The Christmas season is heating up, and with it my market schedule. This month, I’ve got a stand at three markets, the first coming up this Sunday in Hokitika. My husband and I are taking the market as an excuse to spend the long weekend enjoying the West Coast, so my office floor is currently piled with books and market swag to be loaded in the car tomorrow morning. I’m very excited to be selling my latest book (set largely on the West Coast) in Hokitika!
It’s Christmas Eve, and I suppose I should be in holiday mode, preparing for our upcoming tramping trip, baking or cooking something, doing last-minute gift wrapping …
But we had our family Christmas celebration on Sunday, because our daughter is already on her way to Southland for two weeks of climbing, and our son leaves tomorrow. So, with the gifts and fancy meals out of the way, I am ready to get back to work.
Not the day job—I still need a break from that—but writing work is calling me. Which means it’s not really ‘work’, I suppose.
I treat writing as a job that I go to two days a week. I put in long hours on my writing days, and there are certainly days on which it’s hard to keep myself at the desk, plugging away. But the fact I was at the computer typing away at 6.30 am on Christmas Eve tells me writing is more than a job.
As it should be. If I was writing to make a living, I’d be sorely disappointed. Turns out, I can’t not write. The past week, filled with family, celebrations and outings has been fun, but I’ve keenly felt the missed writing days. I’ve been snatching moments here and there (hence the 6.30 am writing session on Christmas Eve), but haven’t had a chance to spend long stretches in the writing zone.
Instead, I’ve been gathering experiences, watching people, squirrelling away ideas. When the holiday madness settles, I’ll be primed and ready to write.
In the meantime, I’ve got a new outdoor poetry chalkboard, made for me by my daughter, to fuel some quick writing exercises. I’m wondering how long I could sustain a poem a day, like I did during lockdown. Or maybe I should limit myself to one a week, in the interests of getting other stuff done, too. So many writing possibilities!
I hope you all have a lovely holiday season doing things that inspire you!
At this time of year, I love chatting with others about their holiday traditions. Every family’s traditions are unique—a combination of family history, ancestry, and geography all mashed together with individual preferences.
Trifle has mostly replaced cookies as my Christmas baking of choice.
And they evolve over time. The Christmas traditions I grew up with are not the ones I practise today. They took a dramatic shift twenty years ago when we moved to New Zealand from Minnesota—northern hemisphere traditions make no seasonal sense here, where Christmas and the summer school holidays coincide.
So my husband and I adapted. Like most Kiwis, our holidays involve travel—we have a tradition of a family backpacking trip the week before Christmas. I always carry a little stuffed reindeer, strapped to the top of my pack, as our holiday hike mascot. We pack Christmas cookies, and usually include one ‘fancy’ camp meal (especially if the tramp extends over Christmas Day).
Our Christmas tree isn’t a pine tree—a cut tree would last about three minutes in the summer heat and wind. Instead, we make our ‘tree’ each year out of whatever materials we have on hand. Making, then decorating the tree is usually a whole-family event.
The LEGO tree of 2019 was one of my favourites, with a motor powering moving parts.
Our big Christmas meal (if we’re not on the trail) is on Christmas Eve—calzones full of vegetables from the garden. We make extras, and enjoy the leftovers for lunch on Christmas Day.
The big day is meant to be a day of relaxation for everyone, so Christmas breakfast sticky buns are made the night before, and rise in the fridge overnight, to be popped into the oven in the morning. After a lunch of leftover calzones, dinner is a big salad accompanied by cheese and bread. Simple as. No slaving in the kitchen on a beautiful summer day.
Boxing Day is beach day for us—along with most of the population of New Zealand—a day to relax with the family and celebrate summertime.
It’s a long way from the hot cocoa, turkey dinners, and carolling of Christmases in my youth, but our traditions do what all good holiday traditions do—they provide opportunities to spend time with family while enjoying seasonal delights.
So happy holidays to you all, and may you enjoy your own traditions, whatever they are! Add a comment with your own traditions!
The traditional Christmas celebrations and decorations involving twinkling lights, snowflakes, snowmen, warm drinks and roaring fires make no sense here in Aotearoa New Zealand. But there’s plenty to celebrate at this time of year.
I always know it’s time to start thinking about the holidays when the strawberries and gooseberries ripen. I know it’s time to decorate when I can stroll through the garden, grazing on peas, gooseberries, raspberries, boysenberries and strawberries. When I can fill a colander with red and black currants. When the supermarket fruit begins to look old and nasty by comparison to what’s tumbling off the bushes at home. When it’s hard not to pick too much lettuce for the day’s salad.
