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
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
Not an earthquake. A falling dead tree. Pinus radiata often drops all its side branches when it dies, before keeling over or, in this case, snapping a third of the way up. This is good because the side branches can cause even more damage when a tree falls although it can and does clip other trees as it falls. As falling trees of at least 135 years of age go, this was on the minor end. The trunk broke in three as it fell, with the longest length (about nine metres) rolling over to a final location which is not bad at all, though it did initially land on a garden bed.
On Monday, we started clearing the paths. Surprisingly, there is quite a bit of good firewood in the centre of the trunk and by the end of the day, the pile of split wood in the shed was growing satisfactorily. There is nothing quite like the Squirrel Nutkin feel of seeing the firewood for 2017 already stacked and drying.
The longer lengths will remain in situ and we will garden around them. It is just a 
It is a lot easier to garden with nature, rather than in constant battle to keep it under control. By Tuesday, it looked like this. We are fine with that. It will settle down again over the next month or two and look as if it has always been like that.
Our ever handy man on the spot, Lloyd, cut back the concrete in anticipation of the move. That was on June 14, 2012. But time passed and other jobs always seemed more urgent. Towards the end of 2014, we spotted a flower spike forming. That was pretty exciting, given that the plant was over 25 years old and had never bloomed before. Moving it was out of the question.
Tikorangi The Jury Garden 