In a blue sky, there’s a ragged thickness of cloud above the valley, maybe grey, maybe rain-filled, but now, before the sun rises, light from beneath the horizon colours the underbelly of the cloud with pink then gold.

The deepness of the colour intensifies by the second, as birds call from each side of the valley and far off to the left, a massed honking of unseen geese. The Hawkduns and Mount Ida are deep blue, the paddocks of long grass tawny-grey, the willows dark brown. All drama and light is in the sky. On the lawn, sparrows in the damp grass, their soft whirring of wings towards the pines, the dark bouncing of birds on air, and over the paddocks and then the poplars and further and further away, a hawk sailing.

The air is fresh. I’m wrapped in a blanket on the edge of the verandah, my feet on stone. When I look up again, the cloud has shifted apart, teased out, become grey, become white, become gauzy blue like the sky. The light now bright over Mount Ida and the first rays on Blackstone Hill, a warm gold on the ridges and gullies and tors. Each morning its tussocked sides the first to announce the coming day.

Black hawk soaring in front of gold clouds, where the sun takes its time to bird song: plover, paradise duck, magpie, starling, and the first bright disc over the Mt Ida range, a shining forth through the poplars. Blackstone Hill, on the opposite side of the valley, brighter and paler, answering back. Now the silver birches are golden, the willows lit up, the long grass with seeded heads shining.

In summer, when the sun rises over Rough Ridge, the mountains become translucent, pale as the sky, but now with the sun lifting over their ridges, they are blue-black, a solid line of horizon while in front of me now even the small blades of grass shine green, the marigolds orange. Warmth now, and sun on my fingers and pen. Behind me the shards of rainbow rise from Blackstone Hill to the clouds.

It’s not all brightness. Now that there’s sun, there’s shadow; the long forms of dark from pine and poplar and willow. But there’s colour too, the willows no longer sombre but yellow and green, the broom dark green by the stream, the cherry blossom leaves orange and brown and red, and on the Hawkduns now, as the sun lifts higher, their slopes become a lighter blue, there’s the remnant white of snow in gullies, the long spurs visible.

Then though there’s sun and light and blue sky, it begins to rain, a fine passing mist, light filled. And still the birds sing, and sing.

The post Ida Valley Musings – The Coming Day first appeared on Jillian Sullivan.

Wind and cold, the yellow leaves flying off the willow trees at the same angle and velocity as the snowflakes.

Looking across the paddock its hard to define what the sky or trees release. The Hawkduns and Mt Ida are blanked out, Blackstone Hill hidden, and on Rough Ridge snow cloud is whitening the peaks and tors.

I climb up into the mezzanine, where after seven years, the apex of the walls above the strawbales has still not been finished. To stem the cold air, I push blankets into the gap, a cot mattress, my father’s jacket. “I pull the rope of my door tighter,” wrote Lu Yün in the fourth century AD, “And stuff my windows with roots and ferns”. For the last seven winters I’ve flown to America and summer to teach. Not this winter.

After lockdown ends, and before we reach temperatures of minus 15 perhaps, I’m going to finish that apex.

The next day, a trip to hospital. The road for two hours is a blessing of open and empty highway, mist on the top of the Pigroot, tussocks flicking, poplars in spires of gold. The hospital entrance is a dystopian adventure – with security, cordoned channel, a barricade you can’t go past unless your name is on a list.

Two people max to a lift, one at the front, one at the back. “My covid test is negative,” I tell the orderly with the trolley between us. “That’s good to know,” she smiles.

After an xray, I’m told its best not to go home unless my tooth is taken out. “Or you’ll be coming back in a helicopter,” the dentist says. I can only see her eyes through gown and mask and googles and face shield. The assistant is similarly dressed. “We were brought in before lockdown and asked for volunteers to keep working,” she tells me. “There are 50 of us. Only six volunteered.”

They work together like friends, as if they have danced this dance many times together. I am grateful for their artistry and skill. For being there. For the masked man who came down the dental school stairs to let me in, and then out. Their deeds will not be frescoed on walls, but glow in a world that needs their brightness.

The post Ida Valley Musings – Dystopian adventures first appeared on Jillian Sullivan.

Witches taper – I liked the sound of that name, and my first attraction to the plant woolly mullein during lockdown was to try lighting a dead seedhead and see if it worked.

Outside in the wind, no. Inside, lit by the fire, a quick blaze up and the smoke alarm set off. As a taper it wouldn’t last two seconds on Outlander, but further research revealed Roman soldiers first dipped the stalks in grease for torches.