Food is an important part of holiday celebrations, and for me half the celebration is the ability to eat my way through the garden. Finally in December, picking vegetables for dinner doesn’t feel like scrounging for whatever’s left from the winter crops. At some point during the month, the question of ‘what is there to cook for dinner’ shifts to ‘what needs to be eaten today’ (or processed and preserved). Jam making is my Christmas ‘baking’. Fresh berries replace the traditional bowl of mixed nuts put out for munching. Fruit ice creams and cordials are our figgy pudding and wassail.
As we make our way toward the summer solstice, the long days provide plenty of daylight for picking and processing fruit. And because it’s the Christmas season, those long days (and nights) in the garden and kitchen feel more like a celebration than a chore.
Is there holiday stress because of the increase in garden work? You bet—I can’t tell you how many times I’ve sat in the car, bucket between my knees, shelling peas on the way to the beach so I can get the work done and still have time for fun stuff. And keeping up with the weeds is a struggle while many of the vegetables are still small. Then there’s the inevitable broken tap or pierced irrigation line you find the first time you need to water (which usually happens this month). And the constant struggle with the thieving birds, who want to partake of the garden’s bounty, too.
We may not have snow, but the kānuka flowers are a spectacular substitute.
But overall, the holiday season is a time to celebrate the garden’s summer bounty. It’s a time of fresh fruit and vegetables, and long days outdoors. Next week marks the end of my work year, with schools letting out for summer, and this weekend will be my first jam-making weekend of the season. Let the celebrations begin!
It’s the time of year when an author’s thoughts naturally turn to …
…marketing.
Yes, it’s sad that I have spent more time considering how I’m going to sell books this holiday season than I have planning my family’s Christmas celebrations and summer holiday trips.
This year, I’ve decided to explore the summer market scene. My first market is coming up this Sunday.
The North Canterbury Creative Market will be held from 11 am to 4 pm on Sunday, 3 December at the Rangiora Showgrounds (156 Ashley St, Rangiora). I’m really excited about this market, not just for the possibility of selling some books, but also because there will be over 80 stalls bursting with locally made awesomeness. I can’t imagine a better place to find unique Christmas gifts that support local creatives.
I’ll also have a stall at the Spencer Park Market and Gala from 10 am to 4 pm on January 1st and 2nd. This event is sure to be a fun time for the whole family, with food, rides and games in addition to over 115 craft and market stalls. I can already taste the mini-donuts …
In the pursuit of sales, I have also joined 76 other fantasy and science fiction authors to offer you an amazing lineup of gift ideas this Christmas. Check out some of these awesome books, either for yourself or those readers on your gift list.
And finally, I’ve discounted my e-books on Smashwords for their End of Year Sale. From 15 December through 1 January, my books are 50% off, along with zillions of other discounted or free books from other authors. This is definitely a sale to take advantage of. Stock up on reading material for the holidays.
And once all that marketing is out of the way, yeah, I guess I need to think about what I’m getting folks for Christmas … And I definitely need to spend a few days at the beach.
Holiday cooking is always special. And with the holidays falling during the summer here, it’s easy to create stunning meals without a trip to the grocery store.
For Christmas Day, I made homemade linguini, and my husband topped it with a delicious selection of garden vegetables—a fabulous, festive meal.
But Boxing Day’s dinner sort of blew Christmas Day out of the water.
It was a simple meal. Just three salads.
A potato salad made with purple potatoes, sparked up with celery, spring onion, parsley, and homemade pickles.
An Ottolenghi-inspired roasted cauliflower salad made with purple and white cauliflower and toasted walnuts. A dressing of vinegar, oil, maple syrup, cinnamon and allspice added complexity to the flavours, and fresh red currants added crunch and zing.
A fruit salad made with the many fruits gushing from the garden these days.
The overall effect was a riot of colour and flavour. Best of all, nearly everything came from the garden. Holiday meals don’t get much better than that.
One of my Christmas gifts from my daughter this year was a set of creative spice jar labels. She spent an hour or so on Christmas Day affixing the labels to all our spice jars.
I love the creativity of the names: imp skulls, essence of griffin, condiment for a pottle o’ chips, miniature grenades of flavour …
Today I was looking for cinnamon and allspice. It took ages to find the ‘fragrant soil’, and ‘cannonballs of spice’. LOL!
It’s been too long since my last post. I have illness to thank again. And simple early summer busyness. The strawberries, gooseberries, raspberries, black currants and red currants are all coming in now, and I’m wondering how on Earth I’m going to pick and process them all!
The big garden excitement here at the moment is the new greenhouse that my husband and I gave to each other for Christmas. Yes, we know it was a rather early Christmas gift, but by the time we get the thing set up and ready to go, it’ll be Christmas Day. I’m looking forward to having more garden space under cover for some tender perennial crops and better winter growing.
I’m off to pick berries now and consider what different jams I’m going to be making this weekend! I’ll leave you with a little bit of Christmas doggerel (because I can’t help myself–bad holiday poetry just spills out of my brain at this time of year).
