SPRINGTIME IN AUCKLAND.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXIX, Issue 12070, 13 September 1902, Page 1 (Supplement)

SPRINGTIME IN AUCKLAND.

[EY M.AHAEA.] I SPKtXG has descended on Auckland. The | rangiora is in flower, and the blossom of ! the manuka makes hundreds of miles o'. ' country white as with March snows: the ! golden kowhai blazes by the tidal creeks : ! the wharangi has put forth its lilac-like : sprays the willows, which but yesterday ! lost their green and to which autumn leaves | still cling, are heavy with tender buds; the i orchards are gay with fruit- blossom-, proi mises of a bountiful harvest the hills i green with young grass. It is springtime, . and yet we scarcely know it. In this faj voured part, of the earth spring marks no I great awakening. It is rattier what the 1 Maoris call it—" Piaugiora"—"The coming ; again of the year'---a mere asronomical I change in the cycle of things I . - I than aught else. Kipling nukes his Auckj landers say. " On. us. on us the unswerving I seasons smile." Kipling caught and expressed in this line what Aucklanders have thought for fifty years without turning into poetry. The unswerving seasons smile on us. The changeless seasons are good to us. ! Aucklanders have understood something of their marvellous climate, though they have not yet learned to appreciate ail its "advantages. They have a saying which might well be called a country prove: now, "It is only winter in Auckland when it rains.'' Or, better still, "It is always summer in Auckland when tie sun shines." A friend of mine, who is a keen observer, and lives, much in the open air, declares that during nearly two years when he had special opportrinity tor studying the weather, not a day passed but what he saw a portion of blue sky, and there are men who nave lived here for fifty years who have never seen a flake of snow, never known one night's keen frost, never known a really cold day. never known a severely hot one." "On us, on us the unswerving seasons smile." The «rass grows ail the year round, the roses bloom. arum lilies flower in inter-time, a hundred varieties of flower* have utterly forgotten the. difference between winter and summer. There are some people who mourn the absence of the much-lauded Northern spring. They forget that their old joy in springtime was largely due to their relief from winter : that the chief beauty of an English spring day was its contrast, to the dark, bitter days of winter. Our race has inherited a joy in the springtime—a love for it, a. thankfulness for it. They learnt it ages ago in the far Northern lands. Our Norse fathers looked to spring as relief from imprisonment. They grew sullen and savage through the long, cold, inactive winter, and spring gave them forays and booty, food, and the gladness of action. Norse mothers crooned of spring to their petulant children, promising them light instead of darkness, warmth instead of cold, flowers and freedom and sweet air instead of the hateful confinement of narrow, smoky rooms. No wonder that spring was lauded in soug and in poetry. No wonder that the romance of it lasts for a thousand years. There are days in an Auckland winter as soft and balmy as in an English spring. And an Auckland spring awakens more flowers and fruits of life" than were everknown in colder England. Those who think there is no change in our peipetually mild seasons do not. know Auckland. Those who call our forests evergreen only speak a. half-truth. Evergreen, forsooth! Just now whole hill ranges are white and yellow with flowering forest trees ; miles of country are gay with 'blossoming manuka. The titirangi "crowns many a noble spur, and the koromiko marks many a slope and watercourse with its delicate flowers. The kowhai and the clematis give masses of gold in the vernal bush. True, Auckland knows no real winter, and therefore there is no awakening from frost and snow ; but spring in Auckland is marked by a, thousand'" blossoms. Because there is no bitter cold we scarcely

appreciate the growing warmth, because there is no long darkness, we hardly realise Ihe growth of light-; but our spring'is a season of beauty, a time of gladness, and if it lacks anything that an English spring possesses it is more the comparison with a severe winter than anything else. English peels through long centuries have chanted the praises of the English spring ; not one poet has sung of an Auckland spring. Not oue man out, of a thousand in Auckland knows the distinctive marks of the Auckland seasons. The snowdrop peeping through its frozen mantle, the first primrose, under the sheltered hedgerow, the violet- on the sunny bank, cuckoo flowers in the warm meadows, even the cuckoo itself, are sign manuals in England, but they are not signs here. These flowers bloom in winter, they bloom iu autumn, thev bloom at. all times, except in the height of milliner. There is a legendary spring flower — the rangiora •— which selves the Maori as a sign that the year has come again. There is the recognised spring flower in the clematis? There are a hundred other spring flowers and blossoms here, but we Europeans have not opened our eyes or our minds to these things yet, aud possibly we shall have to wait, many years before an Auckland spring is known as it should be known.

It is Kipling again who writes of the '■'Kowhai's gold—firing for gift on Taupo's face, sign that spring has come:" but the kowhai's gold is not confined to Taupo. One can see it at this time of the year flung over the forest, lands that stretch from Taupo to the limits of the Great Northern Peninsula. We are familiar with a hundred rhymes and proverbs that mark the English* spring. 'The vagaries of its weather ate known ail over the world, but who knows the rainbow weather of Auckland; the black clouds sailing over the blue sky, the bracing squalls and the bursts of "sunshine? . Rainbow weather! There is no part of the world where rainbows are seen to such perfection as in Auckland's hill country during spring. One can see not only the historic bow. but also domes of gorgeous colouring. A sou'west squall, with its slanting black rain lines, sweeping across a bright blue sky is a thing of wonder and beauty. So are the warm showers from the north-east, that come with the massive black and grey clouds, lazily drifting from the seas about the equator. We have the equinoctial gales here as in the Northern lauds. Not dry and harsh such as sweep from the steppe's of Northern Europe across England, but cool and clear, tine sea winds, and. therefore, always carrying with them moisture that softens their fierceness. The cloud effects so common to the Auckland spring are marvellous iu their stafeliness and beauty. The vast extent of ocean surrounding the country, the wooded hills, the air ions of land and water, and its position near the fringe of the tropics and temperate zone account for this, and at no time are cloud effects so striking or so varied as in spring. We have no festivals in Auckland that mark the coming again of the year. The Floral Fete, one of the most beautiful and attractive exhibitions ever seen in New Zealand, died, like many beautiful tilings, all too soon. It might, had it succeeded, become the flower holiday of the " New Year. It might have rivalled the English May Day at its best. Surelv Aucklanders will revive the Floral Fete, their one purely artistic holiday, which no other town "iu tho Southern Hemisphere could equal; few towns in all the world rival.