I’m getting fancy this week and starting with an analogy of sorts. Whilst absentmindedly pulling on my boots earlier this week, my attention was caught by a hint of pink from behind the higgledy-piggledy, sheltering-from-the-wind, pile of outdoor furniture behind the barn. Closer investigation revealed the most gorgeous, perfect peony blooming for all it was worth (which my rapid googling tells me is currently about $12.00) even though it was nearly entirely hidden away. All while lesser specimens are being plucked and plonked and positioned, at $180.00 a bunch, in all manner of auspicious environs.

It was senior prizegiving this week for Farm Girl’s school; can you see where this is heading? No prizes this year for our blooming brainy beautiful girl but that doesn’t change a thing.

Kind of along the same lines, on Saturday a collection of Homesteaders took a break from the chores and lists and ever-growing weeds to step, after a long break away for a couple of us, briefly into the world of academia. As part of The Resident Engineer’s alma mater, The University of Canterbury, celebrating 150 years (making it the second oldest university in New Zealand by two years – yes, we are a youngster of a country) they are running a series of lectures on some of their world changing graduates. The tantilisingly titled Ernest Rutherford – Some Facts You Probably Didn’t Know was too good to pass up.

It also gave Farm Girl her first opportunity to glimpse the inside of a lecture theatre and, afterwards, wander through the university’s Rutherford Regional Science and Innovation Centre

It turned out to be a really wonderful lecture, delivered by a gentleman passionate about his subject, and totally true to its title; we did all learn stuff we didn’t know about one of our country’s highest of achievers – who just happened to start his journey to brilliance at the very same place as our Resident Engineer. Things like his Dad misspelling his given name as Earnest when registering his birth, that every home he ever knew in New Zealand has been demolished without, until recently, any form of recognition save a rather drab plaque (this was rectified in 2021 to celebrate his 150th birthday), and, most importantly for this missive, that he never, ever actually won anything first pop.

The man with the mind that worked out what the inside of an atom was all about nearly ended up working on a farm, at a desk in the civil service, or teaching high school because he was never first choice for the scholarships or competitions. Even his most famous achievement wasn’t in his chosen field; Rutherford received his 1908 Nobel Prize in Chemistry rather than Physics. The Rutherford peony, if you catch my drift, only bloomed for all to see as a result of fortuitous happenstance; a competition winner being unable to commit to two years away from home, for example, got him to Cambridge.

As an aside, after spending an hour or so in the company of someone who really got Rutherford, I’m sure that, if fortune had not smiled and his path through life was confined to our shores, Rutherford would have been just as happy tinkering in a backyard shed, barn, at the kitchen table, or afterhours in the high school science lab. He did what he did because he loved it.

And speaking of doing what you love, I present this week’s Homestead Blooming Achievements:

The tunnel house may not look pretty, but it seems to be acting as it was designed and the last baby of the season, to Buttercup, a girl: Clover.

So in summary, I think the bring-home learning on the Homestead this week is success doesn’t have to be recognised to be authentic. Even if you’re blooming behind a barn, on a patch of rural land on the edge of the world with no one noticing, you’re still blooming.