Nan for May

My thoughts have been on Wales, one way or another during the month of May.   To start off, Betty sent me a booklet, The Lonely Tree, about the lone pine tree that grew on the hill overlooking Llanfyllin. The book was a selection of stories, articles and poems that people had written and sent to the Llanfyllin Council expressing regret at the loss of the landmark tree, and their happy memories concerning it.  I had no idea the tree was so special, nor anything of the mythology that had grown up around it.  In the storms early this year, the old tree blew down.  In case some of you do not know, Llanfyllin was my birthplace, but I did not grow up there.  I spent a couple of summer holidays there when I was in Primary School, with the aunt and uncle in whose house I was born.  My parents were married there, and retired there in the '50s.  My brother Myles joined them, and lives there still.  Since my visit there in 1997, I tend to think of Llanfyllin as my home town.

We have been watching two TV series about Wales.  One was Griff Rhys Jones' Great Welsh Adventure.  Griff was born in Wales, but grew up in Essex, so knew nothing, as he claimed, about Wales before he went to 'discover' it on this program.  We saw many parts of Wales that I knew nothing about, and several that were familiar.  There was one episode about Snowdon, the highest mountain in Wales (not very high really).  As the camera supposedly closed in on Snowdon, there was a clear shot of Cadair Idris, my 'home mountain'.  The shot of Cadair was probably too good to cut.  Even Ray recognized it.  Ray also knew the Mawddach river which was featured because of the gold mines in the area.  One episode was about Aberystwyth, and there was the surprise revelation that it is where the 'Holy Grail' finally came to rest.  Of course Griff was not actually allowed to see it!

The other TV series was The History of Wales presented by Huw Edwards.  This we had seen before, and most of it had forgotten.  Amazing is the early history, Bronze Age and earlier, when the Celts who lived in Wales traded with Eastern Europe and other places.  Like so many small countries, the history of Wales before the English conquest is one of tribal infighting and disunity.  What it could have become as a country can never be known.

Finally, Wales is on my mind because Mark helped me subscribe to Ancestry.com and I have been having a frustrating time searching for my great-grandfather.  A couple of times in the past I thought I had him, even to putting his details on FamilyTree, but now I think that was not him at all! 

Much of the month was spent, not in Wales but in my garden.  This year, for the first time, I accomplished my goal to get it tidied up before the first day of winter.  I had some minor adventures in the course of my endeavours.  Here is an extract from my journal for 8th May.

“Still the rain more or less held off, so it was back to the garden to dig up the last vegetable patch. The soil was really not dry enough, so it was harder work than it need have been, but I am thinking it will get no drier now, and I wanted to have it all sown with winter green stuff.

I had an unpleasant experience.  I had been working perhaps three or four hours.  I felt unwell in some strange way.  I sat in the sun on my wooden seat by the runner beans.  I wondered what could be wrong.  I wondered if I had, as the saying goes 'overdone it'.  I never really understood what that meant.  Worse than that, I wondered if it was my heart beginning to trouble me.  I still had another trench to dig and fill, so I determined that if I was going to get sick, I'd get the job finished first!  So I did.  By the time I had finished the job and washed my implements I was better.  Later it occurred to me that what had come over me was the effect of standing in the compost bin to dig out the last of the only partly decomposed material.  Breathing in compost air can give on Legionnaire's disease.  I had not thought of that, though I should have.”  Later I remembered feeling queasy at other times when digging out compost bins, but not that bad.  I am sure I do not have Legionnaire's!

My garden has done well this year.  I bought a dwarf tomato plant in the spring and grew it in a pot. It bore fruit early, long before the tomato plants in the ground.  Now, long after the outdoor plants are dead and gone, it sits on the dining table, where we can pick ripe cherry tomatoes to have fresh with our dinner.  An amazing plant.

Here is an excerpt from May 13th   “Last evening, wearing my hearing aids in the kitchen, I heard the sound of running water.  It was coming from the kitchen tap.  I feared we had a leaking pipe under the house, but did not want to go searching in the dark.  Ray could not hear anything, so we hoped it was just a neighbour having forgotten to turn off a tap.  Forlorn hope.  This morning I put on Ray's old overalls and crawled under the house, where I had hoped never to have to crawl again.  Sure enough, a joint in the pipes was spraying like a fountain. What if I had not been wearing my hearing aids! There would much water under the house! Ray called the plumber, who arrived on the scene long before we expected him.  Fixed things up for $100.  Ray caught a ride up town with him to do a little business. 

