Harriet Lean Biography 2000

25/9/2000

OUR GRANDMOTHER, GREAT-GRANDMOTHER and GREAT-GREAT-GRANDMOTHER

We, as Hetty’s grandchildren, great grandchildren and great-great grandchildren have been greatly priviliged. Those of us now in our 40’s and 50’s have had a grandmother much longer than most of our contemporaries and we can look back with many fond memories.

We will always remember the wonderful quality of her baking. When we lived at Twyford, and Sharon, Beryl and I went to school there, we would often go across the road and have wonderful afternoon teas with Nana and Grandad – always the best cups, saucers and plates and the most delicious baking – and the teaspoon of sugar in our tea – forbidden at home but Nana turned a blind eye. Then we would make our way home up Twyford Road while they got changed into their farm clothes and went off to milk their pedigree Jersey herd.

We remember the long drop toilet in the little hut under the tree in the back yard. It was relaced [replaced] with an inside toilet early in the 1950’s but the little hut still was a source of curiosity and investigation for many years.

When television came to Hawkes Bay in the early 1960’s she and Grandad were one of the first in the district to own a TV set and the neighbours were invited to come and watch the images flickering on the screen.

We remember the special relationship she had with animals. She had a gentleness with cows and calves. She enjoyed an empathy with animals right up until she left the farm and moved into Eversley. She gained the confidence of what seemed to us to be the wildest cats on earth – all we ever saw of them were their tails disappearing under the house or into the dahlias as we arrived to visit.

No matter how heavy the rain or severe the frost, her hens were her priority early each morning and she would put on her gumboots, woolly hat and old raincoat and make her way down the driveway to talk soothingly to her hens, and was constantly rewarded with a supply of eggs.

Another love was her garden – the magnificent Magnolia tree near the road, the rose garden with it’s border of grape hyacinths in the front lawn, the colourful dahlias surrounding the back lawn, the fig trees and the constant supply of vegetables.

For many years after Grandad died, she surprised us all with her independence.

One example of this was that she was still mowing her own lawns at 92 years of age, despite the fact that several years earlier, she had lost the top part of one finger reaching under the mower to loosen some grass which was jamming the blade.

When the Twyford School was planning their Jubilee, they wanted to include in their Jubilee Book, a photo of her mowing her lawns at age 92 and she wouldn’t let them. She didn’t think that her mowing her lawns at that age was anything special.

To her younger grandchildren, she was a constant source of lollies in the lolly tin. As soon as they got in the back door it was through to the lounge they went, to check the contents of the lolly tin on the tea trolley and seldom were they disappointed either with the quantity or the selection.

To Andrew, she was Walnut Nana – he always associated her with a constant supply of walnuts from the tree down in the back paddock.