Over recent years, I’ve started making large amounts of what I call ‘communitea’…herbal tea blends made from whatever I can find in the 4412 postcode of Palmerston North…the postcode I live in. It’s an exercise in locavorism and sharing and fun. I dry things foraged and grown, cultivated and gifted, rub and snip them into a tea blend and then give most of it away at community events, like garden working bees, crop swaps and garden education activities. Some of the plants that I’ve used include: nettle, various mints, calendula, violet, rose, dandelion, lemon verbena, lemon balm, chamomile, kawakawa, plantain, pineapple weed, elderflowers, Mexican marigold, rose and more!
Plants from a summer foraging session drying on a basket
I get a real kick out of sharing small bags of the dried tea and telling folks that it’s from plants that are growing all around them!
What plants which grow around you do you like to make into tea?
I made this sign for a wild plant identification stall I ran at a recent community event.
A huge part of learning to forage is learning to slow down…to observe closely…to ask questions of the environment around and settle down enough to hear the answer. I’m not always good at slowing down…but when I do…my senses awaken and the plants seem lean in towards me.
‘The times are urgent…we must slow down.’ -Bayo Akomolafe
It’s elderberry season … I foraged these from an abandoned yard in the middle of the city and there was a thick patch of red clover near by, as well, so I picked a big bag of that.
Every summer I make elderberry elixirs ahead of winter. It’s great for when I can feel myself getting a cold …a dose of this seems to stave it off.
The dark shine of the berries is so beautiful. Here they are soaking in my kitchen sink before processing.
My whole adult life I have kept journals, capturing bits of my life in words and images. I’ve also taught journal writing classes from time to time. Journal writing is a key part of my creative process as a writer and my self-care regime as a human. Journals get some bad press – sometimes seen as self-indulgent, angsty or just plain pointless. I can only share my own experience with keeping a journal, which has been positive, helpful and life-affirming.
Earlier this year I was part of a literary panel and a member of the audience asked us the question ‘If you were the only person left on the planet, would you still write?’ I had the microphone in my hand, so I answered first: ‘Of course!’ I said ‘I love writing, it wouldn’t bother me if no one else was going to read it.’ I anticipated my fellow panelists would agree with me, but instead the other three writers were looking at me incredulously and answered with variations of ‘Hell no! Why bother?’ and talked about how they write with an audience in mind.
This could be a factor in the journal or no journal divide, perhaps?
Keeping a journal is essentially writing to/for yourself. You either find intrinsic value in this, or find it as interesting as watching paint dry.
I have been toying with the idea of writing a book about journal writing for a few years but was wrestling with whether other people would find it interesting, or horribly self-indulgent? I decided to leave it to fate (aka, a panel of board members) by applying for a grant, figuring if the panel granted my proposal, it would be signal enough that there was some value in the idea. They liked it and I received a grant to create the book.
The book is nearly done and all going well with the printing process it will be released on October 15th.
I have gone through some real ups and downs during the making of this book..it is a very personal, vulnerable, possibly somewhat naive book…it is not the New Zealand way to be so ‘out there’ with emotions and sometimes ugly private stuff. I feel a little like I am about to walk onto a stage in a crowded auditorium, flash my undies and then cry….or something.
My journals aren’t ‘beautiful’, the visual parts are usually pretty haphazard, hastily daubed, scrawled or slapped together and the writing is not profound or intellectual…it is unfettered expression…and is offered as such. Now all I can do is wait for the publication process to unfold and hope that the book is met with open hearts, just as it was created with one.
Last year I received a grant from the Earle Creativity Trust to write a book about my life-long practice of keeping a journal. It was so wonderful to get the grant and I’ve been busy working on this time-bound project, which has to be completed in 2016 (a condition of the grant.)
I finished year one of a permaculture design course last year. I also had a go at making yoga teaching my main source of income, really didn’t like it and am back to teaching just two classes a week, which is just the right amount for me. I had a year’s contract working for an environmental trust, doing communications and events work, and now I’m back at Massey, teaching writing.
I taught at the 2016 Kahini Retreat – it was terrific, a whole weekend of being steeped in writing and writing conversation.
Me and my friend, Nga Taonga Puoro artist Rob Thorne collaborated on a performance combining poetry with music, called ‘Tohu’. Huge satisfying fun, and we hope to do it again soon.
I was part of Massey University’s ‘writing in / writing of’ talk series, in a panel about Manawatu writers.
In May, I read with Janet Charman, Belinda Diepenheim and Johanna Aitchison at the Palmerston North City Library. I’ve loved Janet’s writing for a long time, so it was a real privilege to read with her when she visited Palmerston North from Auckland.
My most recent creative act, though, has been painting moons. My friend is opening a shop in town with a theme of earth-based and earth-friendly hand made things. So I’ve been making moon gift tags, wall strings and cards for the shop. It is so much more enjoyable than writing poetry, which is always kind of masochistic and gnarly for me.
