ve always been considered unemployable, that’s tough,” she says. “I’ve always tried to encourage people to do what they can do, rather than worrying about what they can’t.”
The unassuming sister got a shock – and some welcome garden-store vouchers – when she won the 2008 NZ Gardener of the Year title from a pool of regional winners. The award recognised her efforts, including her encouragement of other green fingers in the community.
While taking a permaculture course in the early 1980s, for example, Loyola met a teenager who, like his friends, didn’t have a backyard, but wanted to grow vegetables. She subsequently ran an idea past her fellow sisters of the order: should they let the teenagers use a corner of the grounds? The response was yes.
Begun in 2005, before community gardens went from a rarity to a regular fixture in New Zealand, the Common Ground scheme still thrives today. Thirty land-hungry Wellingtonians tend small individual plots and a large communal space, working collectively according to a permaculture ethos. They now have their own toolshed, fruit trees, herb garden and composting system.
Paying her $10 membership levy along with everyone else, Loyola often climbs the hill to see how the other members are going, offering a quiet word of advice when needed.
“Sister Loyola is an inspiration, not just in gardening but in life,” says member Kate Smith, 47."

Credit for the above excerpt with many thanks: New Zealand Readers Digest: Sister Act 

About now seemed like a good time to find a suitable "Goodness Jar".
 I began on the 1/1 writing on little bits of paper: all the good things, the happy memories & moments, the funny things & stuff I am really grateful for. It'll be a wonderful cascade of goodness to tip out again just under a year from now as we complete 2014. 

Well goodness...I am SO grateful for you. I think that I'll pop that on my little scrap of paper & in to the jar it goes!
I've been thinking quite a bit these last few days about the metaphor of compost making & how it could be applied to life. I'll get back to you on that one!
I wish for us all an engaging, thrilling, creative, flowery, loving & satisfyingly memorable year.
I look forward to journeying with you my friends.
Every blessing  & much love Catherine

♥♥♥♥♥