Struan Farm

Stop and Smell the Roses

The roses have started to bloom at Struan Farm, not just the early ones, hooray!

I recently learned that "Dublin Bay," the red rose above, was bred by renowned international rose breeder Sam McGredy, who emigrated to New Zealand from Northern Ireland in 1972. He was instrumental in getting plant breeder's rights introduced in the country, amongst many other things.

The pink roses above include "My Mum" and "Compassion," while the orange roses are "L'Oreal Trophy" and "Frilly Jilly." "Paddy Stevens" and "Platinum" are still gearing up. "Crepuscule" is blooming down in the Homestead gardens, but that's an entirely different world here at Struan Farm, for another day.

Pondering Naturalisation

This past week as I was trying my best to give away all those spare tomato plants I was reminded (repeatedly) that I still say TOE-MAY-TOE rather than TOE-MA-TOE. Sometimes I say TOE-MAY-TOE-TOE-MA-TOE as a bit of a joke. But I truly feel I'd sound affected if I were to say TOE-MA-TOE, that's just not how I pronounce that word. While my word usage has changed over the 16+ years I've lived in New Zealand, and my accent has softened, I'm still not pronouncing things like a native. (The exception being those things that exist entirely in this context, like place names.) I think I'd sound affected, like I was putting it on.

But something happened the other day when I was out in the veggie garden that has had me thinking. I was talking to myself about "herbs," and pronounced them "herbs as in Herbert." Not "herbs is in urbs" the American way (or the French way without the l'). I stopped myself dead in my tracks. This had bubbled up automatically, straight out of my subconscious. I actually had to pause and think about how to say the word properly, or at least the way I always used to say it.

John jokes that my brain is being rewired. He blames Trump, with tongue firmly in cheek. In my view there are a lot of things to blame on Trump but this isn't one of them. It seems I'm becoming naturalised, progressively.

All in Favour of "Fantastic Extravagance" Raise Your Hand

The first poppies have started to pop in the gardens here at Struan Farm. I went around last autumn and liberally sprinkled seeds around various beds. So much so that I found myself needing to do some culling this spring, since poppies were taking over everywhere and crowding out things I didn't want them to. This is an old heirloom variety that dates back to John's mum Rosemary, I'm glad we've been able to keep them self-seeding in the gardens, with a little help from me.

It seems fitting somehow that they symbolise "fantastic extravagance" in Victorian flower language.

I also managed to get an entire border of snapdragons self seeding along the edge of one bed. I'm happy to have the jumble of flowers, which symbolise "presumption." Although I'm not quite sure what that means in the Struan Farm context! One definition of "presumption" is to transgress the limit of behaviour that is permitted or appropriate, so perhaps these snapdragons might be viewed as having gone too far, but I don't think so.

First Berries of the Season

Piopio Berry Orchard is open for the season, woo hoo! And even better news, they are starting to pick strawberries, woo hoo! Usually they do a soft opening Labour Weekend, selling ice creams, coffees and asparagus until the berries start to come on, so I hadn't expected berries to be available quite this soon. We had both farmstay guests staying at Jim's Hut and friends for dinner this weekend, and of course everyone got to sample the first of the season.

I'd planned to make Annabel Langbein's sticky date pudding with Chelsea Winter's easy caramel sauce for dessert (forgive the name dropping, but there are different versions of these out there, including by these two cooks, and I prefer these particular recipes). With strawberries available, however, the menu was changed to feature our local Piopio berries. A "strawberry wreath" it was, in fact John asked me to make two, one for each end of the table, to make sure there were plenty of strawberries for our guests.