Would you mess with this cat? Few people ever tried a second time.
The decision not to replace our last cat – when she shuffled off the mortal coils after 16 long years of cantankerous and unpredictable behaviour – was not taken lightly. Both Mark and I had lived with cats all our lives and were fond of the furry, purry things. But they are killers and we prefer the birds. That decision has certainly had a huge impact on our bird population here. It helps that none of our neighbours have cats and that there has been some control exercised over feral felines. This spring, we are particularly aware of the huge number and variety of birds in residence and feeling that we may have achieved something of a sustainable ecosystem which maintains an all year-round population. Mark’s ongoing efforts to reduce rat numbers by trapping may also have helped.
Our kaka!
Not even the late Buffy cat could have had an impact on the most exciting arrival this year. It was a kaka – one of our native parrots which is limited to small, defined areas of the country these days, nowhere near here. We had never seen one before. A loud, noisy larrikin it was too, one which enjoyed rarking up the tui, swooping around the place feeding from a variety of sources including the mandarin trees. We were not so impressed at it pulling off fat magnolia buds just to throw around for no clear reason (we did wonder if it was aiming at the tui). After about two months it moved on, perhaps looking for a mate and it has seemed a little quiet here since.
The kereru nest scores about 1/10 for skill and care. Viewed from below.
Baby kereru in residence
The kereru – our great, lumbering native wood pigeon of small brain – are a constant garden presence. They also sit about look decorative, posing almost, as they eat the magnolia and michelia flowers and anything else that takes their fancy. Fortunately we have plenty to share. But I thought that few readers are likely to have seen their nests. These are not creations of great skill and care – more a case of throwing a few twigs together and hoping it lasts long enough for the single baby to mature to flying stage. Sometimes the nests do not last the distance, alas. Mark manoeuvred the ladder into position with some difficulty so I could photograph the rather large baby in residence. I will keep an eye on it to see if I can catch the parents coming in to feed it.
Wax-eyes craft exquisite tiny nests
What the kereru lack in nest-building skills, the wax-eyes more than make up with their exquisite little creations mere centimetres across. I found this one two days ago in a conifer I was cleaning out (removing the clutter of dead needles improves the look and air circulation enormously). The hatchlings were so tiny that at first I thought they were berries that had fallen into an old nest and my eyes had difficulty focusing on the minute movements that showed they were living. I backed off immediately. Finishing the grooming of the conifer will have to wait. Two days later, today, I checked again and the babies are now looking up with their mouths open, waiting to be fed.
Trapped on the inside – Californian quail
We would not have the mob of quail that have built up, had we kept a cat. They spend most of their time on the ground and they usually nest at ground level, then lead their babies around from the earliest stage when they still look like little feathered bumblebees, long before they are big enough to fly. I could, however, have done without the two who wandered into my office one night when the door had been left open by mistake and who then could not work out how to exit.
Agitated young pukeko
I haven’t even mentioned the pair of white-faced herons currently nesting in the Pinus muricata yet but neither have I been around with my camera at the right time to photograph them entering or leaving the nest which is maybe 30 metres up. We are hoping that the cretinous man who shot two white-faced herons in the area because they were stealing his goldfish (!!!!) is now too old to still be wielding a gun. I can, however, give you the young pukeko separated from its parents down in the North Garden – and very agitated they all were by my presence there with the dog. These native swamp hens that rarely fly far are wonderful exemplars of survival and adaptability and therefore so common that they are taken for granted and never given the status of their highly endangered cousins, the takahe.
One of the bonuses of having a garden filled with birdlife is that we do not have much of a problem with slugs and snails. As far as we are concerned, good gardening is about establishing good eco-systems as much as it is about pretty flowers.
We once had a much-loved ginger cat called Moomintroll (or ‘The Troll’ for short). He lived to a ripe old aged despite two broken legs in kittenhood, the second requiring amputation. From this misfortune, I learned that three legged cats are good rodent catchers but can’t get the elevation to catch birds. I did wonder about putting a standing order with the local SPCA for a three-legged cat but there is a problem. All our cats have always been ginger, male or female. As far as I am concerned, all cats should therefore be ginger and a standing order for a three-legged ginger moggy who is confident living with dogs might be altogether too specific. We will stick with the birds.
The handsome kereru, our native wood pigeon
Mid spring brings us vibrant clivias in bloom. The ”contemporary” or “landscaped” look is to block plant in a single colour so you may have a swathe of orange clivias with the yellow ones segregated in a different area. This is not our style, in a garden where we strive for far more of a naturalistic, woodland look – “enhanced nature” seems to be the latest descriptor for this style though it is not a term you are likely to see me using often. We like to blend our plantings and combine the clivias with ferns, astelias, bromeliads and any and all of the other plants we use as the understorey in our shady areas.
