Flowers from an abandoned garden

 A bouquet of late spring flowers gathered from an abandoned historic garden

Recently I took a stroll in the garden that used to surround Godley House in Diamond Harbour. The house was built in 1880 and the painter Margaret Stoddart lived there with her mother and sister between 1907 and 1913, when the house and its surrounding land on Stoddart's Point were sold to the Lyttelton Borough Council. Later the house was used as an hotel, and was a popular summer weekend destination for many years. That included 2010, until the earthquake in September damaged it badly. The quake in February 2011, which was centred on the other side of Lyttelton Harbour, did even more damage. The  house could not be saved, and was eventually demolished. Before demolition the community held a wake for the house, with a big gathering for music and reminiscing in the nearby community hall, and then a march to the house site to take one last look at the building that held so many good memories.

 The west facade of Godley House in September 2011, just before demolition.

Now all that remains is a fenced-off area of foundations and remnant flower borders. Margaret Stoddart's painting of the house and its garden in 1913 

in the Christchurch Art Gallery shows the lovely informal garden borders that surrounded the house then. The daisies in the picture are surely the ancestors of the daisy bushes which have naturalised in some parts of Diamond Harbour.

Today other flowering plants from the gardens of Godley House are showing that they too can survive without constant tending. The roses rambling over the hedges at the back of the garden look like they will last a long time yet, and so do the little yellow, white and purple violas that have self-sown into the rough lawn near the house site. Granny's bonnets (also known as columbines or aquilegias) are great self-seeders as well. I will come back in late summer to collect the seeds from this fine specimen which jumped the fence.

The view of the harbour from the garden remains as appealing as ever, but I hope that the site will not be abandoned for too long, and that an even more attractive building and garden will one day take the place of those that were lost. 

 The view from Godley House garden

A longing for lemons

 Helena among her lemon trees.

On my recent trip to the West Coast I enjoyed the bed and breakfast hospitality of Helena Fierlinger at her lovely house and garden in Queen St, Westport. I also admired her prolific lemon trees - and thereby hangs a tale...

...when Helena was growing up in Czechoslovakia in the 1950s citrus fruits were a very rare and special treat, that came only at Christmas time. One year Helena was given a can of lemon juice drink. She loved it so much that she treasured the can with its lemon label for several years. She dreamed of living in a place where lemons would grow in her garden.

For most northern Europeans such places are further south in Europe, in Italy or Greece. The German poet Goethe was recalling Italy when he wrote

Kennst du das Land, wo die Zitronen blühn,

Im dunkeln Laub die Gold-Orangen glühn...

(Do you know the country where the lemons bloom;

Amid the dark foliage the golden oranges glow...)

For Helena, her 'lemon land' was to be much further south again. Getting there involved a long detour via the USA, where she lived for three decades, raising two sons and producing films. When one son and his family moved to New Zealand she also came and created a new life for herself, in a garden where lemon trees bloom and fruit. 

Fern trees grow tall in Helena's southern garden

Helena's raised vegetable beds in springtime

The garden wraps around her charming house. Guests enjoying her generous hospitality can relax in the garden (or on the flowery verandah) and enjoy some of her home-made lemon drink. Helena is no longer longing for lemons, but only for good recipes to use up her abundance of fruit. As soon as I get her Lemon Crush recipe I will share it.

Slices of the West Coast

There are many lovely gardens on the West Coast of the South Island (of which more later) but I must admit that the first thing that caught my eye when I was over there last week was not the colours of garden flowers but rather the colours of these classic Kiwi slices or squares in the window of a Greymouth bakery. 

Later that day, in King Dick's cafe at the Shantytown Heritage Park, I shared the magnificent Chocolate Peppermint Slice below with a friend. A rich treat, with a combination of flavours which seems to be pleasing to the Kiwi palate but not the European one (if my Continental friends are anything to go by), Chocolate Peppermint Slice recipes are many and varied and still popular. This recipe, given away by a supermarket chain, is a nice simple one. 

A few days later we were in Reefton, at the Broadway Tea Rooms and Bakery, where the chief (and welcome) concession to contemporary urban tastes is the excellent coffee now served there. The cakes are very traditional, and included these two slices.

I feel certain that the local knitter of this amazing outfit, photographed in the nearby Blacks Point Museum, was also a great baker of such slices. 

Yet not all the slices I tasted on the Coast were retro Kiwi classics. If you are ever in Westport on a Saturday morning do head for the little market in front of the municipal chambers, where a German baker has an irresistible array of fruit and cream filled slices. These include a slice I have never seen before – Lambada Cake. You can find lots of recipes for it on the web (e.g. at 11 Lambadaschnitte Rezepte) but your German had better be good because this is a real German slice and the recipes are all in German. This slice seems to have a Brazilian name because it contains tropical fruit juices, not because it dances. The Westport baker was also selling a German classic, Bee Sting Cake, which seems to have become (deservedly) popular in the US, in South Africa, and – in Reefton, where it was also for sale at the Broadway Tea Rooms. 

 Lambada Slice is on the left