Keirunga News 1982

KEIRUNGA NEWS

Official Organ of The Keirunga Gardens Society
Havelock North

Volume 3, No. 16
July, 1982

Registered at Post Office Headquarters as a magazine.

EDITORIAL

The Society has lost its well-loved and respected Patroness with the death of Mrs. Elizabeth Nelson in her one hundred and sixth year.

Mrs. Nelson accepted the position of Patroness after the death of her husband the late Mr. George Nelson who had been the Society’s Patron from its inception.  Right up to the time of death Mrs. Nelson maintained a keen interest in the development of Keirunga.  She received the Keirunga News regularly and read it with interest, latterly having had to have it read to her.

It was through the generosity of the late Mr. and Mrs. Nelson that their fine old home at Keirunga came into the hands of the Havelock North Borough Council and eventually leased by us to form the headquarters of the Keirunga Garden Society.  This was very much as Mrs. Nelson wished and she contributed a charming verse or verses for the News.

As late as a week before she died she asked that someone write down “a little poem she had in her head” and asked that it be given to me with instructions that it was for the News.  I was deeply touched when I read it – it almost seemed as if she knew she was coming to the end of her long eventful life, and that she was totally at peace.  Here then is the verse she wrote for us:

Oh, hear the bells of Heaven,
How glorious they sound;
Bringing the joy of Heaven
To all the world around.
And those on earth who hear them
Are captive, still as stone
In a miracle of beauty
By Heaven’s bells alone.

Hilda Bradley
Editor.

NOTES

As a mark of appreciation and as a token of our esteem the Keirunga Committee were hosts at a morning tea function for Mrs. Nelson’s family, relatives and friends after her funeral service.  This was held in the homestead in the room looking out over the garden and the Heretaunga Plains where Mrs. Nelson herself had spent so many happy hours.  As well, the Floral Art Group were responsible for the flowers at her funeral service in the church.

The Society offers their congratulations to the Floral Art Group on their Tenth Anniversary this month and extends good wishes for many more years’ productive and companionable activity.

We are very pleased to report that the Havelock North Borough Council agrees in principle to the Society’s proposal to replace the existing pottery building.  This is subject to clarification in respect of the aesthetics and design of the building, and to many other regulations, but it is sufficiently encouraging for the Committee to set up a Building Sub-committee to start the ball rolling.  The ladies of the committee will be asked to set up a Fund-Raising committee to go into ‘ways and means’.  We see a year of activity ahead!

Back to more mundane things, the Potters are quite frantic because Someone will leave on the lights at the end of the pottery.  Several times these have been left on overnight.  They stress that these lights are run off their own power supply – they pay their own power bill.  Please spare a thought for the poor potters – if you switch on the lights to light you way to the house, please see that they are switched off again.

Out of a thousand words written there may be one and one only that need in truth be written.
The rest are wasted ink and paper, and minutes given feet of lead instead of wings of light
– Mikhail Naimy
(From New Zealand Potter)