The Story of a Saturday

In the middle of a bundle of back issues of New Zealand Gardener magazine that I bought at a book sale somewhere along the way was a year-old issue of Weekend Gardener, with a special section on the nurseries of Matakana. The other day, I noticed that this village was within an hour's drive of Mangawhai Heads, and when Saturday dawned a bit cloudy and we had no other specific plans, I convinced Frank to chauffeur me to all these nurseries, gathering information for my horticulture blog.

As we were preparing to leave, I picked up my camera bag and knew immediately that something was wrong--it was too light. Sure enough, my long zoom lens was missing. I didn't recall using it lately, but searched the cottage with a growing sense of alarm, and then went out to search the car in case it had somehow fallen out of the bag and rolled under a seat... but nothing. I came to the reluctant conclusion that our car had been broken into in Auckland, and the lens stolen out of the camera bag. This was a big blow, as the lens is very expensive and I use it a lot, but there seemed nothing to do about it, so we got into the car and began to leave. As we got to the top of the drive, Frank suddenly slammed on the brakes. I looked at him in concern, and found him staring into the rear-view mirror, open-mouthed. "Look," he said, pointing backwards--and there lay my zoom lens, in the middle of the driveway. I jumped out to get it and found it miraculously unhurt--not a scratch, and in perfect working order. I must have left the camera bag unzipped the last time I put the camera in, and the lens must have tipped out when one of us grabbed the case to bring it into the house, though how we missed the sight and sound of this large object falling to the ground is a mystery. Because it rolled to a stop under the car, rather than continuing down the steep drive, it was protected from the previous night's rain, and because Frank happened to glance behind him as we drove forward (why he did, I'll never know), he saw it and we avoided running over it as we backed down the drive later in the day. How lucky can I get?? Obviously I was thrilled, and we ventured off with me in a very grateful frame of mind, and with a resolution to zip that camera bag in future!

We started by going into Matakana itself to check out the Saturday morning market--little did we know that this offering of gourmet treats was a drawing card for every resident and cottager for a 50k radius!! The streets were jammed and you could scarcely move inside the small market building. I managed to buy a classy teatowel and taste some heavenly cheese on offer, but then the crowds got to be oppresive and we snuck out a side door.

Nearby was our next stop, Tumbleweed Nurseries, where I admired cool garden sculpture and drooled over gorgeous phormium hybrids unavailable in North America.

Next, Morris and James Pottery and Tileworks, a business that has endured through flood, fire, and receivership to emerge as a very popular tourist spot offering lushly coloured pots and garden art. Deciding that the wares were either too large or too fragile to get home, we fled just as the tour buses pulled in.

Back towards Highway 1, we checked out two nurseries specializing in subtropical plants. The Protea Patch grows and sells--yup--proteas, which are wonderfully alien looking plants, more like birds with their feathery petals, but the bees obviously love the nectar. The other lovely thing here is the meditation garden, slowly being created out of a swampy paddock beside the nursery. I loved the tropical jungle feel of it, and admired the imaginative use of logs to form this interesting sculpture--you may just see something similar at TwelveAcres next year!

Exotica specializes in colourful bromeliads, which for some reason I have always found scary, looking as if they'd snap closed on your arm if you were unwary enough to venture a hand into the well of water in the middle. They are very popular here, however, and are certainly exotic looking.

As we drove back to Mangawhai by a route we had not taken before, we admired the lush valleys of the surrounding countryside. Even now, deep into their autumn, New Zealand is green and beautiful--and features contortionist cows!

After lunch back at the cottage, I ventured out again, in search of the cottage of Nev Arbury. Nev wrote an appendix to Muriel Fisher's Fernglen book (see last posting), about the native plantings around his cottage at Mangawhai Heads, so I've been trying to track him down since we arrived. Unfortunately, his cottage has no phone, so he was not listed in the phone book, and none of the many folk I asked in the village seemed to be able to tell me where the cottage was. I had just about given up, but tried asking one more time when we were at the library the other night. His name didn't ring any bells, but when I opened up my book to the photo of the cottage, the librarian immediately recognized one of the houses in the photo: "My brother once lived in that house!" (no, she wasn't the cardiganed nemesis from my first library visit, though that would have had a poetic sense of justice!). She gave me the street address and pointed it out on the village map, so today I hoped to find the actual house. It turned out to be at the very top of a no-exit, incredibly steep street, and I had a couple of nerve-jangling minutes turning the car around. However, when I knocked at the door and held up my copy of the Fernglen book, Nev's face broke into a huge smile. The next half hour turned into the most energetic, enthusiastic, and informative tour of a garden I've ever had. Nev is a true evangelist for NZ natives, and he obviously loves his plants like children. He has made this windswept, clay-soiled section into a veritable Noah's Ark of rare species and forms of these little appreciated plants. I thoroughly enjoyed my visit, and hope to see him and his charming wife again some day. We have certainly met some great Kiwis through our garden hunts!

Only a few more days here in Northland, and then we will wind our way back south on the way to the South Island for a more Canadian-autumn-like experience of fall colours. Funny to think of all of you back home enjoying daffodils as we enjoy the deepening leaf colours here!