Sub or tropical on Great Barrier Island? Perhaps we didn’t move far enough north. Daytime temperature peaked at a cool 12° at the end of May! (In Fahrenheit, that’s 54°.) Not what we expected for “subtropical”, though we were probably focused more on “tropical” than “sub”. But at the same time, my friend Judy, who lives in the middle of Iowa, wrote that though they had freezing temperatures and snow just a few weeks before, and the long, unusually harsh winter seemed interminable, on the day in late May that we had 12° in the Pacific subtropics, her thermometer hit 100° (38°C), instead of the usual low-70s (21°C). Just about unprecedented, she said. I’ve been in touch with this friend a lot recently! I’ve been editing her autobiography of her interesting and purposeful life. As the back cover says, the book chornicles Judy’s heart-led activism and candidly recounts her courageous and principled struggle to live a life of peace within a troubled family and a world of injustice and war. Carrie created this striking cover from Judy’s idea. Ro and I met Judy and her husband, Paul, when we were all living for part of 1998 and 1999 at the Friends Southwest Centre, a small Quaker community in the Sonoran Desert about 30 km from the Mexican border in Arizona. She later became involved in assisting migrants who had attempted to enter the United States but who had been returned to Mexico by U.S. Border Patrol. Handing out blankets to migrants on cold nights as they crossed back into Mexico was just one small aspect of her voluntary work to improve their lives. From rural Iowa, Judy has lobbied and campaigned for social justice and world peace for decades. This is a newspaper clipping of her first Peace Walk, with her son, Kipp, in neighbouring Minnesota in 1971. What a fun surprise to find this paragraph during my initial read-through of Judy’s book: Another couple rented the old farmhouse. They were outside doing tai chi most mornings. We’re still in contact with them from their home in New Zealand. As the millennium was approaching, some people believed that our computers wouldn’t be able to handle changing the date to 2000. I’m not sure why Ro and Joanna thought they could weather the worldwide disruption in New Zealand, but as it turned out, it was a good move for them. They love New Zealand. As the most self-sufficient people I know, I’d bet on them living through almost any planetary disruption, when most of us would be wiped out. I learned how to email just so I could keep in contact with them. Rattlesnake on Judy’s doorstep The secret to staying warm We ran into Gerald on our way to our swim on one of those cold, windy, cloudy days in late May. He was delivering produce boxes to the bus shelter at Medlands. People who live nearby collect them from there. I asked if he keeps the heat off in his van for the sake of the veggies. He said the heater doesn’t even work in his van. “Don’t you get cold?” I asked. “I never get cold,” said he. You may recall that Gerald has a donated kidney from his wonderful wife, Caity. He said he’s always warm because of his good, strong kidney, and the secret of staying warm is to keep your kidneys warm. It was one of those miracle moments that changes everything! An image popped to mind of a box of items not being used out in the truckbox, among them a wool kidney warmer that Sue M made for me years ago in Golden Bay. I admit I didn’t use it much – I didn’t recognise its value. BUT I DO NOW! Instantly, it and I became inseparable. Day and night, what a difference it makes. When I have to unwrap it to change my clothes, the chill is shocking! Highly recommended for wintertime swimmers and nonswimmers alike! It’s just a long length of felted wool with a few short pieces of velcro along one end. Sue even sewed some decorative bits of wool on one side. THANK YOU, Sue and Gerald! An extraordinary garden Robina was on the Barrier one weekend not long ago. It was the perfect time to take up a longstanding garden-tour offer from Les and Bev Blackwell, brother and sister-in-law of our dear Charlie, and his contemporaries. They were all born in that somber decade that began with the Great Depression and ended with the beginning of World War II. In other words, a long time ago. But these beautiful octogenarians are anything but depressed. Les and Bev are still actively and enthusiastically growing, tending and beautifying large and productive gardens, revitalising them, experimenting, perfecting, and learning, storing and preserving their produce in many forms, and giving generously of the fruits of their labour. This knowledgeable and skillful pair have been on their land since the 1960s. It’s less than a kilometre down the road from our place, so they too started with a windy site and sandy soil. But their place is about 25 times larger than ours – 5 acres (20,000 sq m) vs 809 sq m. Their transformation of parts of this unpromising and difficult land to a lush paradise over half a century is worthy of recognition, and they were actually been featured in NZ Gardener magazine in 2009: https://www.thebarrier.co.nz/Magazines/NZGardener/LesBeverleyBlackwell.htm Though their home and its large surrounding gardens and their magical several-acre orchard/bush/crop area both border the road, another remarkable feature of what they’ve achieved is that almost none of it can be seen from the road! The area around their house is dense with mature native and exotic plants, trees, vines and flowers, all carefully selected for their beauty, interest and resilience, and many propagated by them. Paths, benches, archways, ornaments and a gazebo add to the charm, and wind-blocking hedges border it all. Photos by Robina and me. These flower gardens, named after their grandchildren, are the tiny fraction of their plantings that drivers can see. Notice “Tweety” parked by the entrance. The green arrow at the top right points to our house, and the yellow arrow further to the left points to Winnie and Charlie’s