Dry spell not all bad news

Ross Millar from Millars Vineyard is really happy.   “The   long   hot dry periods have concentrated the flavour,” says Ross optimistically. “Although the competition will be fierce, we can expect some  award winning wines this year.” Grapes from the Block have been gracing our table for the last month. Box has had to water the new plantings from last year but the older vines have stood up well.

Liz Cameron from Lochiel Estate Vineyard and Winery tells me it has been   a  wonderful   season. The best for the entire country for 70 years. “We are about to pick our flagship chardonnay this week,” she  said.  Lochiel is known for their chardonnay and the 2013 vintage will be something to look out for.

Up at the Block one of my pineapple  plants  has at last flowered. And not just one flower. There seems to be some off-shoots around the base. Not quite what I was expecting.   I  will  have  to wait and see what develops over the next six months.  Jo Roberts  says her blackboy peach is ab- solutely laden and so are her apple trees. Our golden queen has kept us in roast peach desserts.

This week we say goodbye to Box’s mother Joyce who died  in  Paraparaumu aged 92.  When Box was about  three  his parents  bought  a house by the sea at Paekakariki. Behind the house was a large   vegetable   garden in which her husband Harry  grew  most  varieties of vegetables to feed their   six  growing   boys and  they  both  belonged to the local horticultural society.

The house, pohutukawas and ngaios sheltered   the   garden   from the  strong  north  westerly winds.  In front  of the house was a wide lawn which Box remembers as being a perfect place to store their surf boards – one step from the house, collect the  board  and cross the road to the surf. Joyce’s flower  beds  surrounded  this lawn.
Joyce had a great passion  for  flowers  and  in the flower beds grew her favourite   gladioli,  Dublin bay rose, leucosper- mums, proteas and bo- ronias with pansies and livingstone daisies spilling  on  to  the  borders. One  year  she  won  the Horticultural Society Award for her flower gar- den. Harry remembers that she would have loved to have been a florist. For her eldest son Neil’s wed- ding, Joyce arranged all the flowers in the  church and at the reception. Lyn, Neil’s wife remembers them  all  being  gladioli. I know that when she came to stay with us one of the first things she would do would be to ar- range flowers around the house.

Amazingly on the day Joyce died we welcomed her latest great grandaughter  Samantha May into our family. The first child of Ruby and  Mark in  Christchurch,  she  is our seventh granddaughter and  has provided the family  with  a  shaft   of happiness.