The intertidal zone

The day after Canterbury’s buildings underwent their first trial by earthquake, the nor-west wind roared through Otago, shoving at trees. This beauty used to supervise the playground. Falling, it considerately divided for the park bench. Its heart was worn out. Today the DCC sliced and carted it away.

Sap is rising in the garden, bringing flesh and blushes to the magnolia next door, and making trees vulnerable (does it?). A roguish nor-easter felled the pink-flowering manuka across the front fence and footpath last week. Sap glistened under the bark. Its wood was wet in the saw’s teeth, and weighed in our hands as […]

On the most interesting walks, only a short portion of the track is visible at a time. Unless you’ve travelled that way before,  you can’t know what lies around the next corner. Or the one after that. If you could see the tiger crouching up ahead (or, let’s get local, the dead possum ponging, or […]

. . . but as purposeful? Do you sometimes wonder, after a day of buzzing hither and yon on the internet, if you still have what it takes for  solid reflection, retreat, and rich, slow creative endeavour? Here’s a prod for contemplation: an essay Driven to Distraction: Cate Kennedy on the internet and the writing […]

One of the residents (chez moi) said there’s no excuse these days for putting out food that looks less than enticing. He suggested I go and try ‘enhance’ and ‘crop’ and ‘brighten’. I did all of these things. I think the plate comes over a little garish, that the centre of the pastelito resembles rather […]

I saw treats like these in the pastry shops in Buenos Aires last year but Elena would always say I mustn’t eat those ones; wait until we got home. ‘Home’ was Jujuy in the far north, on the outskirts of the city, and early in my stay we wandered out the gate onto the gravel […]

Lest anyone gain the impression that Polly’s merely a pretty face among cushions… She does her bit. Structural edits mostly. We of the five digits do the close work and the proof reading. Thanks everyone who tripped through the intertidal zone the last couple of days, and said so. That was fun!

Now and then, despite your best intentions and efforts to be Present, Here and Now, you’re struck by a sudden longing to be somewhere else, such as here on a wild Ahuriri River tributary where the air smells of wet rock, beech litter and snow. Or in some other homeland, heartland of your own. And […]

Warm landscape. Warm hospitality. And here’s the generous interview posted by Tim Jones: Books in the Trees, talking with me last week about Island.

Poet Salman Masalha writes from Jerusalem on the recent exploits of ‘Israel’s pirate army’.

The ‘elusive’ Jellyfish Nebula, 5,000 light years away. Closer at hand, Claire’s Antarctic Medusa.

I think these were my great aunts’ undergarments, hand-made, of course, with all their intricate, undisplayed detail, which I’ve lugged about for years in an old cotton flour bag, along with a couple of well-cured ferret skins and skeins of old lace. I freshened them up in Nappysan and sunshine, then Alex appropriated them for […]

I was moved when my mother wrote after reading Island that a couple of the characters reminded her strongly of my two grandmothers “— strong, practical, optimistic  (especially after a little time alone with their feelings). And Liesel too could have been Granny Grace carrying on until the tasks were all done during the 1918 […]

It’s been the oddest time of late. And yet not entirely unexpectedly odd. Collectively, we on Earth have brought ourselves to a strange and delicate state. I’ve been dealing with upswells of anxiety and I mention this because I suspect I’m not alone in it. While I try to examine myself for local causes, I […]

Shot from behind: I found this dress by cacherel in Ushuaia of all places. Elena talked me into it. With the pashmina from Yaks’n’Yetis, I was all set for Sophie and Ryan’s wedding. For those of us writers slow to take a square look at the need for DIY book promotion — which can feel […]

I wished I had the camera last night: just when we think the meal well and truly over, the waiter comes out flourishing a fish to set on the lazy susan — entire, ‘crispy’, teeth bared, fins awry, standing on its plate, to all appearances freshly electrocuted. I wished I had it this morning at […]

… organic specks in the same starry broth as this dust pillar of the Carina Nebula. (Astonishing sights are posted each day on the NASA gallery.) What does it imply, that we have seen such things? Sorry, no Tuesday Poem today but do check out the others.

Elena and I found this in the kitchen on the Atlantic coast. Does anyone know what it is? Last night a small group of us found ourselves gathered around another mysterious object. Like two large woks meeting at the rims, the burnished metal hang is somewhere between flying saucer and sorcery. Its upper surface is […]

Well Afterwards, I stood with my child on the river’s bridge over the storm swollen rapids. Make your two wishes, he said, and into my hands he pressed shredded petals he’d found, fallen from the peach-silk hot house flowers he calls ‘the singing plant’ for their glorious, open mouths. Their colour flared like tossed coins […]

(Tara-kihi) Nevertheless, we ate her.