Rural life

Saturday Stories: Gardener’s Ballad

/ Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment

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I couldn’t resist a story in verse this week…

A gardener’s life is full of shit
And compost is the best of it.
Now hear a tale of a gardener who
Rose to fame on a pile of poo.

T’was springtime when, as all do know
Young green things are apt to grow.
And Sally, your young gardener fair
Prepared the soil with skill and care.

She turned it with her spading fork.
And pulled the weeds, such heavy work.
Then went she to the compost pile.
Which had been rotting for a while.

Cow pies, weeds and chicken poo,
Mouldy hay she’d added, too.
It made a rick and crumbly mix.
The deficiencies of her soil to fix.

Into the soil her compost went.
She mixed, raked it, then she bent
And lovingly she planted seed
‘Atlantic Giant’, yes indeed.

For this year, she would beat them all
Win biggest pumpkin in the fall.
All summer she did weed and water
As though the pumpkin were her daughter.

The pumpkin grew, and grew, and grew.
Drawing nutrients from the poo.
And Sally grinned as the contest neared.
She thought of past competitors who jeered.

But this year, she would have last laugh.
She had the biggest pumpkin by half.
Fifteen hundred pounds it weighed.
A large blue ribbon on it laid.

Sally was famous, her gardening lauded.
And all the spectators loudly applauded.
And when she was asked, just what did she do,
She calmly replied, “I just fed it some poo!”

Ode to a Seed

/ Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment

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Oh, little seed
Barely a speck.
Germ and cotyledon armoured
In seed coat.
You hold such potential–
A pea, a bean, a sprawling melon
Waits inside your humble shell.
Such modest desires you possess–
Soil, sun, water, warmth.
It is my pleasure to provide for you
Knowing you, someday, will provide for me–
Succulent tomatoes, crisp lettuce, spicy radishes.
I can taste your future.

Grow, little seed.
You are my sun, my life, my lunch.
You are spring itself.

Sedgemere Haiku–Spring

/ Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment

In honour of National Poetry Day this Friday, the remainder of my posts this week will be in verse.

2016-04-18 14.50.46 cropFog billows in wet.
Frosting hair, spider webs, grass
With silver gilding.

_______

Magpie warbles loud
In early morning darkness,
Waking up the sun.

_______

Bees hum in purple
Lavender blooms, blue pollen
Dusting hairy backs.

_______

Seedlings defy frost,
Growing tall in warm sunshine,
Sheltered under glass.

_______

Sparrows descend to
Old sheds, bringing straw, grass, noise
Leaving poo, feathers.

_______

Ploughs plough, seagulls wheel
Overhead seeking
The freshly turned worm.

Competition Ploughing

/ Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment

2016-08-20 11.18.35 smThis past weekend was the annual Ellesmere Vintage Club’s Ploughing Match. Our neighbour hosts the event, so we walked down there on Saturday morning to watch the action.

It was slow-motion action. No big thrills or adrenalin. Just the rumble of diesel engines and the smell of freshly turned soil. It was clear the point was a perfectly-turned patch of ground, not speed. There was a lot of starting and stopping, and adjusting of freshly-painted ploughs.

2016-08-20 11.22.21 smA pair of horses joined the 1940s and ’50s era tractors. Watching them work, it’s clear why tractors have taken over on the farm—there was significantly more fiddling to be done by the horse team in order to perfect their rows.

The demographics of the crowd were predictable. Before we arrived, I commented to my daughter that we might be the only women there. Her response was that she would likely be the youngest person there…by about 70 years.

2016-08-20 11.32.18 cropWhile the majority of competitors were as vintage as their tractors, there were a few younger ones. Two or three other children were there, too, though they were sitting in a car playing on an iPad. And there was a small contingent of women. A few wives watched from the sidelines, and a woman drove the horse team.

It was a true small-town event—25 competitors, and perhaps 40 people in total at the event when we were there. Participants were shuttled to the local hall for lunch on two long benches, set back-to-back atop a flatbed trailer.

2016-08-20 11.33.12 smLater, as the event broke up and tractors motored past the house, we laughed—it was hard to tell which vehicles were en route from the competition, and which ones were simply on their way from paddock to paddock. Many of these vintage tractors still get regular use on the farm.

Of course, I have to wonder what will happen as the vintage tractor enthusiasts and their machines age further. Will younger farmers grow nostalgic about tractors from the 60s and 70s as they age? If not, we’ll see a lot fewer than 25 contestants at vintage ploughing matches in future years.

Well, you don’t see that every day…

/ Robinne Weiss / 3 Comments

2016-08-19 17.44.37I couldn’t possibly post a story for Saturday Stories today—there were just too many interesting things to blog about…

The neighbours are always busy moving sheep around at this time of year—there’s shearing, lambing, tailing…sheep being shifted from paddock to paddock for all sorts of reasons. Nearly every day a mob or two pass the front gate.

Even if I don’t see them pass, I can always tell when sheep have been by, because the road is sprinkled with sheep pellets afterwards.

But yesterday, a sheep left a bit more than poo at our gate.

You know you live in rural New Zealand when…

Special prize to you if you know what this is. I’ll give you the answer tomorrow.

 

List It

/ Robinne Weiss / 1 Comment
See no evil--list it instead.

See no evil–list it instead.

It’s about this time of year when I look around and see how shabby the garden looks. Through the depths of winter, I didn’t notice. I wasn’t outside enough. The days were short. I didn’t want to work outdoors.

