Cottage Life, Village Life

We’ve been nearly three months here at Foxglove Cottage, with another month more to go.  Life has settled pleasingly into routine, something I was desperate for after months of frenetic activity leading up to our exit of Riverdale.  When Dave is away up in Auckland every second week it’s quiet here – my thoughts flow all the better and I find time to write each day.  I am a better correspondent than I have been for years.  My time belongs to me and me only, my meals become simple affairs of cheese and an apple. 

Back in early December we planted a variety of lettuce, herbs, and spinach greens – they have finished now, having fed us throughout the summer each and every day.  As they go to seed, I’m pulling them up and replacing them with flowering bulbs.  I hope we get to see them flower in spring, but the chances are our Cottage will be on the market by then.  I think I’ll feel the pain of parting intensely.  We hope to replace it with something closer to our new home, something we can use easily and share with others.  There is no doubt that this wee home has been a very special place.  Just five rooms – a kitchen, bathroom, lounge cum dining room, and two bedrooms – housework is a cinch, done in a flash with no need to change power points with the hoover.  No ensuite, but the steps needed to reach the bathroom would probably only number a couple more.  Every inch of space is used judiciously to maximise storage.  I’ve even started using the car boot as extra space.

I could have connected, I suppose, with the local folk more than I have… but I’ve found myself drifting to solitude as is my way.  It’s nice though, to walk through town and greet half a dozen people by name.  I like to dip in and out.  I’ve never particularly enjoyed drop in visitors – I think I need to psyche myself up for social encounters.  So I keep my waves and smiles friendly, but rarely stop for more than a few words. 

I walk every morning – most days just as the light is starting to paint the day.  I walk out of my driveway and cross State Highway 8, then turn off right and head up past the old indoor pool, now decommissioned and awaiting a fate on which no-one can agree.  On past the hospital and medical centre, beautiful gardens designed and opened by Maggie Barry of TV Garden Show fame.  Past the old Nurses Home, now an impressive heritage red brick private residence surrounded by holly hedges with drifts of roses spilling through and for sale.

I turn here and start a gentle descent past the school and sports fields, a few more cottages and then the immaculately kept Holiday Camping Ground with its rust coloured wooden chalets, beautiful lawns and groves of redwood trees.  A month ago it was packed with happy campers, now it is more the chalets that are in demand for shearers maybe, or folk just passing through.   A number of large, modern caravans are permanently parked, awaiting the weekends when their doors and windows are thrown open and their owners sit back in deck chairs with a book and a glass of wine. 

The landscape then gives way to fields filled with sheep mostly, who baa mournfully as I pass by, but one holds 6 lovely, plump belted Galloways whom I greet each morning – I miss my cattle, I find.  I turn another corner and on my right is the oxidisation pond (more a small lake really) of the town’s biofiltro plant.  A long, low, seemingly unmanned building turns sewage into pleasant and usable water, something that obviously works exceedingly well, as there is never any odour, the pond and surrounding beach is littered with water birds splashing, quacking and generally enjoying life. 

On my left three sheep paddocks run up to the cemetery which is sited along the top of a hill, sometimes I take the steep path that leads to it, and walk along the ridge – it’s a place so filled with peace that its tangible.  I wish the Crawfords good morning as I pass their shared grave, where Isabella laid for 30 long years before her husband John joined her in 1914, and tell them that we are loving their little cottage. 

Other times I stay on the road, which winds through a valley with a trickling stream beside me, tall oak trees towering overhead giving welcome shade on a sunny Otago day.  Moss grows on the road through here, and it’s very quiet with the headstones just visible on the hilltop.  It’s rare to see a vehicle pass, but once a rough looking, unshaven man slowed his ute to a stop behind me and I did wonder briefly if I was about to be strangled with my designer, felted snood (in a pretty shade of lavender blue purchased recently at the weavers gallery in town) but it turned out he was just checking his sheep. 

At a bend in the road there sits two decidedly sinister houses.  One, an old cottage, was clearly once very similar to ours, but derelict now with grey tattered curtains fluttering out of sightless, gaping windows.  The second is almost completely enclosed by trees which loom over it and looks as if it too, is partly dilapidated although I do see people staying there from time to time.  I call this pair the Haunted Houses, they both have a creepy feel to them, but the one in the trees is the worst by far.

And then I emerge from the tree-lined road on to the Highway again, past the policeman’s house and tiny station, and along a gravel track back towards town, passing a row of houses – one sporting an old coach from the staging days.  Past the Peace Garden where the war memorial stands, and round a bend to drop down into the main street with its veranda clad shops and cafes.  I wave to the man at Wrightson’s (farm supplies) who starts at 7am, and then the ladies in the Four Square (mini mart) – looking across the road to see if I can catch a glimpse of Liz who is setting up her café for the day.  I call “Good Morning” through the mesh door to Jan the butcher, who usually has the Stones playing loudly as she cuts up a pig.  Sometimes I stop for a chat with Kelly who at 6ft 7 looms above me - he works for the council and performs many tasks from emptying the bins, servicing the public toilets, mowing the roadside strips and keeping the streets free from litter around town.  Once a month when mowing the berm outside our cottage, he swings in and mows our lawns for us.  It’s a true case of “not what you know”…

On past the Museum and the Athenaeum Hall, a peek in the window of the beautiful homeware shop, Olea, and past the strange shop selling nothing but smoked eggs and then it’s time to turn to the corner and head back along Whitehaven Street where five blocks along, my little cottage waits…

There is tang in the air most mornings now, and the need for a light jacket at times.  In the last few days I’ve noticed the leaves are just starting to get the first yellowish tinge to them, and the crab apples on the tree beside the cottage are beginning to glow a rosy red.   Soon it will be decidedly autumn, and our time here will be at an end.  And between you and I, part of my heart will remain, I think…