Light Gardening

by Emily Menary (Canada)

Making a local connection New Zealand

She stood tall, I noticed that first. Almost elegant, and I became all too aware of my own unfortunately hunched shoulders under my pack. When she spoke, it was soft and easy; as if she’d discovered the secret to small talk long ago. She drove smoothly, and with a polite amount of road rage--what I would later learn was simple Kiwi driving. I had never worked in exchange for accommodation before. I was looking because of the anxiety about what to do next, and I was getting tired of back-to-back...to-back hostel stays. I looked up from my laptop. The other man in the common room-- ‘Cable Guy’--was going on day three planted at his makeshift office desk: two kitchen tables pushed together, tucked around a corner (very cubicle-esque). He had one notebook, two laptops, and five phones, always charging through a maze of adapters and cords, while he shouted into all of them*. I found an online posting looking for some light gardening at a future wedding venue in the Bay of Plenty. Cable Guy threw a phone across the room. I clicked ‘apply’. We turned off the smooth tar of the highway onto a crunching dirt road. I was welcomed by an indifferent cat, a wandering sheep, a large mildly cross-eyed pigeon, and a dog that kept bringing me dead leaves. My host was Laura: a former tattoo apprentice, painter, chef on a yacht, and now the owner of a catering company, and a Super-Host on Airbnb. This property, despite being on New Zealand’s North Island, was right out a Tuscan-style dream perfectly fit for eating, praying, and loving. A tall, grassy knoll sloped down from the driveway into a field with manicured gardens, lush trees, and rows of bushes lining a future pond. I pick a fresh plum from a nearby tree and breathe deeply, taking in all the fresh country air. Five days later, it’s 30 degrees Celcius by 10 a.m. again. The tall, grassy knoll is a knoll covered in Broad-Leaved Fleabanes (a bountiful, seeding weed) that reach 5 feet tall and need my full body weight to be heaved out of the ground. The trees’ dead, drooping branches are what give them that ‘lushness’. And the future pond is in fact lined with thorned bushes, host to some healthy wasp nests. ‘Lucky’ the sheep has escaped from the paddock-- again-- and has just pooped in the car park--again. Lucky is still pooping in fact, while in motion, behind Laura who he seems to think is his fellow human pal. *The next day I would see him talking to police, and the day after, the makeshift office would disappear. The dog ate all the cat food, so the cat--in a raging retaliation to all--has shredded the back of a crisp new sofa. The dog meanwhile, vomited up all of said cat food in the middle of the kitchen. I grab a fresh beer and breathe deeply, cough, then wheeze, from a new day of fresh allergens: New Zealand farm life. But Laura hasn’t missed a beat. She’s out there with us; in the dirt, on the lawnmower, lifting bundles of pulled weeds. After “light gardening”, she tends to her Airbnb properties across towns, but makes time for family dinner. I see her being somehow the only one of us to get stung by wasps, only to (curse, and) keep working. On an odd day, she’ll have us quit early (“ah f*** it”), to sit and have a beer. I trust that she trusts us. I trust to be treated like adults, not nameless nomads. It’s a rainy day off now. Laura dons an apron, bustling in the kitchen. She plays Norah Jones--the first music I’ve heard her play. It’s as if we could lift our coffee mugs to another beautiful Sunday in New Zealand. While this introduction to the world of rugged backpacking has definitely skyrocketed my living standards, it’s from this woman, in this country, doing physically demanding work, and doing it alone, that I’ve learned to see myself as capable. Laura’s playlist turns to Jack Johnson, and I sway a little as I type these words.