But even if the lengthening days and singing magpies weren’t enough to tell me, the calendar is screaming that it’s just two weeks to spring.

So I’m paying more attention to the yard and garden. I’m taking a second glance at what I thought was my herbs beginning to resprout…and finding that the green I saw was actually a giant, aggressively spreading vetch. I’m walking through the vegetable garden to assess what needs to be done…and finding that though the chickens did a lovely job on some weeds, they didn’t touch the most difficult ones. I’m checking the bird netting over the strawberries, and finding hole after hole that needs repairing. I’m inspecting irrigation pipes, and finding ice-cracked valves. I’m walking the rows of currants and raspberries, and finding enough thistles to make me want to cry.

In short, I’m finding so many things to do, I begin to think I can’t possibly do them all.

And so, to maintain my sanity, I make lists.

A list of things to do this weekend.

A list of things to do in the evenings during the week.

A list of things to purchase in town.

A list of things to do next weekend.

A list of things to do the weekend after that.

A list of things that need to go on a list…

By mid-September, I’ll have every weekend through late-November planned in detail—exactly what needs to be done in order to have everything under control and planted out at the right time.

It sounds crazy, but it keeps me sane. Once a task is on a list, I can ignore it. I can walk past that aggressive vetch plant every day, knowing that if I just keep to my lists, I will eventually get to it. I can be completely blind to the holes in the bird netting, because I know that fixing it is on the list the week before the strawberries should start to ripen.

Without my lists, I’d be overwhelmed by the mountain of tasks to get done between now and December.

But the lists aren’t just good for making me get my work done. They also help me get my play in, too. Fun stuff goes on the lists, too. A weekend tramping trip, a day at the beach—I can schedule these things in alongside my work, and then actually enjoy them, because I know I’ve got time to do them. It says so, right on my lists.

 

My life in gumboots

/ Robinne Weiss / 2 Comments

2016-08-16 12.32.47My daughter and I wear the same size gumboot, but there’s never any problem telling them apart.

That’s because gumboots tell the story of their wearer’s activities.

Mine tell many tales.

A smear of paint—Sicily White—tells of a hot summer day scraping and painting the house. A job that had to be called off, because the paint was drying so fast, I couldn’t spread it.

Another glob—brick red—tells of another summer day fixing and painting the roof, balancing paint bucket and feet on the peak, and looking out over the hedges to the lake and sea beyond.

Lavender speckles recount an afternoon drenching goats, when a syringe of purple medicine burst open and splattered everywhere.

Bits of hay relate frosty mornings feeding the animals in the dark, by moonlight and starlight.

Smears of mud describe weeding and planting in the vegetable garden.

Clumps of goat poo tell of afternoons in the paddock, hand-feeding grain to eager goats who push and shove to get more than the others.

The tales are fleeting—even the most enduring splatters fade in time, replaced by the next instalment of my life in gumboots.

Frozen

/ Robinne Weiss / 2 Comments

2016-08-10 10.08.08 smFive degrees below zero.
Grass
stiff with frost.
Pipes
frozen.
Pond
iced over.
Broken tap
paralysed mid-drip.
Nothing moves in the pre-dawn darkness
Except the stars,
shimmering in a black-ice sky.

 

 

Bean Bag Wars

/ Robinne Weiss / 5 Comments
In the chair.

In the chair.

My husband got me a bean bag chair a couple of years ago. I suppose he wanted to encourage me to sit down now and again.

The chair ended up in my office, where the cat claimed it as his own. The chair grew hairier and hairier. After a while, no one else would sit on it.

A few weeks ago I needed the chair out of the office because I needed the floor space for a project. I took it as an opportunity to clean the chair.

Once it was clean, I moved it to the living room, thinking it might be welcome there over winter, when we spend more time indoors.

I expected the cat to use it too. But he scoffed at it. Instead, he spent weeks in his pre-bean-bag favourite spot on my daughter’s bed.

We’ve used the chair heavily in the living room, and it’s remained delightfully cat hair free.

Until two days ago.

That’s when the cat decided it was time to reclaim ‘his’ chair.

Yesterday, I noticed my cat allergies kick in when I sat in the chair. I did my best to occupy the chair long enough that the cat chose to sleep elsewhere.

This morning I was sitting on the floor when the cat came in. He made a beeline for the bean bag chair. I moved to block him. He attacked with an angry hiss—ears back, claws out.

He backed off, but I couldn’t’ guard the chair all day, so eventually he gained it, and added another layer of fur to it.

This evening I am in the chair, and I intend to stay in it.

The bean bag wars have begun.

Tease

/ Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment

2016-08-03 14.58.18The starlings mutter. The sparrows scold. Magpies warble on the fenceposts.

Daffodils stretch skyward.

I pace the garden, pulling weeds. I finger the newly arrived seed packets.

The goats stand sentinel on the hill, noses quivering with the smell of soil.

Buds swell on the fruit trees.

We are all impatient. Waiting.

The sky is a little bit lighter for a little bit longer than it was yesterday.

The sun, when it shines, is warm.

But we know it is a tease.

Clouds boil to the south, dark and heavy with rain, maybe even snow, if you believe the forecast.

The northerly breath of spring whisks around to the southwest, knife-edged and cold, reminding us that winter still rules.

We bide our time by the fireplace, planning the new season’s garden while rain and sleet lash the window.