house. Who could ever know that hidden behind this unpretentious structure out in the paddock is a 12-room “sand garden” build on sand but now with soil so rich it produces a succession of crops year-round? Les numbered the doors so he and Bev could find one another! This room has mostly herbs. The parsley (near the door) was the most flavourful I ever had. The large plant is lemon grass. They pump water from this pond to water the sand garden. Sheet mulching with cardboard, grass clippings from the large lawns, chippings from the mulcher, wheelbarrows of cow poo and rich dredgings from the pond, and then of course the worms, keeps the soil fertile. This beauty went home with us It can be windy even within the sand garden walls. Les holds down the mulch with lengths of untreated timber diverted from landfill. We could only imagine these gardens in summer pumping mode from Les and Bev's descriptions and hints like the remains of two-metre high stakes for tomatoes to grow up. Les has created ingenious configurations of rope and stakes to give vining plants the space and support they need. In his outside garden, he tapers tall stakes to a point to keep birds from dropping anything that would mar the tomatoes and cukes! Strawberry patch And then, across the road, the one-acre orchard! They call it an orchard but it’s really a forest garden. We passed it every time we drove by – but where was it, we always wondered. Though it starts just about at roadside, to the left of the old yellow shed in the photo of the flower gardens (ten photos back), stepping through the gate and along the first bush walk is like entering a holodeck program on Star Trek, into another world far removed from Charlie’s surrounding paddocks. The pathways are labyrinthine and unless you know your way around, you could get lost! The seeds of these giant cupola pumpkins, averaging 10-12 kg, have been preserved by Les’s extended family. They were brought to Shoal Bay wharf by Les’s Uncle Adam, a trader, who got them on a trip to Melanesia in 1880. This is one of many heirloom vegetable varieties whose seeds Bev and Les maintain for present and posterity. Sugar cane is growing everywhere and Les puts it to good use, running masses of it through a chipper to use as mulch. Lovely Bev by a banana tree. She had us all “listening to the cabbage tree”, with our hands and our ears. “You hear all sorts of things,” she said. Les and Bev “number 8-wired” these pheromone traps for guava moths in their feijoas and other fruit trees. The moths are attracted by the solar lights and the scent of the faux-pheromone in the milk bottles. When the trick succeeds, they fly in and drown. Bev’s recipe: 1 L boiling water 1/3 cup sugar 1 tsp vanilla essence 1 tsp vegemite or marmite 1 tsp ammonia (Handy Andy or pee) Mix to a paste, dissolving vegemite and sugar. Double for a 2 L milk bottle. Les showed us how to make cups from rangiora leaves. Ro and other ornamentals Pepinos (like small thin-skinned melons that grow on a bush) Sugarcane and volunteer kumara Ladder ferns In addition to hard work, skill and knowledge, all this lush growth and bounty is possible thanks to the high water table of this part of their land. It’s a completely different ecosystem from the sandy soil over the road. The soil is always moist and they need to water their trees, plants and crops only infrequently. When they do, they have access to Winnie and Charlie’s bore water, which Charlie pumps with windpower to a concrete tank on a nearby hill. Les explained how he dug out this additional water source bucket by bucket over several years, using the rich soil to create the orchard. Near and far, beauty pervades and envelops “Camberton on Kaitoke”. Big waves Durban, South Africa, February 2017 Frightening, isn’t it?! And it’s not even close to the largest wave ever recorded in the Southern Hemisphere. That one, 23.8 m (78 ft), crashed down near Campbell Island, 1400 km southeast of New Zealand, just a few weeks ago. A buoy moored nearby logged it but didn’t photograph it. An oceanographer said that a deep low-pressure system and high winds helped create the perfect conditions for the colossal wave. The wave travelled along with the storm, its height growing as the storm moved eastward. He said the event will add greatly to our understanding of wave physics under extreme conditions in the Southern Ocean. This ocean is “a powerhouse that generates far-reaching waves”. To that, he added a recreational note: “Surfers in California can expect energy from this storm to arrive at their shores in about a week's time.” I hope the wave settles down a bit by then, but maybe it will help take their minds off the wrath of Kilauea! H.A.N.D.S. merges with GBI in a dish-drying mat I never liked those plastic or metal dish-drying racks – all utility, no aesthetics and too many hard-to-clean nooks and crannies. Supersize granny squares are much nicer! Local exchange member Bridget did a great job crocheting two of them for us before we left Golden Bay. Time and use take their toll, and this one was in need of repair. Winnie to the rescue! She whisked me off to her weekly craft group day, where people can sew, felt, knit or create in any way they like without the usual distractions and demands of home. I returned with a cheerful-looking mat that holds warm feelings of thanks for Winnie’s help. As always, I’ll conclude with more Barrier Beauty. Two views of Tryphena (not my photos) And three of Kaitoke. Central mountains from the beach. This part of the beach, just about in the middle, is accessed from the walkway at the end of Oceanview Road. The only other access to this enormous beach is from Sugarloaf at the south end or by kayak on Kaitoke Stream (or a tricky stream-edge walk) to the north, at the Palmers Beach end. Same view from the south end Palmer’s Beach end of Kaitoke Beach By early June, the island temperature had risen to a much balmier 18°.
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