Apple cheeks, apple weeks, the race against the birds…
The inherited tree which has the codlin moth – I know it’s time to strip the tree when the birds begin to peck at the apple tops – this means they are sweet and ready. Cutting around the moth tunnels, making apple sauce which turn into breakfast or crumbles or just eaten with a teaspoon standing at the fridge when I realise I’m starving but have to do the school run in two minutes. (I continue to ‘battle’ against the codlin moth. They are determined creatures.) The commitment of using seasonal abundance. It’s a gift, sure, but it’s work. Sometimes hours and hour of work. Sitting at the table, making the meditation ‘can I take all the peel off in one go?’ Buckets and buckets of practice later tell me that I can’t, but it’s fun trying.
The Ballerina apple tree which was a wedding present 20 years ago, and moved with us from flat to flat in a big pot, finally planted into the ground here and produces the most beautiful green and red apples, like the ones from Snow White…
This tree on an abandoned section – the way fruit trees give and give, regardless of how they are tended or neglected. Walking onto ‘private property’ to pick the apples. Respecting the tree’s gift more than the human’s claim. Not wanting the generosity of the tree to go unnoticed, unappreciated. Leaving plenty for the birds.
At my permaculture course, Duncan brings two beautiful baskets of apples from his small farm. Four heritage varieties – enough for everyone to take a few home to taste. On the permaculture course, people are passionate about plants, about fruit trees, about the earth. People have strong opinions – in discussion time the debates are weighty, rich, sometimes a little heated…but at lunch time, we sit around munching Duncan’s apples. That they are fine, crisp, tasty apples, we all agree on.
The beauty of the simple backyard apple, wet from being rinsed in cold water, fresh-picked off the tree.
Another beautiful permaculture garden I visited recently, is the Paekakariki School garden. Lots of schools have gardens these days, but they are usually hotch-potch patches of vegetables gone to seed and a few calendula…not the Paekakariki School garden. It’s clearly lovingly and frequently tended, with huge compost and mulch piles, a working greenhouse and an effusion of vegetables, herbs and flowers. There is enough sowing and planting activity happening in this beautiful collective garden, that before Christmas they had a huge plant sale of plants they had grown in the greenhouse.
Below – greenhouse to the left, borage growing freely everywhere, herb and vege beds…somewhat inexplicably, old fridges used for storing tools to the right…
I love how there are so many flowers – foxgloves, violas, chamomile, borage – growing around the vegetables. So pretty, and so good for the bees!
Below – chamomile….parsley seed heads. (Oh how I love a spindly seed head!)
Below – Fine looking garlic crop! Strawberries growing in tyres…
(Below) – This is intriguing – looks like they are constructing a greenhouse from an old jungle-gym frame and recycled plastic bottles threaded onto bamboo canes. Good upcycling, but looks very labour intenstive…
(Below) One perfect viola – so so pretty… What an inspiring community garden! I didn’t want to leave!
One of my favourite things to do is to visit other people’s vegetable gardens and have a good nose around…I always learn so much and get inspired to go home and get into my own.
Here are some photographs from a beautiful, well-established permaculture garden on the Kapiti coast I visited in late spring last year.
Here is their garden photographed from just beyond their porch, you can see this from the house:
I loved the way they had their main crops (potatoes, corn) in large clear beds, their salad crops growing more ‘wildly’ in the shadey edges, and they had planted an orchard at the foot of the garden which doubles as the chicken run…the chickens keep the grass from around the base of the trees (most fruiting trees don’t like grass growing around their bases), and the chickens fertilize the trees with their poo…meanwhile, the trees offer shade to the chooks, and food, too. (Unfortunately for my chickens, the two huge trees in their run are feijoa trees, and it seems chooks don’t like feijoas, so no happy harvest for my lot!)
Everywhere I turned there were different crops – here you can see salad vegetables, calendula, dark leafy greens and garlic…
Near the house was an absolutely beautiful peach tree sorrounded by fennel, with flawless fruit dripping off it. I sat under it for a while – it sure was a special tree – and took a bazillion photographs…but I’ll just share a couple with you here as you may not find photographs of peaches so mesmerising as I do.
Beautiful hand-woven baskets and seedling pots made from newspaper…
I noticed they had a ground cover of red clover, too.
I have another vegetable garden visit to share with you, soon. I hope you enjoyed this one!
If there are any locals (Manawatu, New Zealand) reading – I am about to start this:
Although I hope people will come every week – I am aiming to have each session work as an independent writing experience, so people might come to just one and get a good fix of inspiration, or come to each one and add community to their writing experience.
Last Friday the public collaboration phase of the BLACK RIVER exhibition I’ve been involved with was launched at Te Manawa.
In support of the exhibition, the poets and artists have their drafts/sketches on display in a cabinet. The idea of this was to share creative process with the public.
It is a little bit exposing to have my scrawling, messy poem draft on public display, however I believe in the reason behind it (sharing creative process). (It doesn’t help that the other poets seem to have basically ‘cheated’ (I say this jokingly) and submitted fairly polished, finished poems for display so mine looks all the more deranged. Ha ha!) Oh well, all I can say is I STUCK TO THE BRIEF.
Here is the cabinet with the sketches and poetry ‘drafts’. My mess is on bottom left – notice how much longer it is than the other ‘drafts’? Ahem.
On Friday, there were already quite a few public responses. Here are some of my favourites:
Whoever this person is, they have great handwriting…
Helen Lehndorf 