Matariki

Friday night was a special occasion at our school, as we celebrated Matariki (the Māori New Year) with a powhiri and hangi. The school my children attend is small (approx. 55 pupils, up to year 8 (13 year olds)) and rural. It is the centre of our community, as there is nothing else here! We are close to two villages (5 minutes drive), and two towns (about 15 minutes drive in either direction). We have almost lived here for two years, but it feels like a lot longer as we are all so settled, and that is mainly due to the school.

 

Matariki is the Māori name for the cluster of stars also known as the Pleiades. It rises just once a year, in mid-winter. Traditionally, Matariki was a time to remember those who had died in the last year. But it was also a happy event – crops had been harvested and seafood and birds had been collected. With plenty of food in the storehouses, Matariki was a time for singing, dancing and feasting. Matariki, or Māori New Year celebrations were once popular, but stopped in the 1940s. In 2000, they were revived. Only a few people took part at first, but in just a few years thousands were honouring the ‘New Zealand Thanksgiving’. [taken from Te Ara - The Encyclopedia of New Zealand.]

As the school had not held a powhiri (Māori for welcoming ceremony) for more than two years we were part of the manuhiri (group of visitors)  who were welcomed by the tangata whenua (hosts) to the school. This involved us waiting at the entrance with the other families while we were called on to the grounds. A powhiri must involve four people, one female to do the karanga (call) and one male to do the mihi (speech) on either side. [Further info can be found here.]

When we got to the top of the drive we took our seats and there was singing and speeches. We were honoured that "H" was chosen to say the mihi for the manuhiri.  We then lined up for the hongi - where we shook hands and pressed noses and foreheads, which means that one is no longer considered manuhiri (visitor) but rather tangata whenua. This was a completely new experience for the hubby and I. It was lovely to see how the kids took it so naturally, but then they have the benefit of a bi-cultural schooling. As I said to them all we learnt at school in the 1970s was a couple of pretty dodgy songs that had been translated to Māori. We weren't taught the correct pronunciation of  Māori words, so now the kids correct us!

 
H's mihi:

Kia ora koutou

Kua tae mai nei mātou

Ki tenei kura

Ki te hakari o te matariki

Ka nui te koa

Mo to koutou kaha

Ki te koreroreo

I nga take

E pa ana ki teneu kura

Ko (his name) toku ingoa

No Whakatu ahau

He uri tenei no Haina

Inananei e noho ana ahau ki Mahana i te Waipounamu

He whakatauki - Matariki ahunga nui

After the powhiri, the refurbished classroom was officially opened by the local MP, with "H" (being the eldest at the school) along with the youngest pupil cutting the ribbon. Then we waited for the hangi to be opened.

A hangi is the traditional way of cooking food in a pit in the ground. There is a real art to laying a hangi, and is was carried out by one of the dads. The kids had earlier dug a hole in the playground, and on Friday morning a fire was lit to heat up pieces of metal (traditionally stones were used) which were placed in the pit with the baskets of food wrapped up in tin foil and cheesecloth. The baskets of food were covered with damp sheets to keep the soil away from the food (traditionally leaves would have been used).  I think it took about 7 hours for the food to cook throughout the day.

Hangi food has a taste that is so unique it's hard to describe, it's definitely smoky but not like barbecued or smoked food,  its very moist too, very delicious. There were three different meats, potatoes, pumpkin, kumara (sweet potato), cabbage and stuffing. It had been years since the hubby or I had eaten at a hangi, and it was the first for the kids.

It was getting quite dark and cold by this stage, but with the fire still blazing, and the stars above us it was a magical night. We were home by 7.30 to light our log burner and warm up!

This is my attempt to get a shot of the super moon setting on  Monday morning, about 7.30am. Here's a much better photo of the moon rising, wish we'd been home to see it, but we were driving back from Blenheim after a weekend of dancing competitions with Miss L.

It's quite amazing to turn around 180 degrees and see the sun rising at the same time.

"H" actually got better shots than me the following day! And of the sunrise too!

