Hanging Around

I've been hanging around Havelock waiting for a call from a builder to meet about house building.

Summer has finally shed its cloak and radiated it's full heat upon us. I managed one day and a morning grubbing blackberry on the site that I plan to be my vegetable garden.  I don't want to spray it there but have had to concede that with over half an acre of rapidly re-establishing blackberry, I may be forced to take drastic measures on some of it.

The neighbourhood seems most concerned about the gorse (also called furze when I lived in England's New Forest) on my land but frankly gorse doesn't scare me. It grows straight up, reaching for light. In the absence of support blackberry scrambles along the ground, growing many centimetres every day and layering (taking root to form new plants) anywhere the stems touch the soil.

Gorse is a great nurse crop for native plants that have evolved to germinate and establish themselves in the shade, such as in an existing forest.

Blackberry on the other hand chokes and suffocates in total darkness everything it advances over.

Gorse is a legume; it nurtures. The microbes in the nodules on its roots fix nitrogen in the soil; nitrogen that other plants can use to thrive. Blackberry simply robs.

Yes gorse can be prickly but it's spikes are not barbed, hooked, or designed by nature to bind you in and tear skin from flesh. They are just a warning system - "keep your distance". Blackberry on the other hand is just pure evil - and the stuff on our place doesn't even have useful fruit. It is what, in England, we'd have referred to as brambles - vicious hooked thorns attached to a tangle of high tensile wire.

Heat and lack of useful shade defeated me by the time I had cleared and grubbed my way (with a handy mattock) over about 40 square metres (10x4).  I want at least 5 times that and will have to make it flow around a few rocky outcrops - on which I have decided to plant olive trees. Bro would be all for moving rocks with big machinery.  I prefer to flow around rather than bulldoze through.  I hope it will give more interesting shape to the landscape and pools of easy shade in places.

Our stream is nearly dried up and I suspect neighbours upstream of extraction for household use. Nothing I can do about that but my plans to create a small puddle to retire to in the heat have been redirected to the idea of developing a glade in the tall gorse; a light well into which I can introduce some light seeking plants and perhaps a few foxgloves to add floral cheer (they seem to grow in the wild hereabouts possibly brought here by early settlers).

On day two I spent the afternoon walking in and out on part of the Nydia Walkway

Ferns are a symbol of New Zealand and the famous silver fern abound on this walkway (this is not one)

I need to find out what lily-like plant it is that produces these startling electric blue berries. They scream "don't eat me".  The strappy leafed plants are also growing amongst my tall gorse.

(The TALL gorse BTW is over 20 feet high, neither it nor the 12 inch high stuff worry me.  I almost love it and the promise it is protecting.)

Thursday 6 Feb is/was a public holiday. Builders take the Friday off as well. Every man (and woman but mostly men) and their dogs seems to have parked a 4WD vehicle and enormous tandem axled boat trailer on the Havelock domain having launched the boat at the marina slipway, and headed out to fishing grounds. There were about 200 such rigs parked up here over what became a 4 day weekend.

A fraction of the Domain

They can't all be builders.

For the weekend proper the temperatures were forecast to be in the 30s Celcius. I granted myself a holiday, spent one day reading a book and the next walking about 14km of the Link Path - an off road path of about 36 km that connects Picton and Havelock enabling walkers and cyclists to travel more safely than on the narrow winding Queen Carlotte Drive motor road.

Now I will just do a photo dump on you

Havelock - the marina looks bigger than the town.

That inlet on the left is to be our new home.

Pelorous Sound from Callum Point

Pelorous Sound - note the unrippled marks on the water. My grandfather used to call them Hare Tracks. Apparently it is in fact plant oils released in the breakdown of dead vegetation (on land and in sea).

Gorse

Broom

Himalayan Honeysuckle

Wild Carrot

Great🙄 - reverse order. Lilies. Old-fashioned Lilies. They appear to have escaped gardens and established themselves in the wild. The evidence suggests this offends some people who have pulled out plenty. I can't think why, as wild carrots, himalayan honeysuckle, gorse, broom and buddlieah (along with dozens of other introduced plant species) proliferate along the track seemingly without suffering prejudice.

A waterfall from the knot of a fallen tree. 

Rooted beside the pool above the waterfall the (still living) tree must have been hollow as it leaned out over the falls and has become part of the attraction.

Gorgeous wings glittered in the sun at my feet. Note the colours.

(NB - has anyone else noticed blogger adding random capital letters to ordinary nouns? It is becoming really annoying having to read back and take out the weird capitalisations.)