Category: Autumn

I feel out of whack. Contemplating powerlessness and unpredictability in the wake of the recent climate floods. The bubble of societal comfort burst overnight. Does awful natural force ironically provide sight lines to sensing imbalance?

On a vastly different scale other things tug in the same direction. The other day we visited Mike our local beekeeper at his honey stand in Brown’s Bay. There’s less manuka honey than normal for this time. The manuka flowering season was shorter this year, even the kanuka was over in a few days due to the wet and wind. That explains why I never saw the usual white dusting, like icing, across the valley. And there’s less honeycomb too – the bees have been eating more of it to sustain themselves over the damp summer.

Female monarch butterflies have only just started to visit my swan plants in earnest in the past two weeks to lay small pale yellow eggs. It seems late. They are also sensitive to temperature. Last year was a disaster. Hundreds of caterpillars stripped my few small plants within days, then humped off starving, in the hopes of finding food elsewhere, or to die. This year I got a head start, planted early (late winter) and now have lush full-grown plants. But not many caterpillars. Most live for a day or so then disappear before they mature. They are probably being taken by the many wasps around that hunt for protein to feed their queens.

Impotence has crept into my haphazard attempts to support the local butterfly population.