I hadn’t had much regard for woolly mullein till I started reading about it. It seeds and grow in my driveway and on the edges of my garden and sends up a not particularly beautiful seed head, I thought. But I didn’t know the leaves of mullein have long been used for the treatment of respiratory tract infections.

In the Western USA, the soft downy leaves are known as ‘cowboy toilet paper’ (and by trampers here). The leaves were once used to line shoes on cold days. But in these days of respiratory infections, or even constant dry coughs, a tea or tincture of mullein leaves is said to be helpful (and noted almost 1000 years ago by Hildegard of Bingen).

I’ve picked and dried some leaves. Now to use some of that cheap vodka I bought for making hand sanitizer to make a 1:2 tincture for my cough.

In Ireland, mullein was grown to use against tuberculosis. The yellow flowers, soaked in oil, produce a healing oil for a child’s earache, or for lymphatic swellings. Could this plant I’ve yanked out or turned away from be something we ought to let grow in a corner of our gardens? Its seeds stay regenerative in the soil for up to 100 years. There’s something about that resilience that calls to me.

Yesterday was 24 degrees here, and a hot excursion on the hill for rosehip gathering. Today, wind strong out of the north-west, the willows roaring with it. Tomorrow, snow again, and time for tincture making, rosehip top and tailing, and more stewing of apples.

The post Ida Valley Musings – Witches Taper first appeared on Jillian Sullivan.

In autumn, there’s a red flush on the hills here – the briar rose and hawthorn offering their bounty of scarlet and orange-red berries. It’s taken seven years for it to sink in that these freely available flowerings can offer us health and the enjoyment that comes from rambling around and picking.

And now that thousands of cyclists aren’t passing through the village, the apple trees that line the old railway line are loaded with fruit too. These trees grew from cores thrown out the window from passing trains, and from the seeds have grown trees bearing sweet and crunchy apples, a godsend for a hot cyclist.

I’ve enjoyed them on bike rides myself. The laden trees are now another symbol of how life has changed here – the pub and café closed, the street and bike racks empty of the conglomeration of bikes, the quick smiles from strangers passing through or stopping to talk, the washing lines in the valley empty of the lines of flapping white sheets and pillowcases and towels.

For many of us make a way of life here by offering cyclists shelter.

In yesterday’s foraging, from our own gardens and along the rail trail: rosehips, hawthorn berries, apples and elderberries. The rosehips I like to soak in almond or organic oil for at least three weeks in a cool dark place (first top and tailing them and then cutting in half) for face moisturizer.

After rereading Isla Burgess’s book The Biophilic Garden and her entry on rosehips, I’ve decided to dry some and grind for teas. Rosehip tea is high in lycopene, an antioxidant ‘linked with reduced risk of heart disease and cancer.’ Isla recommends putting approximately 3cm of dried ground hips in a jar and pouring boiling water over. Stir now and then for the next 30 mins. “This is a syrupy, beautifully coloured, naturally sweet, warm drink.” Isla’s books on herbal medicine are highly recommended.

Today there’s snow on the peaks at the end of the valley. No wonder the fire was welcome last night. A still, fine but cloudy day, dry enough yet for more foraging.

One of my favourite Brian Turner poems, Deserts, for instance, reminds us that what our eye may pass over or disdain, holds its own beauty, strength and healing.

Deserts, for instance

The loveliest places of all
are those that look as if
there’s nothing there
to those still learning to look

The post The art of seeing what’s there – and what to do with it. first appeared on Jillian Sullivan.

In the east, Rough Ridge golden as ever, the tors slanting against a blue sky.

On Blackstone Hill, to the west, shreds of cloud murky over the ridges and gullies. Beyond the willows, in their first flush of yellowing, and deep into the southwest, grey clouds mass. The breeze is buffetty from the southwest too. How long can the blue remain?

At Ranfurly, the nurse calls out from the surgery window: “Stay in your car.” Shortly, the doctor walks out fully gowned and masked and gloved. There’s an outdoor table set up with a line of testing kits. Beyond the carpark, the Kakanui Ranges.

I wish last night I hadn’t read that having a covid test was like 20 out of 10 for pain. Until then I hadn’t considered the practicalities. But how bad can a slim stick be?

“You haven’t got tears,” the doctor says. I must be doing it wrong.” I think its because the process is so interesting. Not just the swab stuck so far up your nose it feels like its touching your brain, but to be out in a gravelled yard at all, a nurse calling questions from the window. Thirty seconds without blinking, and it’s over, somewhere on the comfort zone between a mammogram and cervical smear.

