Posts Tagged ‘friends’

Whanau and friends…and a dead calf

Friday, February 22nd, 2013

A wonderful evening with three generations of family from four countries plus our neighbours. Wine, coffees, chippies and chocolate under the stars whilst we chatted and laughed the evening away.

We could have stayed around the table on the deck forever, underneath a three-quarter moon and stars – except a stench that has wafted over our place intermittently over the last 36 hours returned with a vengeance.  

As the assembled whanau reeled from the stink, I grabbed a hunting lamp and headed off for to track down the source but a quick search of our place revealed nothing.  My mate Johnny jumped the fence ahead of me and a wander around the adjacent farm revealed a dead and decomposing calf in a tomo* in the paddock nearest our house. 

We’re off to the Helensville Agricultural & Pastoral Show tomorrow but I suspect the afternoon will involve a call to the farmer (away on holiday) and a session with a digger to bury the calf/fill the hole.

*Tomo is Maori for hole or small cave. These are usually formed by underground streams eating away at the dirt above until the top caves in.

A Harvest Of People

Thursday, November 24th, 2011

For all my friends  – especially those celebrating Thanksgiving today – I’m blessed to know you.

Let us give thanks for a bounty of people:

For children who are our second planting, and though they grow like weeds and the wind too soon blows them away, may they forgive us our cultivation and fondly remember where their roots are.

Let us give thanks;

For generous friends…with hearts…and smiles as bright as their blossoms;

For feisty friends, as tart as apples;

For continuous friends, who, like scallions and cucumbers, keep reminding us that we’ve had them;

For crotchety friends, sour as rhubarb and as indestructible;

For handsome friends, who are as gorgeous as eggplants and as elegant as a row of corn, and the others, as plain as potatoes and so good for you;

For funny friends, who are as silly as Brussels sprouts and as amusing as Jerusalem artichokes;

And serious friends as unpretentious as cabbages, as subtle as summer squash, as persistent as parsley, as delightful as dill, as endless as zucchini and who, like parsnips, can be counted on to see you through the winter;

For old friends, nodding like sunflowers in the evening-time, and young friends coming on as fast as radishes;

For loving friends, who wind around us like tendrils and hold us, despite our blights, wilts and witherings;

And finally, for those friends now gone, like gardens past that have been harvested, but who fed us in their times that we might have life thereafter.

For all these we give thanks.

A Harvest Of People by Max Coots