We have just returned from a weekend in Central Otago enjoying temperatures in excess of 30 degrees and a couple of impressive lightning and thunder storms.
It was the opening of the Otago Polytechnics new Central Otago beer brewing facility ‘Rough Rock’ Brewing company, which enables them to offer a full-time one-year programme in the New Zealand Certificate in Brewing. The impressive new facility also offers automotive and building spaces and in the next few years the Cromwell campus will add to the site with their courses ranging from Hospitality, plant propagation, to rock wall building along with outdoor pursuits.
We had time to spend a night in Clyde and Queenstown with friends that we never get to see enough of during the year. Enjoyed a glass or two of prosecco and delicious fingerfood with two couples from Wanaka that loved the Italy / France tour this year and visited the most inspiring dry garden created and developed by Jo Wakelin just outside Cromwell on the edge of the lake. Without the use of water she has built and shaped her gravel garden into a masterpiece of colour, shape and proportion. I was in awe of her knowledge and tried to soak up all her advice to help us with our own dry windy site where we intend to create a garden.
While Philip had Polytech work to do I spent a fun Monday morning with Lesley who also toured with me last year to Turkey. She walked me around her new homestead in Tarras, home at last for her since her old farmhouse was devastatingly burnt to the ground. She suggested a trip to the farm huts that sit on the edge of the Lindis River 10 minutes away towards the Lindis Pass. The usual dry Central Otago landscape was like green velvet and as lush as anyone has seen it for years after constant rain over the past month or two. As we dipped down off the road the vista of lupins was eye-popping. Carpeting the river on either side the lupins have established themselves throughout the region and for 4-5 weeks a year they show off their beauty in a riot of colour from deep purple, blues, pinks and white. The cute huts had lavender doors and all made a picture perfect scene.
The Russell lupins were supposedly planted on the roadside by a farmers wife -Connie Scott from Godley Peaks Station, near Tekapo. She bought about £100 worth from the local stock and station agent, hiding the bill from her husband for many months. She scattered lupin seeds along the roadside, hoping simply to make the world more beautiful !!!! She now lies in Burkes Pass cemetery beneath a headstone remembering her as the ‘lupin lady’.
Farmers and agricultural scientists found Russell lupins as a potential saviour for merino sheep farming in difficult times.They are a a long-lived and nutritious sheep feed that needs little fertiliser. However, DOC’s stance is that it is unclear whether the agricultural benefits of Russell lupins outweigh a major risk to fragile native ecosystems, including braided rivers and while they looked pretty, they didn’t belong in this high-country landscape. Russell lupins may become an environmental weed as serious as broom.
Photographers jostle for space on the roadside to capture a calendar shot across Lake Tekapo to snow-covered Mt Cook, through a dazzling blaze of lupins or more serious travellers stop at precarious places on the road side anxious to get the ‘Shot’ but creating a danger on the road. You can even find web sites giving advice on where to spot the best Lupins to photograph.
They are certainly stunning and I adored my walk through the head high flower stalks on Lesley’s property. She said she had never seen them look so vibrant and glorious and I suppose that has been the result of the wet Spring too.
This is a contentious issue as the Lupins advance their way across the landscape and wreck nesting grounds of native birds. I thought they looked amazing and so beautiful and would hate to see them irradiated. But I do see ongoing problems for our iconic High Country landscape.
At least I had my bunch of Lupins to fill my colourful Christine Boswick vase. Even if they did have to sit in a lifesaving bucket of water overnight after a hot trip back in the car.
My life is filled with friendships made on my tours from people up and down the country and I am so lucky to have this network of amazing people.
I am working on 2019 tours and confirming hotels. If you would like to join a fun-loving small group tour to Scotland, Turkey or Italy /France next year please get in touch and I’ll send you the tour details.
