There is a river at the bottom of our property. To get there you step out the front door, then walk along the rosemary hedge, across the top paddock and into the olive grove, through the bottom paddock and a dense cluster of trees, then finally down to the water’s edge.
The river in summer
The miracle is that you can do all of this without ever leaving home.
I fell in love with the river during our first summer here. Everything about it was perfect. Time seemed to stand still there.
I had no idea that the river as I knew it would soon disappear.
That first summer Rick and I were trying to prune the olive grove ourselves, even though we had no clue what we were doing and had only the weekends to do it. The trees hadn’t been pruned for years, and I found myself spending long afternoons in the Wairarapa heat just cutting out the ‘suckers’ – the tender, unproductive branches that shoot up from the trunk.
At the end of those afternoons I’d wander down to the river, sweaty and hot. I’d throw off my shirt, boots, and socks and fall back into the cool, clear water.
Posted by Moon Over Martinborough 
