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March 30, 2015March 30, 2015 The Green Garden

Speed bumps

December 3, 2014February 10, 2018 The Green Garden

Albie’s heart update

October 21, 2013February 10, 2018 The Green Garden

Albie’s heart update: More great things

December 23, 2012January 25, 2015 The Green Garden

The best Christmas present

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Dinner basket: kale, zucchini, cucumbers, toms, basil and calendula.
Lucky enough to join in the celebrations of the opening of Green School New Zealand this afternoon. So exciting to see the dream come into reality and just wonderful to have been a small part of the journey so far. Such an uplifting end to a soul stretching week.
On the day when/ The weight deadens / On your shoulders / And you stumble/ May the clay dance / To balance you. // And when your eyes / Freeze behind / The gray window / And the ghost of loss / Gets in to you, / May a / flock of colors, / Indigo, red, green, / And azure blue, / Come to awaken in you / A meadow of delight. // When the canvas frays / In the curragh of thought / And a stain of ocean / Blackens beneath you, / May there come across the waters / A path of yellow moonlight / To bring you safely home. // May the nourishment of the earth be yours, / May the clarity of light be yours, / May the fluency of the ocean be yours, / May the protection of the ancestors be yours. // And so may a slow / Wind work these words / Of love around you, / An invisible cloak / To mind your life.” - John O’Donnohue, “Bennacht” Last night we held a memory sharing vigil around my fathers casket. . Today we bury him with my Mum.
I’m collecting hospital rooms, like charms on an unwanted bracelet- three hospitals, one week. . I am sitting, not with Albie as has been the course so far, but with our beloved, ageing Dad who is battling a really nasty bout of pneumonia. . He’s far, far away and unresponsive and I’m not exactly sure what to do with myself. So here I am. Tapping out yet another angst filled caption for yet another heartfelt image. You’re welcome. . I notice my infinity ring on my thumb. And think about the handing on of love - about his certain love for me and my certain love for him - generational hands of parent and child. And child and parent, across time and across space. For infinity. . I wonder too about my culture focusing just on the bit of life that it’s comfortable with. Why my culture speaks loudly of the stories of life that sit in the solid space and only whispers of death that happens certainly, but ever so quietly, at the edges. . I speak as much to myself when I write this as to you, knowing I’ve avoided Dad’s slow deterioration as much as I can, too uncomfortable to imagine a life without him to notice that this leaf is turning regardless of whether I want to bear witness to it or not. . And in this quiet morning, in this hospital room, on the back of cups of exceedingly bad coffee, I whirr too on whether my cultures discomfort with death of our loved ones is related to our collective and wilful ignorance to the mortality of life on this planet more broadly as well. . And I realise it will be. . This is all far less a radical gardener pep talk, and more a hospital bedside missive, but somehow I seem to have arrived at the same place. At a place that yearns and aches for a more human way of being human.
We’re awaiting Albie’s exercise tolerance tests which we hope will be next week in Wellington. Till then, we’re home. Grounded my hands and feet in the soil all morning, and slowly my aching heart has settled down some too. Thankful for an abundant garden awaiting - our first Magda. A plethora of plums right before the birds got to them. Peas. Cocozelle. Kale. Beans. Spring onion. Simple but sure reassurance.
One of my absolute favourite places remains a gallery. It’s a big part of my jigsaw. . Today, Auckland Art Gallery provided the solace. . We came across this Claudia Pond Eyley piece. I studied it waaaaaay back in 1996 - with Sister Anne Bulman at Sacred Heart Girls College - perhaps one of the first pieces of feminist art I came across. . And I don’t think I’ve seen it in actuality before. . But today I did. . And I said hello to this “Shield for Ancient Mothers” feeling like I needed it, rushing towards it with an unbecoming flurry. Armour for my front. Like I too was one of the ancient ones, knarled and worried and wearied. In need of this shield. . Oh. . But then I looked again and remembered that this shield stands behind me, not in front of me. This shield is ancestry, a record of the continuity of maternal life that goes back and back and back and back. . I stand on my mother’s shoulders and my mother’s mother’s shoulders, all the way back in time. . And from this, comes strength. . The shield of ancient mothers stands stoically behind all of us. A strong back for this soft front. .

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