Our local korimako has set up shop to taunt us with their melody Insistent, tuneful, repetitive, hiding we think in the giant macrocarpa we spot tui dancing from pohutukawa to cabbage tree and eucalypt
a breeze lifts so that leaves lift too and sunshine obscures our view fat wood pigeons (the kereru) fly drunkenly low almost acrobatic but our local korimako makes more noise than any of them, show-off
I creep up the driveway toward the macrocarpa, the way I do at night when our local morepork is hooting and tooting and talking to me they also hide and I’m certain detect my silent footsteps, so stop
And instead, I whistle back to the korimako, and considering I rarely match proper pitch with pop songs, it’s surprising that they hear me but they do, and we whistle back and forth, friends for an afternoon
I was walking down the zig zag this week and peeked over the fence at my old garden (roses now in bloom), got a bit nostalgic and wrote a poem about the Nor’wester …
then, this morning a dear friend in Sunny Nelson sent me a photo of her blooms
November means roses erupting all over the show bundles of scented beauty in clusters on arbours standard and staked, rambling and rambunctious glossy leaves before the aphids arrive, thorns rise up and out in defence protection agents before grandma or whomever arrives with secateurs
quickly, take yourself down to the garden to breathe in the fragrances, heavy, light some say green tea or honey, but rush, rush why don’t you before that damn Nor’wester arrives to startle the tuis, shift the kereru, entwining cabbage tree flora to sway and dangle
why did you plant those roses right here in line of the wind, in clay soil near the sea, surrounded by manuka, kanuka, kawakawa, beech those cabbage trees, the flax bushes, the kowhai did you think your Constance Spry would not fly away shedding petals in November?
But still, year in, year out you cosset them Your favourite flowers, out of place in your native garden where geckos manoeuvre unseen where tuatara might once have been, but no you wanted roses, by the sea, so you could glimpse perfection, inhale summer then you curse the Nor’wester
a curious half hour 