Witters from Down Under
Created | Updated Feb 18, 2009
Having moved from Scotland to Australia in 2005 to find out if she had fallen in love with the country as well as her husband a decade ago, she decided that the answer was ‘yes’ and intended to stay.
However life has always had a marvellous way of changing her best-laid plans. And it happened again. An unexpected work opportunity presented itself in mid-2008: one too good to miss.
As a result the Witter from Down Under is now coming from the land of the long white cloud - New Zealand.
Please join us and read Frenchbean’s commentary on a new country, a new city, a new job and new friends.
Globetrotter
A little while ago Mum sent me a newspaper photo of ex-battery hens proudly wearing hand-knitted jumpers to make up for their temporary lack of feathers. It transpires that Little Hen Rescue is an organisation which helps ex-battery hens enjoy free-ranging lives. In these times of chicken enlightenment I would like to commend their work to you. In particular, they encourage knitters to provide jumpers. So if you’re looking for a small project, here’s the pattern.
The concept of keeping hens myself is one which I’ve been exploring, but came up against a categorical “No” from my landlords. There is a ‘no pets’ clause in my contract, which apparently extends to hens. Ah well; one day…
In the meantime, just around the corner is a family with a garden enclosure housing hens and ducks. I’m hoping that they have an excess of poo, of which I might be able to relieve them.
The commercial garden centre manure that I put on the veg patch in December is really paying off: the plants are thriving. Rain this week (as the result of Frenchbean-style rain-dances last weekend) have lushed-up everything perfectly.
The star turn is a marrow, verging on 1m in length and increasingly rotund. Courgettes and lettuces are flooding in and soon all the other veggies will be providing me enough food to cut out the weekly shop.
The quest for free produce continues. I have a large rowan tree, or mountain ash, in the garden, laden with bright red berries. They are a common plant hereabouts, having been introduced by Scottish settlers in the 19th Century. Interestingly Kiwis don’t know about harvesting the berries: they leave them for the birds. I, on the other hand, collected half a bucketful yesterday, to turn into delicious rowan jelly. It is a perfect accompaniment to rich gamey meat like venison (wild, not farmed), pheasant, duck and hare.
For the last couple of weeks I’ve been watching the berries, to time the pick to perfection. Unfortunately, the blackbirds and thrushes (which are from Britain and therefore know all about the delectable fruit) were also biding their time and beat me to it while I was slumbering at dawn on Saturday. Half of the lower-hanging crop was away before I had a chance to clamber up the ladder and start collecting. I did so to the accompaniment of loud complaints from the birds, who evidently think this is an avian pantry, thank you very much. The top bunches of fruit are far too high for a Bean to reach, so they have a veritable feast for the next few days. They also have every other rowan tree in New Zealand, untouched by human hand.
It is pretty remarkable how much European vegetation covers New Zealand. The settlers brought with them plants that would guarantee food and familiarity at a time when conserving native flora (and fauna) wasn’t on anybody’s agenda, but when spreading British culture in all its forms was considered the way to civilise the world.
The countryside of Canterbury is dominated by non-native grass (all the paddocks), willows, pines, poplars, elms, oaks and beeches, rhododendrons, laurels, gorse, broom and many others. Take it all away (an impossible task which is nonetheless espoused by the purists) and you’d be left with a catastrophic soil erosion problem until native plants could colonise. Not to mention no food production and no shelter from the wind. We are a nation of foreign imports.
It’s not surprising that everything grows so well. The soil is rich and well-draining, the land is flat and easy to cultivate and the climate is warm. We are on the equivalent latitude of Livorno in Italy and enjoy a gentle Mediterranean climate.
I know that we are on the Livorno latitude because I arrived home on Tuesday to find an enormous parcel on my doorstep; the content of which was a globe-trotting atlas. Not an atlas for globe-trotters, but one which had itself trotted the globe to reach my step.
The packaging was adorned with a positive plethora of labels, informing me that it had been unsuccessfully delivered to the Shoebox on 2nd February and redelivered there on 9th February, when the postie noted that it was an empty apartment. A redirection label had been stuck over the Chez le Shoebox address, sending it here; on the very last day of my arrangement with NZ Post to redirect my mail. What serendipity.
Other stickers demonstrated that it had been posted in Britain in November and that it was an atlas (I knew that). On the inside was a wee label to say that it had originated from a bookseller in the USA. However, it’s a British publication, so presumably it crossed the Atlantic twice before being mailed to NZ. And from whence did the directions for the travels of this Atlas with an OE of its own commence? From friends in Greece!
It is the biggest book I have ever owned, although not the heaviest. Can you guess?
- In the White Corner is The Times Comprehensive Atlas of the World (Eleventh Edition) measuring in at 33cm X 5cm X 47cm and weighing 5kg.
- In the Blue Corner is The Compact Oxford English Dictionary (1971) measuring a meagre 25cm X 16.5cm X 36cm, but weighing in at a whopping 9.5kg! (That’s the size of a poodle.)
The arrival of the Atlas completely messed up Tuesday evening. I spent three hours deep in its pages, comparing latitudes, landmasses and looking for the most obscure places I could dream up. And on Sunday morning it is now even more difficult to fight my way out of bed past the tomes weighing down my legs.
Happy days.
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