The mail bag. Photo / Greg Dixon
A sheep arrived in the letterbox this week. No, not a real sheep. It was a card-sized copy of a print of a very handsome Romney Marsh sheep painted by Ray Ching and sent by a reader in Rotorua. A real sheep wouldn’t fit in our letterbox, of course. A lamb might. Anyone is free to put a lamb in my letterbox. I cannot resist a lamb. Who could?
If someone did mail a lamb to Lush Places, it likely wouldn’t be left in the letterbox anyway. Instead, NZ Post would leave a note, as it now annoyingly does, that our package was undeliverable because we were not at home, even when we were clearly at home but they hadn’t bothered to check.
June, our long-time rural postie, would not have left a note. She would have delivered the lamb to the house. Readers would write, on the fronts of envelopes addressed to Lush Places, Near Masterton: “Hello June!” But June has now retired.
All the people she delivered packages to in her decrepit van loved her. All of the dogs on her rural route loved her. She kept a bag of treats for them. When they saw June and her decrepit van, they would rush towards her, tails wagging, in anticipation. She would arrive here at Lush Places and toot the horn and we would rush towards her, tails wagging, in anticipation. We’d shout, “Kia ora, Juney!” She’d say to Greg: “Kei te pēhea koe?” She taught him to say “Kei te pai” in response.
Early on, I used to ask if she would like, say, some shortbread or apple bread I had baked. She’d say, “Don’t ask. Just give.” It was a fair exchange. She delivered our parcels. We delivered baking.
I would cut her a slice of apple bread for her morning tea and wrap half of the loaf with strict instructions that she take it home. It never made it beyond the end of the driveway. Our mates Janet and Blokesy Stokesy, who live just around the bend, once gave her a cooked crayfish. She ate it in their driveway, in her decrepit van. It is hungry work being a rural postie.
When we lived in Auckland, I once happened to be at the letterbox when the postie came by with some mail. I said, “Oh, you might as well just give that to me.” The postie said she couldn’t do that because I couldn’t prove I was the person the letters were directed to. That pretty much sums up the difference between city life and country life.
The last lots of mail June delivered to Lush Places included a handwritten letter from Faith, in Nelson, with a story about sheep: “A person walking in the New Forest was surprised to see a small group of sheep paused at a cattle stop. One sheep lay down on the cattle stop and the others took turns to walk over her.” Yet more proof that sheep are smarter than their reputations.
Coralie sent a card with a picture of her sheep, Cutie Pie, who is being shouted at by a barred rock chicken.
Cherie wrote that she had read about my liking for giving wonkily knitted chickens bought from street markets as Christmas gifts. She sent a picture: “This is my one. I don’t know where it came from and if I didn’t love it so much I would give it to you. Sorry.” Instead, she sent a knitting pattern to replicate a very cute knitted chicken.