Time&

I was invited to St Patrick's School at Kaponga where the children prepared to don their plastic gloves and scout the neighbourhood for rubbish to do their bit for Clean up New Zealand Week.
The principal and teachers gathered for morning tea, and invited me to join them.
Teacher aide, Lorraine Stratton, gave each of us a page entitled 'Take time for 12 things' Psalms 27:11.
1. Take time to work it is the price of success.
2. Take time to think it is the source of power.
3. Take time to play it is the secret of youth.
4. Take time to read it is the foundation of knowledge.
5. Take time to worship it is the highway of reverence and washes the dust of earth from our eyes.
6. Take time to help and enjoy friends it is the source of happiness.
7. Take time to love it is the one sacrament of life.
8. Take time to dream it hitches the soul to the stars.
9. Take time to laugh it is the singing that helps life's loads.
10. Take time for beauty it is everywhere in nature.
11. Take time for health it is the true wealth and treasure of life.
12. Take time to plan it is the secret to being able to have the time for the first 11 things.
Stopping to smell the roses is a time-honoured phrase, or in my case, watching the curved beak of the tui as they reached inside the golden globe of the kowhai blossom for the nectar. Sharing the same tree and nectar were bumble bees, bees, and wax-eyes a tree teeming with different life forms.
Meanwhile, in a friend's garden bumblebees fed on the nectar of hyacinths, and full of nectar, they fell off into the pot or between the stem and leaf. In the evenings they gathered in the peach tree, and she found them, a black and yellow-striped carpet under the tree in the morning.
My home is situated very close to the CBD, but tui, kereru and fantails flourish in our neighbourhood. A kingfisher visits and a hawk glides periodically down the currents between the urban ridges.
Their playful antics are what poets would write about, and which I constantly marvel at.
Along the street is a stately home built over 90 years ago. It commands views over the city with the apt name Matai Moana (sea view).
The garden had trees that were probably planted the same time as the home was built. A double karaka tree grew there, and was one of the native species that the tui and kereru whooped to as they chased each other around the gardens. But last year the owners cut the tree down. And then they sold the house and returned to their homeland overseas.
It takes time to plant a tree, time for it to grow, and an instant to cut it down.