Lush Places is abuzz. Having spent the winter looking how I have felt, our gardens are finally beginning to come alive with the promise of spring.
The sudden, almost miraculous appearance on our ancient plum trees of blossoms – they are white with a hint of yellow and look, from a distance, like buttery popcorn – has meant the arrival of what sounds like thousands of bees. Their work has been filling the backyard with a clearly audible humming.
Their welcome drone hasn’t exactly made walking through the remaining mud to hang out the washing or feed the chooks anything like a pleasure, but it’s certainly made them less of a chore. Even the wayward sun has blessed us with its presence these past two weeks.
Now, I am no bee whisperer, no reader of the apian mind, but if I were, I would say all those buzzing bees sound like they’re in a bit of a flap. And well they might be. After the wettest winter anyone – be they bee, or be they not – can remember in Wairarapa, who can blame them, or anyone else with work to do outside, for being a little overwhelmed by the number things that suddenly need doing.
It has been a winter that made many potholes in the driveway. It has been a winter where it’s been impossible to mow the lawns, so gluggy have they been. As our flower beds and lawns and paddocks have turned into sloppy ruins in the rain, it has been a winter where it’s impossible to do the weeding, planting, hedge-clipping and all the many other things that must be done if a garden is to look its best come spring.
So it isn’t just the bees who are in a panic. With the sun out, I have been, too. I spent the first week of spring running about like a man being chased by a wasp.
After two months, I have finally mowed the lawns, or at least the bits that aren’t still like the Somme in the winter of 1916. I have raked up enormous piles of catkins that our many alders drop everywhere. I have cut out dead things from the garden with the chainsaw – until the bloody chainsaw died as well. I have collected branches and other debris brought down in winter storms. I have thrown heaps of dead wood on the burn pile in the apple tree paddock. I have filled garden bags and taken them to the tip. And I have pruned and pruned and pruned.
I have been – you guessed it – as busy as a bee in a plum tree. I imagine it’s only a matter of time before I start humming loudly as well.
Lush Places isn’t the only place that’s suddenly abuzz. The drones in Wellington’s Beehive have now begun flying hither and thither to gather votes. And with full-time campaigning before next month’s election fully and finally under way, the drones’ election promises are now as abundant as blossoms on an old plum tree.
Elections are such dispiriting affairs. Less contests of ideas than contests of tribalism and shameless bribes. This one feels like it’s going to be even more depressing and less enlightening than previous ones, what with conspiracy loons, religious hucksters and vaccine paranoids now added to the usual disagreeable mix of glad-handing, baby kissing and faking sincerity.
I cannot imagine voting for any of them. It’s quite possible that for the first time I won’t vote for any of them. However if any political drone out there wants my two ticks, here are my bottom lines: First, GST must be removed from all pies, beer, salt-and-vinegar chips and Betty’s yum cha emporium in Masterton. Second, any taxpayer-funded pothole fixing must include the entire 600m driveway at Lush Places, because it’s costing us a fortune. Finally, and most importantly, the next government must guarantee that Lush Places and its busy bees never have to go through another winter like this one again.
