The lazy days of summer
Spring has sprung, the grass is rizz. Summer is here. Yesterday it blew, hailed, rained and shone blistering sun out of a mottled blue and storm cloud grey sky.
I cut my front lawn today for the first time in three months. It’s a crazy world with global warming. My cats love the long grass — playing lions on the high veldt. It’s Christmas season again and I’ve been resident in Dannevirke for 18 months. Muses of Gerald Durrell, James Herriot and Sir David Attenborough whisper in the new sprung foliage of sycamore, magnolia, grapevine and blackberry. Someone said I should write a book. Maybe I will.
There were 15 tui feasting on a nearby kowhai tree recently. I well recall, when I first arrived here, a stroppy blackbird yelling his supremacy from the top of my clothes line and his partner pursuing, at grass top level, my Torby cat Timberley, as she ran flat-out across the back lawn in the back door with this angry bird three feet behind.
Last spring was open season on butterflies. Timberley discovered white butterflies. Her first escapade saw her take a flying leap in pursuit over the top of my newly planted silver beet patch, straight into the corrugated tin fence, which she gracefully slide down into long grass and emerged from, somewhat bemused. Since then both she and Amber, my tortoiseshell feline, have proved invaluable as white butterfly hunters. Who needs insecticide?
Amber is fascinated by puddles on the lawn after rain and by snow. I’ve seen her patting water to watch the ripples or tossing snow pieces around. I have an army of black ants living under my garden shed and occasionally they invade my kitchen cupboards. Thrushes, fantails and tui sing in the trees in the mornings. There’s a starling or two nesting in the ridgeline of the house next door. I’ve rescued several field mice in past months and last week I played parent to three fledgling backbirds brought in by Timberley. Both cats were intrigued. Two died but the third I couriered to a bird rescue lady in Turakina in an icecream container.
Life goes on, territorial lines proclaimed, and the rambunctious blackbird, which I’ve nicknamed David Bowie, on account of his punk hairdo, will eventually, no doubt, enjoy some Christmas spoils.