MOTUNAU

Sometimes, the plants that leave the biggest impression on us live in gardens beyond our own.

- Some plants we cherish live in gardens beyond our own.

They get to reside in one of the most beautiful places in the world, with birds, trees, a river. Yet, they suffer a range of ailments. Conversely, at the back of a small salt windswept garden is a self-sown peach tree. The leaves are unblemished, the fruit uninhabited by insects. It is strong and healthy. This garden is in our little bach in Motunau, north Canterbury.

It is dry here almost all the time. The nor’west winds are wicked beyond belief, but it has a lovely, simple charm of the imperfect. There are no shops. People are here because they love it (or because they love fishing).

We are selling the bach because how can we care for it when we live on a farm that requires so much work? It isn’t the kind of place that would be easy to live and work from, so I don’t feel bad about having somewhere that someone needing a home could use, but it does feel wrong to neglect it. We are very privileged to have had a place we could go to get away from time to time, from the winter shade that was our Lyttelton home for many years.

Bought as a wee section with an old garage, together with a friend, we cleaned it up while our boys played with their Action Men on the grass. One son was young enough to enjoy just being here. The other, slightly annoyed at having to be here with us, nevertheless brought his friends up here when he was old enough to come up without us.

There are memories of the children and their friends playing for hours on the beach, throwing stones into the waves. Memories of collecting stones to make the wee garden bed, of picking up bedraggled flax plants that had fallen from the eroding cliffs in a storm, and taking them back to plant here. They are still there, beneath the kānuka trees that some friends planted as a windbreak and a gift for their time here.

My favourite time to be here was in winter when it was quiet. Only the people who truly loved it were still here. Neighbours who would come up every weekend, no matter what the weather. We once drove up here with some Japanese students who were staying with us. It was a stormy night and it took us three times as long to get here, but we had the best time.

There have been births and deaths in the community. People coming and going, all leaving a part of themselves in the landscape. Neighbours who got up early to get the boats ready for the tide, others who slothed around (maybe that was just us).

There was a family we called the Bigs because everything they did or owned was the biggest – big boat, big house, big car and the loudest voices as they got ready to go out. Another neighbour who admitted to us that he was scared of ghosts and that was why he always brought friends with him when he came to stay.

I got keen some years and threw around some vege and herb seeds in a wee patch I dug. I see there are still some potatoes growing and that the pineapple sage has survived.

Motunau has wild parsley in abundance and I still grow my parsley from that seed. It is robust and dark green. It never wilts. I figure if you have parsley in your garden, you will survive. For a while anyway.

We also planted a lemon tree here many years ago. I’m not sure why we did that, except maybe to feel that we are making a tiny step towards self sufficiency. (I see that my old book on self-sufficient living in still sitting on top of the fridge.) The tree is finally fruiting for the first time this year, although the tree itself is only knee high.

We also planted a kōwhai seedling that a dear friend gave me when my mother died. It too is thriving. I will be sad to leave that.

I thought about collecting seed for it but, apart from being the wrong time of year, it is a responsibility – one that if I fail to grow another tree, I will feel I have failed in my love to my mother. So I have decided that it is too big a burden.

I will let it live on here and hope that the next person will too. If not, then that is just another time passing.

We will be sad to say goodbye. Goodbye to the house that always felt so nurturing, to the tiny garden that was only work if we wanted it to be. Goodbye to the sound of the sea at night and the wide open skies and moonlight. To the memories of the children growing up and sharing the days with friends.

All my fruit trees, big and small, old and seedlings, are struggling. They are watered, fed, fenced off from dangerous animal teeth.