Down here where kiwi birds roam Santa trades snowy rooftops for foam Of the incoming tide As the reindeer all ride A Sea-Doo till it’s time to go home.
Down here while the barbies heat up Santa sips pinos gris from a cup. With sand in his shorts He’ll play summertime sports Till the elves tell him it’s time to sup.
Down here where pavlova is king Santa enjoys his annual fling Wiggling tired bare feet In the summertime heat While we wait for the gifts that he’ll bring.
The base of the new greenhouse. Raised beds to lift plants above winter flooding and provide decent soil for growing. Hopefully we’ll get the top put together this weekend.
The family’s Christmas tramp this year took us to the Gillespie Circuit Track in Mount Aspiring National Park. The trip was a good adventure, through a dramatic landscape we don’t often hike in.
Day one started with a jet boat from Makarora to the confluence of the Wilkin and Makarora Rivers. It was my first jet boat ride, and I’ll admit my inner teenager was grinning as we slalomed down the river in a noisy, environmentally unsustainable fashion my adult self disapproves of.
From the mouth of the Wilkin River, we hiked upstream. It was decidedly the least interesting four hours of the trip—the area is grazed, so it was primarily a slog through a cow paddock. The track then turned into the forest and climbed steadily up Siberia Stream to Siberia Hut, where we spent two nights.
On day two, we took a day trip to Crucible Lake. The track to the lake is quite steep, but worth every step. The lake sits in a basin behind a massive glacial moraine. The glacier above the lake drops chunks of ice into the water, making it look like an enormous punch bowl. Apparently it’s popular to take a dip in the lake, but we were deterred by the ice and the cool morning air. The scale of the landscape is deceptive, and photos don’t come close to capturing it.
Day 3, Christmas Day, dawned lightly overcast—perfect for the next stage of the hike, over Gillespie Pass. The track climbs steeply over 1000 metres to the pass, first through the forest, and then into alpine scrub and tussock. Mount Awful looms over the pass, and the surrounding landscape is dominated by jagged peaks and glaciers. The taller peaks, including Mount Awful, were shrouded in cloud, but the views were nonetheless spectacular. We even got a slightly white Christmas, hiking through a couple of snow patches near the top of the pass.
If we thought the way up was steep, the way down proved us wrong—it was even steeper, dropping down a precipitous ridge to the top of the Young River. From there, the nearly flat hike to Young Hut afforded plenty of opportunity to admire the rocky ridges above and the many waterfalls cascading down from them.
Day 4 was a long but relatively gentle hike along the Young River to the Makarora River through the forest. Crossing the thigh-deep Makarora River back to the car was a refreshing end to the trip.
Being a Christmas hike, the trip naturally inspired another bad tramping Christmas song. This year’s song is to the tune of Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas.
Have yourself a merry tramping Christmas. Make the trailside gay. From now on our cars will be so far away.
Here we are as in olden days, Happy tramping days of yore. Faithful friends who are dear to us Sleeping near to us—they snore!
Through the years we all will tramp together If the joints allow, Even when we’re eighty, though I don’t know how. So have yourself a merry tramping Christmas now.
May you all have a lovely holiday filled with your favourite people doing your favourite things!
Wilkin River ValleySiberia Valley, looking toward Mount AwfulOne of many alpine daisies bloomingPanorama of Crucible LakeCamouflaged spiderMount Awful and Gillespie StreamGillespie Pass with people for scaleReindeer mascot on snowRanuncululsMount Awful from the Young River valleyLooking down the Young River
It’s unusual to have three days of rain in December. Usually, I’m desperately trying to keep the garden watered while the vegetables are in their early summer growth phase. Usually, I’m doing a pre-Christmas weeding of vegetables and perennials that will carry me into January with minimal weeds.
Not this year. It has been raining steadily for three days, after a week or so of showery weather. Every inch of the garden is thick with weeds, and continued rain means I’m not out there pulling them as they grow in size by the hour. I’ve braved the rain to pick vegetables for dinner and berries, which are rotting in the wet weather, but otherwise I’ve stayed indoors for three days.
I’m restless to get outside.
But I’m also thrilled with the excuse not to. Usually in December, I don’t manage to do much beyond garden work. So three days to make Christmas gifts, write, and get some nagging indoor chores done has been a gift.
It’s also been a gift to the garden. Much as I try, I can’t duplicate in watering the effect of a good rainstorm. The vegetables are growing as quickly as the weeds. Broccoli, cauliflower and cabbage are all ready to eat. The pumpkin and zucchini plants seem to double in size every few hours. The beans have completely filled in their beds, beating out the weeds entirely. And the peas and lettuce have gotten a new lease on life, and will likely last a few more weeks than they would have otherwise.
So while I’d still rather be out in the garden, both me and the garden are taking full advantage of the gift we’ve been given.
Robinne Weiss 