Snapshots of Tauranga #60 – Wild Gale Slaps

When September rolls around, we humans and our gardens thankfully start to brighten up, popping our heads into the sunshine with more vigour. Well, most days. Though our weather is still very changeable, I won’t mention my thoughts about those spring gales that don’t gently caress but just slap.

If you’re a keen walker and a gardener like me and you’re out and about wandering around, you see the subtle changes. A few blossoms here and there, more bulbs and generally more colour about the suburban and public gardens.

Then there are the real physical changes that tell you that spring is on its way. And so that’s when you could think something primeval kicks into the human condition as well. Like, I have this sudden urge to start digging up good old compost and spend way too much money on plants, though I never regret it.

Talking about compost, I needed more humus in our garden, especially as we have been warned about a very hot summer coming our way. So off I head down to Otumoetai. Every town or city has a “guy”, a local who stands out for perhaps odd reasons rather than an altruistic cause or ordinariness. Anyway, I needed to make contact with our oddity one and his horse, a Pinto horse named ‘Apache ‘, who resides in Tauranga, last week.

Well, after a few words about the weather and such, with a horse and their owner, locally known as Ngatai Rd’s ‘Johnny the Indian’, as you do on a Wednesday morning. Thankfully, the horse owner just happened not to be wearing his Apache outfit and headdress; I’m not sure I could have kept a straight face if he had, and yes, I do find it all a bit tacky, though I suppose he has a purpose for doing it.

Anyway, those gentle horses kindly, on cue, deposited a fair amount, a few bags full, on the ground, which was what I wanted, well, to be more precise, it’s what the garden needs. This gardener, happy as a dung beetle, turned around and headed home.

The following day, ignoring the wind, I dug that lovely, rich horse manure into the garden; I’m sure I could hear the worms scream with delight or was that the neighbour when they got a whiff via that wild westerly.

As there’s not much to photograph in the garden, here are a few images from my morning walk just a few hours ago.

At Sunrise