SECTIONS

Town and Country

NewsFebruary 12

Recalling the cute and nasty, birds and bees, gorse and trees

Right when we want to be basking in summer sun, here comes the long white cloud.
NewsDecember 18

Indiana Jones school of bee pursuit calls keeping skills into question

The call came while I was at lunch: "Your bees are swarming and they're at the neighbour's".
NewsDecember 4

Town and Country: In almost every aspect - could do better

Could do better. It's a comment that blighted my report card all the years I was at school, even on one rare occasion when I topped the class. And I still feel the burden almost half a century on.
NewsNovember 20

Here, there, everywhere when you want them in one basket

Eggs in the hedge, in the woolshed, in the mint patch; eggs on a shelf in the garage, down the driveway, in the coppice: we're sick of our hens running wild and laying everywhere but the henhouse.
NewsOctober 23

Town and Country: Trusted grubber redirects creek

What were you doing before breakfast on Wednesday? Maybe you were making your lunch, or listening to the news before getting up. Maybe you were reading the paper. Me? I was up in the paddock with a grubber, directing a creek back into its channel.
NewsSeptember 25

Town and Country: Daffs' briefer bloom

You'd think I would have sorted things out by now, but every spring it happens - our lambs arrive at the same time as the daffodils, and the only place with lovely rich grass for them is the daffodil paddock at the front of the house. So my beautiful display gets nibbled by lambs and squashed flat by ewes plonking down for a rest.
NewsSeptember 11

Busy as a bee, but hole in defences bodes ill

Well, they finally got me. After a year and a-half of poking around in bee hives, moving them, stealing honey from them, taking them apart box by box to check every frame for disease and generally interfering with the bees, I have finally had a bee sting.
NewsAugust 28

Money really does makes the world go round

Money talks, they say, but all mine has said lately is goodbye.
NewsAugust 14

Busy as bee cleaning out garage

Winter must be on the way out - I've been feeling the urge to spring-clean.
NewsJuly 31

Only way down for roving sheep

When Shrek the famous merino visited an iceberg off the Otago coast, he was fitted with little crampons so he didn't lose his footing in the slippery conditions.
NewsJuly 17

Digging the beginning of a dream garden

I wish I was a gardener; a proper gardener, with neat raised beds bursting with winter greens - silverbeet, spinach, cabbage, cavolo nero, bok choy - and carrots and parsnips just waiting to be pulled up. Broad beans would be well on their way to producing a spring crop.
NewsJuly 3

Seeing things a new with SF MkII

I knew things on the feed front would be tight this winter when Mr Reliable, the gentleman who sells me the bulk of my hay each year, told me he had none to spare.
NewsJune 19

Return to reality in a cold climate

I was riding an elephant in Malaysia when it occurred to me that I hadn't filed (or even written) my first June column, and it was too late to do anything about it. I had no choice but to carry on enjoying my holiday.
NewsMay 22

Hard workers, every single girl

Busy as a bee; a hive of activity, making a beeline. Humans and bees have lived together for so long that the habits of the bees are part of our language.
NewsMay 8

Harbourside bike trail like another world

Otago Harbour shone like glass in the autumn sun. There was not a breath of wind, which was bad luck for yachties and windsurfers but great for the kayakers, rowers and dragon-boat paddlers who were making the most of the glorious weather.
NewsApril 24

Town and Country: Furriers to the catwalks of Europe? It's a possibility

Headlights cut through the early morning gloom; a car crunches to a stop in the loose gravel at the top of our drive.
NewsMarch 13

Perfect week a rarity

Sometimes things go perfectly right.
NewsFebruary 27

Town and Country: Frivolity shelved as we feel for Christchurch

It's sometimes hard to get started on a column, but I've never found it harder than today.
NewsFebruary 13

Town and Country: Brawn defeats drains

I love to think of myself as self-sufficient, and I enjoy the sort of practical tasks there isn't much call for in town: clearing ditches, unblocking drains, that sort of thing.
NewsJanuary 30

Slowed down, though not exactly feelin' groovy

"Slow down, you move too fast ..." sang Simon and Garfunkel cheerily.
NewsJanuary 16

Plans fall apart but what will bee, will bee

We're all going on a summer holiday ... Yeah, right.
NewsDecember 19

Cook book spurs burst of Earth Motherhood

On my bench top is a bowl of flour and water mix, just beginning to bubble. The friendly wild yeasts that hang around my kitchen are moving in, ready for me to bake sourdough bread unlike anyone else's.
NewsDecember 5

Town and Country: Time to buckle down for shearing

For the third year in a row, our sheep have gone wild. They are roaming the property willy-nilly, but this weekend I plan to stop them in their tracks.
NewsNovember 21

Town and Country: Green friends within reach

Christmas is coming; buy, buy, buy. Never mind about a budget. Pay later, pay next year or the year after. Shop til you drop. They make it, we need to buy it. Or do we?
NewsNovember 7

Town and Country: Goodbye winter and wind, hello waves, wine, wildlife and weeds

When a great big anticyclone parks overhead for days on end, my thoughts turn to the beach, and our wee beach house that has been mostly empty for ages.