Spring in the step as Pukekura Park blooms

Well, it’s definitely here. If you’re got a garden, a barbecue, a lawn or just a row of pot plants, you would have been outside enjoying spring last Sunday.

Our neighbourhood was a hive. Things got weeded, trimmed, swept, mowed, cleaned and tidied up. Dreary cold spaces were transformed. I lifted the cover on the barbecue, fired it up and stood back to watch the cockroaches flee.

There weren’t any, as it happened, and the worst cleaning job in the world turned out to be less of a chore than I’d built it up to be. The reward was being able to stand out in the cold later, relearning cooking skills contaminated by a winter of indoor master-chefing.

If you live in town, you’ve got to look close for the signs of spring, although New Zealand’s greatest park, Pukekura, has them in abundance. The ducks, the geese and the swans have been showing signs for weeks, with showy drakes paddling persistently behind plain hens, pairs of coyness with intent.

I remember when as children we were taken to the park for an ice cream, and our ‘‘what are those ducks doing?’’ was met with standard parental advice: ‘‘fighting over the bread — come away’’. There’s no bread to blame now, because someone says it’s bad for ducks.

Any day there’ll be the magical annual spectacle of a mother duck and her brood toddling around the landing near the band rotunda. Those of us who walk there regularly will watch with trepidation as 10 drops to nine and on down until the fittest are left. Must be some big eels in that lake.

One of the things that amazes me about Pukekura Park is the way its staff manage to keep it serviceable during winter. Storms bring tree damage and washed-out pathways, but somehow they keep it open and useable, at the same time quietly making improvements without fanfare.

Take a look at what they’ve done with the top entrance from Victoria Rd, the one leading down Scanlan Walk to the main lake. Splendid gates now sit alongside new borders, a spruce-up that offers an impressive welcome to the park’s treasures.

Park experts will have sussed by now I know bugger all about plants and specimens and landscaping, but the point is I’m in the majority, the army of regulars and visitors who just enjoy the park for its ambience.

Every time I walk through it during winter months I’m motivated to take out my phone to photograph the extraordinary effects of low-angled light. Seasonal changes in foliage and the way sunlight backlights it are reasons enough to go back as often as I can.

The experts are worried about one apparent failure, the decline of specimens in the Goodwin Rhododendron Dell, near the entrance to the Bowl of Brooklands. They certainly looked sick when I walked through there recently, apparently from the ravages of little critters called thrips (or is that just thrip?).

I don’t have the expertise to comment, but I do know from talking to park staff that New Plymouth District Council’s decision to phase out chemical control of pests is making life difficult for those left with the job of maintaining standards. I see that in our streets, as well.

We have been battling this dilemma since environmental author Rachel Carson revealed the downsides of pesticides in her book, Silent Spring, in 1962, and America sprayed Vietnam in the 1970s. Just last month, a San Francisco jury ordered Monsanto to pay $439 million to a former school groundskeeper dying of cancer, saying Roundup weedkiller contributed to his disease.

Hell, I use Roundup. I put a mask and gloves on and spray when there’s no wind, and I’ve assumed it’s safe. I use pellets on the snails; copper on the lemon tree; something called a system disease spray for black spot, powdery mildew and rust; ant bait; something that kills stumps; and something with which to ‘‘dust’’ the tomatoes. Having been inherited, some containers have lost their labels, and one day soon I’ll get around to throwing them out, which sounds responsible. But where will they end up?

Natural means of control do work, as I saw when I wrote about an organic dairy farm round the coast. But I’m not sure the rest of us have the persistence. Yet.

FOOTNOTE: The park has been replacing those useless weathered steel signs with versions we can easily read. Good on them.

. . . New Plymouth District Council’s decision to phase out chemical control of pests is making life difficult for those left with the job of maintaining standards.