Spring Fever

From Your Mayor

Global leaders come and go but the demands of a Christchurch garden in spring time are more pressing.

I say I’ve been gardening, but in the interests of avoiding the Fair Trading Act I should emphasise that it was under supervision.

It’s one of the things about family life that makes me very grateful for Pam and for our family.

I can be as global and important as I want to when I’m at work but once I come home I just become one person amongst many.

If I try a speech on in the kitchen I will just get handed a tea towel and told to do something useful with my time. It’s a great aid to keeping a human perspective on political life.

When it comes to working in the garden, my job description is definitely just that of labourer.

Artistic direction, vision and the details of what goes where are all Pam’s province.

As I work my way through my lowly tasks I do get just a faint sense of why so many Christchurch people, men included , turn all poetic when it comes to the subject of gardening.

It gives me a rare chance to slow down enough to look around my immediate neighbourhood and realise what a beautiful environment we have collectively created in this city. Without getting overly sloppy, you can still feel the slight chill coming off the snow on the nearby Alps and see the stirrings of spring in the buds and hear it in the optimistic songs of the birds.

In my frequent bouts of shovelleaning I also get to admire the equally optimistic spring in the step of the cats who look, after a long winter of admiring the woodburner, like they are getting ready to help the birds avoid overpopulation. It’s great too to see that the soil has got lots of moisture in it this year.

I think the rain... and rain... with rain... that seemed like it was never going to end a few weeks ago is going to pay dividends in our gardens and further out on the farms.

I think maybe that’s why people love gardening so much... it gives the chance to get a glimpse of the bigger perspective.

Still I’d have to admit I am also glad that having followed orders, I can now look forward to a summer of admiring the results, on the way to the garage and my collection of really interesting bits of vintage cars.

But that’s another story, altogether.