Over forty thousand people have sat just like this in their cars or wherever, enduring the prong, with the same hope that in not too far-off days, we will be going back to work and ordering coffees again, and those of us who need to stay safe will be safe.

I don’t know what it is that makes the sheep outside my window startle and begin their trek through the grass again, in single file and mobs (ah, now after weeks, there is a reason: three young people in shorts and five eager dogs.) One young man shuts the gate, closing the sheep in the front paddock, and then I see the farmer at the far gate, which is open.

Perhaps the days of plodding sheep in my dry and tawny fields are over. But as for all of us, we follow what the Government says, against our own desires, and not only because the government says so, but because, as, American author Wendell Berry says, the government ‘governs by the consent of the people.’ And the people want to do what it takes to be through this.

A pinprick to the brain. And for the sake of those I dwell among, I am grateful to say, a negative one.

The post Ida Valley Musings – Thirty seconds without blinking – 5 April first appeared on Jillian Sullivan.

“Look at this world/spinning for us/even in the dark/ look at this world/spinning for us/ giving us hope and sun…” (Sartori and Quarantotto)

On the road to Ranfurly, I play Andrea Bocelli singing Canto della Terra – Song about the Earth. The road climbs past the fields of matagouri and hawthorn, swoops over the Ida Burn and up onto the higher tablelands. Bocelli’s voice soaring.

On my last trip to Nelson, driving up the length of the ravaged West Coat, I let my thoughts fly to his voice, imagining, oh, my essays out in the world, the exultation of the music stirring my hopes.

On the long drive home, after a health scare, I drove through the mountain passes listening to the song again, and wondered if I would even live. As if these were the only two responses to the music: adulation or grief for oneself.

On the way to Ranfurly, the song again, and my thoughts lifted and flew to the world, as if to each precious family sheltering in their own ways, to each precious worker needing to be out amongst it all, such a wave of unbidden, unselfish love.

The song the same, but the response as if walls had come down between ego and aroha, a silent tearing of the shell that makes me think I am I in a world of others, instead of I am you, am we.

Over the Rock and Pillars, white cumulus rise. The land on each side of the road stretches away, the grass golden to the hills.

The post Ida Valley Musings – Song About the Earth – 3rd April first appeared on Jillian Sullivan.

This morning the mountains are a dusky blue, their curves accentuated by shadows. A low cap of softness, like smoke, hovers over the ridgeline of the Hawkduns, some of it wisps into the gullies.

On Mt Ida the cloud hugs tight, hiding the peaks. The cloud grey-blue underneath and on top the newly risen sun lays a brightness that promises heat and a sky- blue day. In the willows, the sparrows and starlings chitter and sing. There are magpies ardling and oodling in the pines beside the cricket ground. No other sound but birds. No frost either.

The long blades of grass on the edge of the paddock beaded with dew though the tall spires of seed heads, the timothy and cocksfoot, are dry and quiver in the early breeze. Already small insects stir.

Far away, against the blue flanks of the Hawkduns, a flock of ducks. I hear them honk before I see them, the sun catching their wings in flashes of light. Perhaps all over the world the insects and birds are like this – filling the space of sky with their song and their flickering.

It is humbling, and just, to think that while we falter, the wider community of land and air and creatures, to which we have always belonged, grows stronger.

The post Ida Valley Musings – While we Falter – 2nd April first appeared on Jillian Sullivan.

It’s still again today, the toi tois upright. That’s saying something in a valley that’s the hottest, coldest, driest and windiest valley in the country. So the legend is. A few winters back it was minus 21 degrees here for three days in a row. And wind enough to send the neighbour’s henhouse with hens flying over the fence or upend corrugated outhouses or sweep my chairs off the verandah as if they were bark.

A still and sunny morning. And in these close-down days, not easy to get to a doctor on a Sunday. First a 40 minute wait on the phone, then two interviews with nurses, then a video conference with the doctor before he agrees to see me and prescribe penicillin. But he wouldn’t do a covid test, telling me the same advice Healthline had – you haven’t been in contact with any known cases… He told me the penicillin would be expensive on a Sunday. But I’d already decided, on hold for forty minutes, that I would do what it took to get better. In the past I haven’t honoured my body so well.