And remember to come over and follow me on Bloglovin - if you don't already!

lighting up

This is one of those blog posts that's been in  my head over the summer. It's also the first one I've written dedicated to interior design. So hopefully I'll not bore you with my lights. When we moved into this house 16 months ago one thing that struck me was the totally boring lighting design. It consisted of the hideous inset downlights in every room. The only pendants were two ugly generic things hanging over the kitchen bench. In the kids bedrooms there was only one light switch by the door and no reading lights. Our bedroom was not much better, but at least I had a switch by the bed to turn off the ceiling lights. So something needed to be done, and finally this summer we added some retro character to our house.

The cheapest solution for our bedrooms was to hang lights with long cords that plug into the three point socket. First up was Miss L's. I had the cord and plug from a broken light, and found the red plastic woven lampshade in an antique shop. They only thing we needed to do was wire it all together and add a on/off switch along the cord and hang it from the ceiling.

The photo of the out of focus cornflower was taken by L herself a few years ago, before she learnt about focal length. The greenery is in focus. I framed it as love the colours and composition.

Next up was H's room. He's a bit harder to please (being almost a teenager) and therefore I had to spend a bit more money and brought a funky red cage light off a local website. But when it arrived the cord that wasn't long enough and it had no on/off switch. So a trip to Mitre 10 was needed to buy an extension cord and the switch. By this time H was really enjoying playing the electrician and was doing all the wiring for us.

The photo is of H when he was about 2 and in the collecting-the-biggest-stone-possible-from-the-beach phase. Other artwork is his own, from quite a few years ago, when he still enjoyed his art.

For our room I brought some gold flex on Trade Me, which works well with the brass mesh lightshades I found at the recycling centre. The lamp in the corner was another shade I found at the dump (sorry recycling centre!) which we put onto a lamp that's shade got damaged when we moved years ago. Soon after buying the light shades I also brought two  mid century oak drawers on Trade Me which also happened to have brass handles. I then read in a magazine that brass was 'in' this season, wow I've never been this current in my life!

Note the carefully staged shot to avoid seeing the piles of clothes that are lurking on my side of the bed.

Last up was the kitchen pendants. Again I scored two perspex lightshades at the dump. I had planned on selling them on Trade Me, as the colour is a smoky purple, which wasn't quite me. But we tried them above the kitchen bench, and they are perfect.

More carefully staged shots of kitchen. Although maybe I should have cleared the junk off the top of the microwave. Or better still moved the ugly thing that just sits on the bench because there's no other space. One day there'll be the new kitchen post.

Yes I have been planning this post for so long that those are our Christmas lights along the front of the house. If you look really carefully in the above photo you can see the lights of Nelson and Richmond twinkling in the distance.
 

Sorry I couldn't stick totally to interiors, so had to throw in some sunset photos for good measure.

I've still got time to join in with Max's Op-Shop Show-Off party.  All light shades (except one) qualify and I'm definitely showing off!

And, thanks for the words of encouragement on my last post about continuing with this blogging malarkey. It's actually a bit of a milestone for me today, as it's two whole (Chinese) years since I started blogging.  So Gong Hey Fat Choy to you all in the year of the snake.

happy holidays

Yesterday morning we went for a bike ride on the newly opened part of the cycle trial that is being established in the region. It's known as the Great Taste Trail, due to the Tasman-Nelson region being renown for growing all sorts of crops, livestock farming and fishing.

The small part we did was from Rabbit Island over the Waimea River to Lower Queen Street in Richmond. It only took about an hour return which was more than enough as the sun was getting quite hot. Living on the hills to the west of the Waimea Plains it's nice to get out on the flat for a ride.The boys in the family don't mind downhill mountain biking, but us girls don't like having to do too many gear changes so are much more into refined biking along nice paths!

 This is looking west, we live somewhere out there probably on the far right. It's about 10 minute drive in the car, it takes a lot longer to get four bikes secured to the bike rack! In the foreground is part of the estuary, the tide was out so there wasn't much water to be seen.

 The cycle trail goes around the edge of the estuary, so it's good for bird watching, on the other side is farmland. This is looking south, it was a great day for clouds. I just wish we'd get some rain, but think we are in for a long, dry summer. We get out water from our roof and store it in three large tanks, so we are more fixated about rain than we used to be!

Near the river there was a paddock with a herd of Clydesdale horses. I could only get a photo of these two, the others were too far away. These horses are still used by the family that has been breeding them for over 100 years.

 Here's Miss L riding onto the new swing bridge. It's a lovely blue colour which doesn't show up with the bright sunshine.

