Where poppies grow

Sometimes we feel very connected to home. Working remotely means we are always in touch with the team in the studio and our fabulous Wellington clients. Modern day technology also enables us to stay in touch with family and friends as though they could just be down the road.

Sometimes home feels very far away. Like birthdays, the first day of the school term, the ballet show we missed, when the children have face-timed family or a friend...

On Saturday night a group of our lovely friends will be out partying at a fortieth and we will wish we were there (we hope you have an absolute blast). It will be one of those times when the distance between us feels very real.

France is so very far away from New Zealand, and while there are many universal similarities, the landscape, culture and climate are quite foreign to us.

But there is one constant and special reminder about the bond France and New Zealand have. History that can never be re-written. On roadsides, unkept paddocks, in rock-faces, en masse or as lonely single blooms. Red poppies. They grow wild and are prolific. Each one like a proud New Zealand soldier arriving on a boat nearly a hundred years ago to the other side of the world. To fight with our allies and defend France. Many of them never returning home.

Their souls reside here in the French countryside. It’s an honour to walk amongst them.

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky    
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.