THIS TIME OF YEAR……..

……on the first day, spring/kōanga was true to itself.

A small plane with bright yellow wings and tail put-putted across an epic sky, the sun standing tall/not a smidgen of wind. Clusters of quail had returned and I began keeping an eye out for the first of their babies.

If I came too close they fled/all together now/on rapid little legs.

What kind of spring/what kind of summer are we in for?

It’ll be dry/a mean drought/it will be wet/depends on who you talk to.

The old farmers who’ve kept daily weather records for decades, they’d have a thing or two to say.

The Dutch dairy farmer moved his stock around the bend, back over the bridge to the home paddocks/lightening the load.

“Trudging along,” he called out, “yeah, there’s a bit more grass now.”

The ground is already cracking/small rocks are rising/the water table is much too low. Walking one morning a water tanker passes me on the way down the hill.

Some poor bugger further west has already run out.

“Blimmin’ wind, blowing all my blossom off,” said Rangi.

But she’d got her lawns done the day before, her cows had all calved, she’d been up the back hill twice that morning checking on them.

“My babies, looking good but they’re just like blimmin’ teenagers running off the wrong way as soon as I open the gate.”

Running off with their back legs kicking/gleeful.

They’ll be off their mothers before long.

Jak, home from a month in Ireland with her mother is worried about how blustery it is, she’d been out digging as soon as she got off the plane.

“Blustery in Ireland too,” she said, “got blown up the street one morning the wind was so strong.”

A woman had come into the library and told Jak one of her old tōtara had fallen.

“What?!”

That didn’t happen/it did.

This floral thicket of spring/fecund and fertile.

A flowering tumble/to catch the sun.

Everything, all at once/coming thick and fast.

Echium as tall as Tīkouka/pansies, fennel, ringaringa seedlings growing up through the shingle.

Poppies/they’d take over the world if you let them.

Bud, bloom/gone in no time.

Second crops/second flowering before the first are spent.

The out of season/the disorder/the garden gone haywire/weather gone mad/the plump/plenteous springing over of spring.

There’s a surfeit of greens/asparagus bolting out of bed/an inch an hour.

“The best way to cook them,” Ben reminds me, “standing up with their tips above the water line.”

From the yuzu comes a hopeful/dense din of bees.

It had been a long, seven year wait for that tree to fruit, and then it did, a rumpled citrus with squishy skin.

“Good for drying into a powder,” said Ben.

Emptying the outside bath I pluck a quivering bee about to drown/am stung/in minutes my armpit itching.

Bees/crowding the stigma of every flower in the garden.

In a young orchard you know each tree/in a young orchard you can count the entire precious, early crops.

“There were a dozen Beurre Bosc last summer,” said Mick, standing beside the pear, parting leaf and blossom to admire this year’s many, tiny fruit.

The worry is/the weight of them might break the branches/the hope/there will be enough pears for perry cider.

The apples are pruned like inverted umbrellas/to cup the sun/let the birds fly through.

Kingston Black/Monty’s Surprise/Sweet Alford/Tom Putt/Staymans Winesap/Beryl/Broxwood/Mother in law.

The pawpaw, just as they did last year, drop one fruit a day.

Here comes the dog daisy/the parsley drop wort.

“Everyone’s got their hate weed,” said Jak.

Everyone’s got their hate bugs/I’d carried the first two stink beetles of spring in with a bunch of rhubarb and broke their backs.

Jak had hung rectangles of yellow card in her glass house covered in vaseline to catch the white fly, laughed and said it wasn’t working.

“What would eat whitefly?” she asks.

But, what she’s really worried about this year/friggin Asian orange ladybugs.

“They bite!” she exclaimed and tells the story of not knowing this till she had rescued dozens caught in a spider’s nest/paid her back.

“They’re a nightmare, they’re here right now, they’re under the house breeding!”

The pomegranate weathered the winter/held on with its scabby, mottled skin/its insides/integrity intact.

Tamarillo fruit twice/tropical apricots fruit twice on the underneath of low slung branches/close to the ground. Bend/lift and pick, they make the smallest quantities of the best jam/tart, knock your socks off.

Spring’s get up and go/fruit galore for wine making.

The toons morph from cerise to pink to puce, and yellow out.

Spring, teeming and in a hurry.

Spring/kōanga/oversized/extravagant/showing itself off.

Though the whitebait season hasn’t ended the wāhine are off the awa.

The eels and kariwaka are swimming in, it’s their time now/that’s the kaupapa.

“It’s time to put our hands in the dirt darlin’,” said Bridget, her voice shuddering up from her puku/gravelly with pleasure.

We walk down the road together, dirt under our finger nails, imbedded in the lines of our palms.

I bare my arms to the sun but my old swan neck still swaddled against the wind which can whip up through the forest from the south/a sting in its tail.

Next minute/not a breath.

Spring/kōanga makes its robust passage towards summer.

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