Helen Lehndorf

news + musings

  • green bean serene

    Summer = season of green.

    Broad beans until we can’t face another broad bean.

    I divided up my monster stinging nettle plant and now I have baby nettles thriving away. (Anyone local want a nettle plant?) Nettles are a wonder herb and are seriously good for you – very high in iron, it also builds healthy blood cells and clears chest congestion, among other things. It also tastes great in soup – very savoury and iron-rich tasting.

    Green polka dot sundress with my green roman sandals. Welcome in summer, you’ve been a long time coming this year!

  • The Comforter Cocktail

    The Comforter Cocktail

    We made this in a big punch bowl, but of course you can make it by the glass also.

    One part Blackcurrant Vodka

    Four parts soda water

    Enough rose-infused sugar syrup to make it pink and tasty. This is the stuff I used – it’s French, lovely and costs about $18 for a bottle at good bottle stores:

    Edible flowers – borage, calendula petals, rose petals, cornflowers, violas etc

    Ice

    Mix the wet ingredients, pour over ice, sprinkle edible flowers on top. Drink and feel comforted!

    This drink is pink, refreshing, tastes like summer and roses and good times.

  • ‘The Comforter’ launches (2)

    Launch one:

    The first launch was in Palmerston North at the City Library.

    The speakers were Helen Rickerby, my editor, Thom Conroy, friend and creative writing professor at Massey University, and Natasha Allan did a beautiful blessing of the book.

    This one felt like a slightly more formal, ‘family, colleagues, local community’ (and friends, of course) one.  People bought books, I had my first experience of signing books, like a proper writer and it felt weird and really wonderful all at once. I tried to write something meaningful in each book I signed, so by the end of the launch my hand was really sore.

    Launch two: 

    Launch two was the next day in Wellington at my friend Emma Barnes’s house in Aro Valley. Wellington turned on the sunshine for us and it was a stunning day. This one was at 3pm in the afternoon and because of the perfect weather and all the women who obliged my request for floral frocks – it felt like a luscious garden party, (Emma McCleary said it felt to her like a wedding!).

    There was good food, plentiful wine, The Comforter cocktail, Simon (Emma B’s partner) played live banjo, which was just beautiful. The guests were many different kinds of lovely!

    For the ‘formal’ bit at this launch, Helen spoke again, then Pip Adam and Maria McMillan spoke about my writing and said extremely humbling things, then I read poems and all that, and then Natasha Allan did a closing blessing, which set me off crying a lot.

    (Oh and there was a notable earthquake.)

    Both launches went without a hitch and were just (as far as I’m concerned) perfect. I really couldn’t be any happier. Sometimes dreams come true. Check out this cheesy grin:

    If you want to see more photographs, I made a set on Flickr HERE.

    *

    NEWS! My poem ‘Garlic Planting Time’ is the Tuesday Poem on the Booksellers Blog today, HERE.

    & I’m also the Tuesday Poet, on Winged Ink, Helen Rickerby’s blog, HERE. & Helen wrote a little bit about the launches on the Seraph Press site HERE.

    *

  • ‘The Comforter’ launches (1)

    It’s early Monday morning and I just said to my editor, Helen Rickerby ‘Isn’t love the best drug? because I am still high from all the love at the launches!’.

    Helen and I did two launches, in two cities in two days! They were both really beautiful and special in their own ways.

    For a taster of the Wellington launch, Emma McCleary has written a post about it HERE.

    I held it together pretty well through both launches, but at the blessing part of the Wellington launch, (the very end of the formal bit) I lost it completely and cried like a baby, which was a little embarrassing, but then my friend Ben said: ‘Don’t worry. It just made it more ‘Helen’.’ Interpret that however you like.

  • a flower falls

    ‘A flower falls, even though we love it; and a weed grows, even though we do not love it.’

    –Dogen

  • off, off it goes

    I’m launching my book in less than two weeks.

    I would love to see you there, if you are in Palmerston North or Wellington!

    Here are the details:

    Palmerston North launch: Friday, 2nd December, 6.30, Palmerston North City Library. Books available on the night for $25. There will be refreshments and general book related frivolity. All welcome!

    Wellington launch: Saturday, 3rd December, 3pm. The Wellington launch is at a private residence, so I don’t want to put the address on the internets, however, if you would like to come to the Wellington launch, email me: helenlehndorfATgmail.com – and I will let you know.

    ***

    I got my copies of the book in the mail on Saturday. It was a surreal and lovely moment. I immediately sat down on my bed and read the whole thing cover to cover – even though I know all the poems inside out.

    It looks like a real, proper book! and I feel very proud of it. It IS a real, proper book.