In the afternoon Ray decided to go to Tokoroa.  After he got what he needed in town, we drove to the lake, and walked around the lake bed.  Much working in the marsh.  The water has been out of the lake bed so long, that where they have not bull-dozed is green with grass-like weed.  On a large green 'mesa' sat dozens of ducks.  We left the round-the-lake track to walk upstream on a grassy track behind the houses on Arawa Crescent.  A couple of hillocks have been more or less of cleared of weeds and scrub. They would make good housing sites.  In fact they probably have been designated as such.  Just beyond that I got my foot caught on a bramble, which somehow managed to jump up and scratch the back of my leg.  It took five band-aids in a row to stop the bleeding. I told myself to remember to replenish the band-aid supply in my purse!  On the country side of the lake, the autumn trees were glorious.

In the evening we watched Ray Mears on a canoe trip on a northern Canadian river.  So often I watch things that I wish I had done, or wish that I had been able to do.  This time I watched in great gratitude that I had done it!  Not on a northern river, and certainly not shooting rapids – I never wanted to do that – but that I have had canoeing and camping holidays in the Canadian woods.  Also I had no desire to do it when he did it, in the mosquito and blackfly season!”

As I am quoting my journal, I will include one of my Sunday entries.  “Bishop was not present, being at a training meeting in Rotorua. His counselors were to speak.  Simon King, who was conducting, spoke first.  He talk was so good that Robert Kapoor declined to speak afterwards.  A wise decision, leaving us with Br King's message on the top of our minds.   Simon spoke of mental illness, and well qualified he was to address the topic.

We all knew that his wife Julie is pi-polar, and is often 'ill'.  Julie has become a local and even it might be said a national heroine.  The work she does for the community is something most of us would never do.  Last year she organized and set up a soup kitchen in Tokoroa for the needy.  It is only open one evening a week, but it is a place for the poor to gather not only for a meal but for companionship and comfort.  Julie, in her own off-beat way, called it “Love Soup”.  She was featured and pictured in our local paper many times concerning that endeavour.

Earlier this year she organized a protest against 'legal high' drug outlets.  She held protest meetings outside the Tokoroa shop selling artificial cannabis and 'party drugs'.  Much about that in the paper. She organized and led a march of protesters through the town.  That hit the national news.  That led to people in other towns following suit.  That led to much debating in parliament.  That led to a ban, at least temporarily, on the sale of 'legal highs'.   Now she is organizing a therapy clinic for those trying to get off the drugs.  She says she has to get professional personnel to give the counselling.  I have not heard how that is going. Knowing her, she'll probably succeed. Ask her how she can do all that, she says the 'manic' aspect of her illness drives her.  Simon told me, when I marvelled to him, that it is her way of dealing with her illness.  Long may she succeed and stay 'out of trouble' as she puts it – and out of the psychiatric ward, of which she has had experience.

What I did not know was that Simon himself suffers from bouts of mental illness.  I knew he has health problems, but I did not know what type of health problems.  He was up front about it, and I am sure his words were a solace to many.  He said he was one of the 'broken vessels'.  He quoted the list of myths that people believe about mental illness that are wrong.  He said that 1 in 20 people suffer from mental illness.  I think that could be an optimistic statistic.  I read recently that in America 1 in 3 are likely to suffer it.  There are many sufferers amongst us.”

Here is a fact I am sure you all do not want to hear!  I was able to index the astronaut Neil Armstrong as a relative of the deceased in the Florida obituaries!  His father Stephen died in 1990.

When I received June Ensign it opened itself to the middle pages (local area insert) 

where there was a write-up on the Ormond family of Mahia.  There were photos of their three missionary children (they have other children too).  One was Elder David Ormond, with his companion of the time.  That companion was none other than Elder Calvin Petty! I was excited to see a photo of one of my family in the Ensign, even though he had no name attached. Neither did Elder Ormond.  Unless one's eyesight was good enough to read the names tags, one could not tell which was Elder Ormond and which was Elder Petty.  When I told Nathan this he said he remembered the father, Andrew Ormond, at school.

That's all!      Nan.