But in the pandemic, in the country, in the dark of night, I understood my health is priceless. “They never tell you anything that’s of any real use,” David Malouf writes in his novel The Great World, which I’m reading at the moment. “Even the books. Even the great ones. You have to learn it for yourself, just as it comes.”.

On the long drive to town we realize autumn has arrived – the poplars turning gold, the willows emerald and yellow. Because this is an essential trip into town, we can guilt-free drive down to sit by the Clutha. The river is cobalt blue. Last week it was summer, then snow, now the leaves are brightening and falling.

The post Ida Valley Musings – Learning it for Yourself – 1st April first appeared on Jillian Sullivan.

Early evening, and the grey cloud has lifted from the flanks of the Hawkduns and the sun lies weakly there, faint shadows and stipples on lightened ridges.

On Rough Ridge too, the tors in subdued light. It seems so long since I took it for granted I could climb up there, even in a snow storm, just to feel the strength of nature, the wind and snow. Perhaps now it’s too far to walk up there, too risky to climb where in the 1860s young children followed a three kilometre track to school over the ridge. In these days, what is right? But even so, I don’t have the energy yet.

This morning I read in the Otago Daily Times a line: we shouldn’t spend our time in isolation “exceedingly self-soothing”. So not just Netflix and news. But to do something positive. My temperature was down and my mind began to fill with ideas – writing, and learning new music on the piano, preserving, cooking. I chose to try and fix my weedeater.

It lay in the carport as I hadn’t had the time or inclination to face it, and what better time than lockdown? I consulted Youtube videos for the wrong models or advertising models or outdated models. In the end I sat on the verandah and consulted the weedeater itself. Found a way to get the lid off the spool. Used a rusty nail to pick out long strands of tussock grass and shredded flax and some white nylon string. Poked about, pulled out the string and reinserted it. Assembled it, and it appeared to work.

I spent half an hour in the garden dominating long rye grass amongst the tussocks and old hollyhock spires. My face reminding me now and again that it was swollen, sore. On a break I consulted google again, becoming more lurid with my descriptions of symptoms and outcomes. Who knew there were so many things could go wrong with a body. Still, I feel the effect of coronavirus on the medical system through my own distress at not being able to get to a doctor for another four days. By then the golf ball sized swelling may be an orange.

My friend Roi, who was often in hospital, would sometimes write his newspaper columns from his hospital bed , keeping up the humour and not once mentioning where he was or his own anxieties of the future.

I watched Netflix but the new rule was that I had to work on my ragrug while I watched. First I resisted picking up the sack and the rug needle, then I didn’t want to stop. Just one more row, one more row, while I watched three episodes of Shameless. That could be my challenge, finish the rug (which was for Brian’s 75th and now he’s 76) by the end of four week’s lockdown. And one new song on the piano.

The post Ida Valley Musings – Creatively Self Soothing – 31st March first appeared on Jillian Sullivan.

A bright morning yesterday, so bright we had to sit with our backs to the sun to read the paper and drink tea. What did the day hold?

Planting cabbages for sure. Also, marigolds from my friend Mary in Nelson. She’d sent a box of comfrey roots, lettuces and marigolds home with me, in a different life when we drove places and visited friends. Last week, for instance.

I loaded the car with waratahs and old sheep netting from Nelson and drove to my front paddock where the sheep have been chewing my newly planted natives, the flaxes and cabbage trees and rushes. I whammed in the waratahs and rolled the netting out, stretching it to hook on each waratah in some semblance of fencing.

Every day the sixty or so perendales Barry has put in here to knock my long grass back, walk in long trails across the paddocks as if they’ve heard in the far corner there might be something better. One way, then an hour later, single file again. Their backs shine in the sun when the sun is setting, and the other day when it snowed, they walked single file with a layer of snow upon their backs. Now, they have to skirt my new fence, and perhaps the flaxes and cabbage trees will raise new leaves.

In the afternoon, sick, so that I crawled thankfully into bed while it was still light, books, and laptop, and sleep. Just good. But shitty too, and no energy to write or be useful in anyway. For a change I read covid symptoms again, then read again the numbers and where they’re spread, and again the ones found in Central Otago.

Brian calls in morning and night to check on me. When I open the back door to tip out coffee grounds, he has left a box of chopped kindling by the step. At night, I can’t get tv to work but Netflix works so I watch that till late, not even guilty, the fire glimmering.

In the morning when the sheep walk past, one has a row of six starlings on its back.

The post Ida Valley Musings – Single File – 29 March first appeared on Jillian Sullivan.