I am back in Winton, as you will perhaps have guessed from the length of my last post ... only with free Internet can I afford to be this verbose, this often. The only thing it costs me is sleep...

Tomorrow promises to be another fair, fine day. There is some wind, and a slight rain tonight ... perhaps only dew.

If it rained, I would have tomorrow off, as it's Saturday. But the days are holding fair-to-cloudy, and the flowers are "moving;" they continue to open a little more each day. Each day, six or eight of us go into the field (I do not know its size, but those who have cars tend to drive from one end to the other along a side road; walking it takes a few minutes). It contains a lot of peonies, of many lovely varieties.

We take small knives, and cut the flowers -- at first, it was cutting sideshoots and rotten buds to leave only healthy, promising stems; now we are picking stems, every day. We can collect three or four baskets of a given variety one day, and return the next day to find more flowers ready to be picked.

The tallest and finest are to be exported to Denmark and US and other places as orders come in; I imagine them on banquet tables and behind podiums in grand halls for the holidays. Others, too short to ship, and too pretty to abandon, are collected haphazardly to be turned into bouquets and sold for lesser prices. These I get to see as Janelle makes them up; some we enjoy in the house, but most go to carts and florists in local towns.

It was supposed to rain tomorrow, but instead now we think it will not rain until Tuesday. So tomorrow we work again, at least a half day, to keep up with the flowers. Additional cutters are flying over from Denmark to arrive on Wednesday; but if the weather goes as predicted, we will have cut most of the flowers before they get here, leaving them nothing to do and rain to do it in.

Kathie's cool storage is already almost full; we emptied all the less valuable or faded flowers out of it today to make room for a few more crates of good ones. On Monday, we will have a refrigerated container/truck, which will be sorely needed.

At least the cool, fine weather means the flowers are not being rotted or ruined. A good crop makes work a pleasure; there is the enjoyment of excellence, as well as the good mood of the boss and other workers. Only the youngest employees have been complaining at the increase in the pace and hours. I am old enough to enjoy the fact that I am still young enough to enjoy exhaustion. The women older than me take satisfaction, like any harvester, in finally picking what they have spent long hours spraying and tending ... and more than some harvesters, because the plants themselves are beautiful.

In between picking peonies, there is sorting peonies, cleaning up the stems, "giving them a drink" in tubs full of sticky water, washing buckets and getting baskets ready for tomorrow, and sharpening knives.

I enjoy the two-sided whetstone (coarse and fine grit), and the coarser-stemmed varieties can dull a blade in an hour. (There is a grinder, which might "sharpen" more quickly ...but a shame of a way to treat a blade. NB for those who have never worked metal: When steel turns blue and purple with heat, the temper (hardness) of the steel has been changed. Except in the hands of an expert, the process tends to degrade rather than improve the blade. I learned this during a month of blacksmithing, but am far from expert, so I intend to keep as much of the blades as possible in their original condition.)

I like keeping tools well. And I enjoy using the tools I've maintained -- the first hour back in the field each time is markedly easier going, until the coarse stems begin to dull the blades again.

Another craft I'm taking up again, in my "spare time" in the evenings, is leather-carving. I did this for four or five years as a child, gave it up about the time I started riding horses and playing basketball. But I haven't forgotten the technique, and a shop I visited in Christchurch (which had some appalling examples of stamped leather to stand in for the intricate craft I was taught) got me motivated to start again. New Zealand themes are marvelously suited to the medium: Maori patterns, Celtic and Lord of the Rings variations, and the peonies and other flowers that I'm surrounded with here, are both inspiring and marketable. So I hope to get some pieces to the local fair next weekend ... cranked out a couple of wallety things and three bracelets this evening ... I'm burning the candle like nobody's business!

So if you don't hear from me again for a while, I'm keeping busy, or possibly sleeping. Running ... swimming ... dancing old-time dances ... to shake off the repetitive motions, and be well.

For those who would love pictures, tough; that's about the only thing that Kathie's technology here can't cope with gracefully. (Or should I blame my camera for not speaking to Macs?) In any case, it'll have to wait for a slow day when I can get into town.