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Published: December 28th 2008
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Hayfever at Christmas time is just wrong. So is listening to Elvis Presely singing Christmas duets with the sun shining outside. But then again the moon is upside down and the stars are inside out and and and...it's all rather confusing and peculiar.
But it does remind you that you are living on a planet. In space. In a solar system. Galaxy. Universe. Rah.
'Tis a good thing I think.
So my first chapter in New Zealand has come to an end and today I move on...and I'm excited. There have been some beautiful moments here at Herb Haven...spending time with Rowena and watching her sparkle, getting to eat home-made scones with cream and strawberry and lavender jam every day, learning which flowers are edible and eating them every day like borage and heartsease and violets and calendula, making friends with a chicken called Little Red Hen, learning about keeping cows, eating home-made bread, starting to learn how to hula hoop and having a hoop most mornings or evenings, making friends with a labrador called Tippy and feeding him left over sandwhiches for the Victorian tea platters, being around all these plants and picking fruit off trees and
Rowena & I
Daily tasting eating them - sweet and juicy plums and oranges, gooseberries, beetroot and salad leaves, seeing the apples slowly colour and watching the Jacaranda tree slowly come into blossom in all it's purple magnificense.
Two highlights:
Celebrating summer solstice: Rowena and I make a little fire in the garden and burn dried sage branches which smell incredible *and used to be used for soltice celebrations in pagan times). We have an alter with a bowl of different yellow flowers to represent the sun and it's energy and bundles of herbs (summer solstice is apparently the best time of the year to collect herbs) and candles and then have our ceremony around the fire, creating a sacred circle, saying out loud some intentions - using the sun's energy and symbolism of fire to fuel them and throwing herbs into the fire after each one. A bundle of herbs is then buried in the garden and with it intentions of things to let go. It was a beautiful and powerful evening and it ended in true Maori style by partaking in food - eating a day lilly, passing it back and forth, petal by petal until it was gone.
Boxing
day: I go with Rowena's brother Paul to a dairy farm and spend the afternoon milking cows! This involves driving on a little mini tractor thing to a field and slowly herding all the cows down the path into the milking station - I think it was about 100 cows and 2 bulls and then they all line up with their bums facing you and you have to be careful you don't get pissed and shat all over - as they are pissing and shitting all the time - and apparently when you have been milking for a good while you get so in tune with the cows that you can sense when their about to and can dodge it. First the udders get sprayed with this liquid that kills bugs and then you place these suction cups over each udder - unless a cow has a marker on it's ankle in which case it's pregnant and that udder is for it's future calf. They all seem very resigned to the fact and used to it - and I suppose it's not a bad life for them. They get to graze in beautiful green pastures all day long and have
a rest 4 months of the year where they aren't milked. Apparently when they get mastitus they get gin injected up their udders. Oooer. Udders are funny things...Go and inspect one if you ever get the chance.
Not such a highlight was my one and only night out in the last...God...forever.... in Hamilton which opened my eyes to the fact that New Zealand has just as many chavs as England and they were out in full force on a Saturday night, the girls in their mini skirts and binge drinking and dancing to abhorent noise and stag parties etc etc.
And so now it's off to Waiheke island and I'm hoping for a little dose of debauchery because...well...you know it's been 3 months now and I'm been ever so good (mostly) and all the domesticatedness and wholesomeness and lack of a social life...well...I think that maybe if I had a few days and they involved Bourbon, a Good Pounding and Bad Behaviour (in no particular order) and get it all out my system I might be able to wake up in the morning and do my alternate nostril breathing without wanting to bang my head against the wall.
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