On the way back we stopped at this old tank that has been restored. Hubby thought it was an old water tank, but as H pointed out why does it have a door and windows! Good point, unfortunately there wasn't an interpretation panel here so we are none the wiser.

 After packing the bikes back onto the bike rack, we headed back the way we had biked to a berry garden. This is one of our favourite pre-Christmas rituals, picking raspberries and boysenberries. I think we may need to go back on Monday to get more for Christmas Day.

We have had our tree up for two weeks, we have an artificial one because of allergies. While I miss the smell of a real tree I don't miss the mess, as in the heat it doesn't take long for needles to start dropping. The kids decorated the tree, with some input from me! Miss L loves tinsel, as I restrained her tinsel use on the tree, I let her decorate a driftwood branch with some, no restraint there! The felt hearts I made a few years ago, they were the first crafty thing I'd made, and have lovely old buttons on them.

This year the only decorations I've made is a garland of felt circles from an old jumper. I like how the red matches the red in my painting.

Wishing you and yours, where ever you are, a very Merry Christmas.
Sally xx

spring-like

Yes I like spring, but when do you know it's here and winter's gone? It's hard to tell sometimes, and when you think the season has changed it flips back.

Some of the signs of spring are that the weather is very changeable, this weekend was an fine example of that -  lovely Saturday, crap Sunday! Blossoms are starting to appear. Lambs are being born. The pollen is here, my sinuses are in overdrive. The beach was covered in yellow, I've never seen that phenomenon before.

 And just to confuse you we preserved some Granny Smith apples we were given a week ago. They are great keepers, they were probably picked 5 months ago - but I think they're close to the end by the smell that was coming out of the box! My mum was a "preserver-extraordinaire!" She would bottle enough fruit so that we could open a jar a day! I cannot compete, it's quite disheartening when one large pot only produced 4 jars. We have not finished the box, we need to keep on with the preserving*.

*preserving = bottling, canning of fruit in jars for future use.

The jars we use in NZ are called Agee jars, and the metal lids on the top are called Perfit Seals, and the metal ring is a band. The way I make stewed apple is the way my mum did it. Fruit is peeled and sliced, thankfully we have a nifty gadget to help do this. The fruit is stewed by slowly boiling, with just enough water to stop them sticking, and no sugar is added. Jars are washed in hot soapy water, then placed in an oven at 100 degrees C. Seals are put in a small pot and boiling water poured over them. When the fruit is soft and mushy fill a hot jar almost to the top, then using tongs take a seal and place on the jar making sure there is no fruit around the rim, then tightly screw on a band. The next day check that the seals have worked, they should be slightly sunken, if not the fruit will need to be kept in fridge and eaten quickly. Remove the bands and put jars in cupboard to have stewed apple whenever required. Around here we use it for apple crumbles and apple sauce when we have roast pork.

I'd be interested to know how others preserve apples in other parts of the world.

After that long and rambling post I'm linking up with Cathy at {tinniegirl}

lazy Sunday afternoon

Here's my Mother's Day posy handpicked and arranged by L. It's been a bit of a lazy Sunday, we did a spot of pruning with my new telescopic loppers, and that's been about as productive as it got. Afternoon tea was at a local cafe, but as I forgot my camera and phone there are no pics of muffins or coffee or the sea, you will just have to imagine them! It's nice to be much more relaxed than this time last year, when we were in the throes of open homes and stress.

I don't seem to have been taking many photos of anything other than sunrises lately.  Just about every morning there's one that looks different so I'm often on the lawn in my pajamas! I do zoom in quite a bit, as we are some distance from the sea.

On May the 6th we had a "super" moon, which according to the experts was 14 per cent bigger and 30 per cent brighter than other full moons of 2012. I was lucky enough to be outside as it rose over the hills, and quickly grabbed my camera. It certainly looked large and when rising was an amazing orange colour.

We live very close to a road, there is just a lawn and a low hedge between us and the road. Thankfully its a country road so there is not much traffic, in the weekends there seem to be more cyclists than cars. Across the road the hillside drops away, which gives us the feeling of being perched on top of the hill. Yesterday the light was skimming over the grass and paddocks so I clicked there as well.

 

We were in fact watching the fog over Nelson, and hoping it was going to move so the hubby could fly home! He did get home after about an hours delay, which has to be the best Mother's Day present I could ask for.