This completely confused a self-described Auckland landscaper I once took around the garden. This must have been back in the 1990s when ambitious but unqualified young people who, in a previous generation would likely have done an apprenticeship, discovered they could earn more money by dispensing advice and services to the growing wealthy of our largest city. He patronised me all the way around the garden – landscapers, you understand, rated themselves further up the social scale than mere gardeners – and at the end pronounced his surprise that we didn’t grow any clivias. I may have a been a little tart when I pointed out he just hadn’t noticed them, for they are there in abundance.
The soft yellows are still a recent introduction but already widely grown, readily available and making a huge contribution in gardens. Extending the colours into peach tones is well underway and of late the combination of white and green in clivias represents another development. One can, when all is said and done, have too much orange in the garden (NABOC syndrome – Not Another Bloody Orange Clivia) whereas the option of other, softer shades can bring welcome variety and interest. If you covet red clivias, you need to be aware that they open orange and age to red. Do not be like the gardener I heard of who bought a swag of large red clivia plants at considerable expense. When the first ones opened orange, she dug them all out.
Considering the easy care nature of clivias, you may wonder why they are often relatively expensive to buy. It is all to do with time because they are slow to get established and to reach flowering size. In these days of instant gratification, most gardeners want plants that will perform and be showy in the garden from day one. In the case of clivias, be prepared to pay because it costs nurseries money to hold slow growing plants much longer to reach saleable size.
In the meantime, it is The Challenge of the Lytocaryum weddellianum. This is a very pretty little, feathery palm from Brazil, a close relative of the coconut palm but small. It is sometimes referred to as the wedding palm (presumably because it is favoured in pots as green decoration at wedding receptions?). There are a reasonable number of them sitting out in the nursery that Mark bought as baby plants years ago. It is doing particularly well in the subtropical gardens beneath the rimu trees.
We have a relatively large forest of a giant bamboo – in this case Phyllostachys edulis. The neighbour wishes it was not on the boundary and we are trying to be vigilant this spring and doing a weekly round of jumping the fence to grub out the new shoots that insist on popping up in the farm next door. It is a handsome bamboo and of some use as cut lengths in the garden. It is also edible. Sadly, panda bears have not arrived to take advantage of the food source (further proof that the cargo cult does not work) but I am having another go at cooking the fresh shoots this year. To be honest, the bamboo shoots that you buy in tins taste more of the brine than anything else. And even fresh, they are more textural and a carrier of other flavours (as tofu is) than a taste treat in their own right. But they add variety to our diet and I can see a use for them in stirfries. “Please bring me some bamboo shoots for dinner,” I asked the other night. And he did. The big one is past cooking stage. The trick seems to be to harvest them just as they come through the ground and to prepare the white sections that are below the surface. I shall slice some, blanch them quickly in boiling water and then freeze them to see if we use them later in the year. The first batch I poached gently in stock before adding to the dinner that night and they were pleasant, if not life-changing.
The deciduous magnolia season is over, bar 
Now it is bluebell time. It appears that ours are all Spanish bluebells or hybrids. The pink and white variants are a bit of a giveaway. Ken Thompson in 
Bluebell Woods
Somebody, or probably several living bodies, must have lavished a lot of love and care on this section of the graveyard over many years. It was so well done and individualised that it did not have the look of institutional management. Nor indeed of relying on family or descendant management of individual graves – though there were some examples of these.
It was the wide range of plants used, the attention to detail and the many delightful little pictures that were created as a result, the careful colour toning in some areas and the soft-edged maintenance that made me think it was not chance that created these scenes. Many are created as individual small gardens for a specific grave. I could not help but notice that the space of an individual grave back when the 1800s turned into the 1900s was considerably larger than a modern grave; family plots were larger again.
For spring scenes, the cemetery was unsurpassed. I must go again in summer and see if the secret hands have wrought similar magic into the next season.
If you are on Facebook, I have posted an album of additional photos to our 
A sign of an interesting book is when you find yourself keeping it to hand so that you can refer to it in numerous conversations. Not a showy book, in this case. There is a not a photograph in sight and the production values are what might be called utility, so it fails to fit the traditional definition of a coffee table book. Perhaps the descriptor of ‘aircraft reading’, or even ‘loo reading’ captures the format – short pieces between about 700 and 1200 words long which can be read in a few minutes. But for the last few weeks it has been sitting close to hand as we discuss many of the points made in its text.
Tikorangi The Jury Garden 