Short overcast days are finally giving way to lengthening days of blue skies when it’s tempting to think that spring may finally be just around the next corner. But bright cloudless days give way to chilly cloudless nights. Yet even these are not without their recompense as, even with our metropolitan light pollution, the Auckland night sky can often resemble a handful of diamonds cast haphazard against a bolt of the blackest silk.
Rangitoto Island, Auckland
But possibly the biggest change this time of year brings is evidenced in the sheer glorious quality of light we receive. This can take the most mundane of pictures and effortlessly reinvent them as a near photographic masterpiece.
As the days warm and lengthen the trees are becoming heavy with buds and with them comes their promise of a constantly changing technicolour display lasting well in to Autumn. And none offers greater promise at this time of year than the kowhai, or more properly sophora microphylla.
Kowhai in bloom
A common feature of New Zealand gardens the kowhai flowers, according to region, from July to November, so it can be considered a true harbinger of spring.
Maori used kowhai in traditional medicine, or rongoa. The infused bark was used to treat internal ailments, cuts and bruises. Boiled and crushed bark is useful for treating sprains and skin diseases and the ashes can even be used to treat ringworm.
So the kowhai and the brighter days are two signs that spring is in the air. If a third sign were needed it came at an informal meeting at the weekend. Milestone’s guides unanimously decided it’s time to get the shorts back on. So it’s white knees from here to Christmas.