February 6, 2010
Holly and Mia put their feet in the water and screamed. “Freeeeezing!”
It was hot in the Wairarapa that summer, and we were at a tiny beach along Palliser Bay, not far from Ngawi. Unlike my most recent drive to the coast, this was a gorgeous day. The sky was perfectly blue, and the heat intense.
Stingray (image from Wikipedia)
“But the water’s sooo cold!” Holly yelled. Mia went running, her arms flapping wildly, back up onto the black volcanic sand.
Holly and Mia are my nieces. They were 12 and 10 then, just last year, and visiting over Christmas with their parents, my older sister Amy and brother-in-law Mark.
The sand burned our feet, and Mia did a funny dance on her tiptoes as she ran back into the water. Soon all of us were in the water splashing around – the four adults and two children. The chilly seas of Cook Strait felt good against the heat of the day.
That was when we first noticed the undertow.
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Family, New Zealand, River & sea | Tagged: abel tasman, coast, stingray | 
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Posted by Moon Over Martinborough
January 23, 2010
Rain had been falling all night and throughout the morning when we climbed into the trusty little Nissan Pulsar. I threw four pairs of gumboots into the hatchback, started the engine, and headed for the coast.
Palliser Bay (click to enlarge)
Sitting next to me as I drove was Rick’s Aunt Charlie – a retired nurse from Iowa who, at nearly 70, still has a passionate enthusiasm for life and the boundless energy of a 16 year old.
In the back seat were Titou and Gabby, a delightful European couple.
Titou is a wiry Frenchman with a quick smile. Gabby is a petite Polish woman whose traditional Polish potato dumplings are so delicious that they’ll make you wish you grew up in Warsaw.
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22 Comments | Family, New Zealand, River & sea, Roads | Tagged: seals bay sea rain storm Nissan | Permalink
Posted by Moon Over Martinborough
January 2, 2010
No matter where I’ve lived in the world, if I couldn’t get back to Michigan for Christmas, then a little bit of my boyhood Michigan Christmas has always come to me – in the form of a box of gingerbread men.
Our gingerbread persons (click to enlarge)
Whether we’ve been living in provincial Japan or crowded Tokyo, central Wellington or out here in our rural paradise of Martinborough, the gingerbread men have always come.
That is, until this year.
Things had changed, and the only way we were going to get them this year was to make them ourselves. We’d never done that before, in any country.
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32 Comments | Family, New Zealand | Tagged: Christmas, gingerbread men, gluten free, gratitude, molasses, recipe | Permalink
Posted by Moon Over Martinborough
October 24, 2009
I was standing at the kitchen sink and looking out the back window when I first saw our chickens sneaking into the backyard. I froze.
The Forbidden Zone
They were headed straight for The Forbidden Zone.
It is a truth universally acknowledged that chickens untended get up to no good. Anyone who keeps chickens knows this. Given the chance, they’ll make a bee line towards the most freshly planted, unfenced patch of garden only to begin wreaking havoc with all the wild abandon of drunken sailors in a bar fight.
When we first got our young hens, we kept them in the chicken run for months on end. They were small and there are feral cats and stoats around, so it was for their own good. But when they were big enough to start laying, and when they began laying consistently in the nesting box, Rick and I decided they were old enough to be granted the occasional shore leave.
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20 Comments | Chickens, Family, Garden, New Zealand | Tagged: chicken coop, Chickens, chook house, Garden | Permalink
Posted by Moon Over Martinborough
September 26, 2009
Over 6 years ago my sister called from Michigan and left me a voice mail message that I’ll never forget. “I have something to tell you,” she said. “I think you know what it is.” She was right.
Foggy morning view of the grove
I knew my dad was dead.
Significant events always come with stories, and when I called my sister back she told me the story of how he died. It was a story I would hear many times over the next several weeks, from several people – where they were, how they found out, how it happened. We turn important stories in our hands, listen to them from every angle in order to grasp their enormity.
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11 Comments | Family, New Zealand | Tagged: death, Family | Permalink
Posted by Moon Over Martinborough
