Letters from Wetville

It's not quite Godzone, or the land of milk and honey, these days is it? Pike, the Christchurch earthquakes, Rena. Bryce Edwards has assembled a number of very interesting images commenting on the Rena crisis here . I've been mostly focused on my own family, especially my children. Tomorrow we head away for a while, partly to visit my grandparents and partly to give the children some new experiences in parts of New Zealand we've not taken them before. We booked and paid for this trip before our sad and sudden trip to Auckland and I hope it lifts everyone's spirits. I finished The Long Song by Andrea Levy. It was quite good, but lacked the magic of Small Island . Now I'm reading Jeanette Winterson's Lighthousekeeping . I've also started to listen to her South Bank lecture which is found on her website here . I read today of something called Blog Action Day, which this year is to be held 16 October, which is also world food day. I've not enough to...

It was time to do more completion and less starting of new projects. I was sort of successful. Done: 1. The ironing board is now functional. It looks like this: There were indeed some plain blue and even plain beige covers in the shop. I did not care for them . 2. One shirt belonging to Favourite Handyman now fixed. Jackie at the Bernina shop advised me how and didn't charge me a cent for it. She is shopkeeper of my year. 3. Planted slenderette dwarf seedlings, celery seedlings and some polyanthus. Watered my basil and tomato pots. 4. Cooked loads of fried foods for dinner. I almost didn't provide dinner at all, because the garden was so much more interesting. Fried sausages, bacon, onions and mushrooms, plus I added butter to the steamed broccoli and asparagus. Only the carrot escaped the butter or oil treatment. It tasted beautiful. Not quite done: 1. I began weeding the strawberry patch and bought a netting cloche to go over it and protect it from the birds. Proba...

Never go into the kitchen before the garden when rain looms. Starvation takes a while to set in. That's how I overcame the hurdle of the noisy tummies and sowed carrot, beetroot, pea and alyssum seeds outside and tomato and basil seeds inside today. I would normally have sown the tomato seed earlier but now has to be good enough. I am hopeful of a good growing season this summer. I came back from Auckland to huge and lovely-tasting broccoli. The heads were lots bigger than the supermarket ones (brag braggidy brag brag). Last years' broccoli was shameful and almost inedible. This year I grew it where a compost heap had been not long beforehand and also in a more sheltered spot. I also cut the irises which were prone in the garden due (I presume) to recent winds and put them in a vase in the dining room. Thanks to their prolific division over the last 2-3 years, I now have lots of iris bulbs, but they are still too spread out in the garden. Next year I want them in clum...

Or maybe some higher number. It's true that I dare not keep stats. Today I went to Mitre 10 to buy some coat hangers. I did this for three reasons: 1. I was given some new clothes up north and need hangers for them. 2. I hate shopping at The Warehouse. It gives me the wibblies. 3. Miter 10 is closer, so ethically favourable. While I am at Mitre 10, I find replacement ironing board covers. As I have been meaning to make a new cover for our ironing board for about three years, and I accidentally cut the fabric of our current one not long ago, buying a new cover seems very sensible. After all, the laundry mountain at my place currently seems to be on growth hormones and there is a garden waiting for some more seeds, some weeding, some tender loving care. Twenty-three dollars later, I get home, take it out of its packet and finally remember that we have an extra long ironing board. It doesn't fit and the wrapping is torn so no returns. So now I have spent money and I am ma...

Ten days ago I got a phone call which has changed all of our four lives here at the Messiest House in Wetville. My sister in law couldn't say the words out loud and with a thumping heart I guessed. My Mother in Law died of a heart attack, cuddled in the arms of the man she married over 50 years ago. The man she loved and the man who adored her. We have spent the week since that phone call in Auckland, farewelling a much loved woman along with almost 200 other people in a small wooden church in the lovely leafy suburb they made home as they raised five children. All the 13 grandchildren were there, all the children, her siblings and squillions of other relatives and friends. The vicar of their church was a very good friend of my Mother in Law's and that made for a particularly lovely farewell service. My Mother in Law loved to shop, but until I was asked to help go through her clothes and to pick out some things to take home for myself, I had no idea what a marathon evente...

One in the morning is a perfectly reasonable time to get up and do some sewing and blogging, isn't it? That or nothing this week. I did buy some more sheets ( errr yes. Cheap. ) from the Sallies and St Vincent de Paul. Those Catholics have expensive sheets. Three whole dollars vs the Sallies only charging $2. So I've made up the bodice of the Colette Crepe dress in a plain yellow, using my new pattern piece for the front with an FBA and adjusted neckline. I pinned down the sides and tried it on and indeed it looks like the adjustments work. Hurray hurray hurray. I don't have enough fabric for the skirt as well, but I did buy some sheets which I think complement the yellow fabric and so this time the skirt will be a contrasting colour. I am getting faster at sewing. Once, the bodice would have taken a week of evenings. This time round, I think my blood pressure is even stable when I sew darts. Other blogging sewists have suggested they would fully line the bodice...

My favourite picture book at the moment is The Runaway Hug . The blurbs don't show the best bit which is the illustrations. The story is sweet but I love how the house is messy and that is just normal. I've been looking at my garden with a new eye since I read Dennis Greville's Colourful Gardens . He talks about restful colours with red rather than the full on drama of red and yellow which I had been planning for the red fence garden. I have since noticed how the yellow looks good against the old mustard fence. I don't have a photo of the blue borage and the globe artichokes together, but the silvery foliage of the artichokes and the blue-purple of the borage would be the perfect gentle foil for our dramatic red fence. Given the self seeding proclivity of the borage and the ease of division of the globe artichokes, it will be labour with no financial cost to create my new red fence garden vista. When it stops raining. Amongst the parenting today, did I clean the h...