    I’m very much looking forward to, with the help of friends, giving it a good send off into the world at the launches. I’ve organised lively speakers and a blessing of the book. At the Wellington launch there will be some live music!

    It’s really happening. This thing I’ve hoped for since I was a teenager. Someone pinch me!

  • lean in

    I went to the Pohangina valley.

    Clean spring green.

    PIcked up heart shaped rocks.

    Picked up broken glass.

    Picked up.

    They were throwing stones in the water. I walked away from the splashing.

    I walked past the Friday night fire pits, the Woodstock cans and pizza boxes.

    The trees along the bank were just flowering.

    I thought the trees were thrumming with their flowering, thought I could hear the flowers.

    Then I leaned in and it was bees. Trees were thick with bees.

    The bees sounded like effort and essence, it was a vital sound.

    Bee frequency. Bee transmission.

    I closed my eyes. I leaned in. I could smell new vegetation. Clean growth.

    The trees told me. The bees showed.

     

  • beets and pieces

    First some writing news – Fourth Floor Literary Journal is up and I have two poems in it! Yay! You can read them HERE.

    Back HERE I mentioned my friend Helen wrote an essay about ‘Taking Care’ (killing) ‘Of Animals’. It’s also in 4th Floor. It is a funny, chilling read – you can read it HERE.

    *

    I continue to be tired. It’s like when you’re on a Merry-Go-Round and you jump off and you have to run so you don’t fall over and then you feel a bit dizzy and woozy until you get your balance back. That’s me right now.

    *

    The Beetroot liquid makes a great vegetable dye (the vinegar in it acts as the ‘fixer’.)

    After we ate the beets, I had some beautiful hand-spun wool that a friend had given me, but it was in pastel colours. I prefer stronger colours so I dyed it with the beet juice. Here is how it turned out:

    What am I going to use the wool for? No idea. Back into the stash cupboard it goes for now.

  • unexciting gluts

    Sometimes I end up with an unexciting glut in the garden. Recently it was silverbeet.

    A silverbeet glut is not like a tomato glut, or an apple glut – where your friends will get excited and happily take bagsful off your hands or you can make bulk delicious things like ketchup and apple sauce.

    I tried giving away some of my silverbeet and got either screwed-up faces or ‘No thanks, I’ve got lots of my own in the garden.’

    Poor old silverbeet.

    While it does freeze well – in the Manawatu I can grow silverbeet twelve months of the year, so I didn’t feel especially motivated to freeze what I know I will have on hand fresh. However, if you live somewhere with a snowy winter – there is an excellent photo-tutorial of how to prepare greens for freezing over on TEND BLOG HERE.

    I am, however, thrifty to the core and wasn’t going to let it go to waste – so I picked it all. It was a green supermarket bag absolutely chocka. Once cooked down, it was about twelve cups. That’s a lot of silverbeet.

    I love silverbeet, but it does have a strong iron flavour – so I thought, right, I’ll do something with it which will temper the iron flavour.

    I made a huge mixture of egg, strong cheese, fried onions, chopped olives and chopped sundried tomatoes – I figured the cheese and olives would be a good accompaniment to the strong flavour of the silverbeet. Then I made pies. And pies. And some more pies.

    I made four full sized pies and two dozen mini-pies. We ate one that day, and the rest I wrapped and  froze. The mini-pies have been great for taking to work for lunches.

    & that is the story of the great silverbeet glut of ’11.

  • the poppies live on

    A few years ago, I rescued a whole lot of plants from a garden in my old neighbourhood which was about to be demolished.

    When I moved to my new house, just over a year ago, I was careful to shift a lot of the tiny poppy baby plants from the legacy of that garden-save. (At the time, with a whole household to move, faffing about digging up tiny seedlings seemed kind of mad – but I now I am glad I took the trouble to do it!) I am happy to report they are doing well, and doing what poppies do in their second year, which is ‘pop’ up in all kinds of places which are often not garden beds.

    As well as the red poppies from the old house, this year I also planted big pink poppies. Alas, on the verge of flowering magnificently – they got blown over in last week’s winds. I will leave them in anyway, in the hope they still go to seed, so I can at least have them next year.

    (Photo one above is the pink poppies about to pop. Photos two and three are rununculas, in lieu of the (now horizontal) pink poppies. The rununculas are being the pink poppies ‘stand-in’ for this post – lol.

    I also planted yellow californian poppies. These are lovely, elegant plants. In New Zealand you often see them around lakes and rivers. There are lots of bright orange ones around Lake Taupo, for example.

    As well as poppies, I’m planting as many self-seeding flowers as possible so that after a few years, I will have a low-labour, self-sustaining flower garden.

    Viva la poppies!