NATURE AND MAN

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 80, Issue 133, 7 June 1937, Page 6

NATURE AND MAN

4 CHAT ABOUT A GARDEN iKAI'TY BEGGING FOR NOTICE. < Edited by Leo Fanning. * People of Wellington are gradually increasing their interest in trees and flowers, but they still lag behind their kin of other cities and towns. A band is much more powerful than beauty of flowers and trees to draw citizens to the Botanical Gardens. When musicians are there on a Sunday afternoon the attendance of the public is 10 times as large as it is on another Sunday afternoon when the attraction is limited to the charm of flowers and birds. Thoughts on that queerness were stirred wnen I was rummaging the other day among some oi my old clippings. Here is a sketch —“The Morning of May 24, 1919, in the Botanical Gardens, Wellington”—which 1 wrote for “Quick March” (deceased*. Twinkling tubes of tweed, men s hands gripping leather bags' (which always stir thoughts of “six o’clock closing”}, silken nose gleaming below < flapping short skirts—are all rushing for the 8.50 a.m. cable car on Kelburn Heights. They have timed it nicely. They hugged the blankets till the pitiless hands of the clock pulled them to a hurried dressing, a hasty breakfast, and a scamper towards toil—the daily tally of the tallow, the counting and the discounting, the begging to acknowledge receipt of this or that, all the tiresome things of inst., ult. and prox.—the dull drabness brightened only twice a day by typistes and tea. i Their eyes arc a little strained with I anxiety. Will they be late? They j have not a moment to look at a tree. I One hears a mixture of puffing and ■ panting and little tributes to the I weather “Gorgeous day” . . “Yes,! heavenly.” .... “It’s just lovely.” . I “Not half bad” ’according to tempera- I ment). If these agitated persons had left the blankets half an hour earlier they could have played in the rays of the merry sun of “Indian summer’’ among the birds of the gardens, on the quiet way to the noisy city. A clang—and the load of bed-lovers lias rolled away towards the Salamanca hill. One person turned off into the Botanical Gardens, of which the higher wooded walks sweep into the tramway terminus, and he was soon alone on a pleasant path—alone on another path —alone always—for it is not fashionable to visit the gardens when the day is young. One passed through all the seasons in a few strides—winter in the steady places, lightly frosted; summer in the billows of verdure on sunny slopes; autumn in the flare of dying foliage and the memory—stirring fragrance of the changing year; spring in songs of the birds. There was a tinkle of a cow-bell from Tinakori hill. The opal-smoke from cottages mingled with the haze from the warming ground and curled and coiled among/ trees. Wellington city was a million I miles a .’. ay. Not one superannuated ci .il servant was here for the music, the fragrance and the beauty; not one dowager, free from household cares; not one money-changer; not onp poet. , even * This uas a morning as fresh as '. th? first morning, and the citv knew it I' not.

A last cricket gave a carol of fareto the sunshine; no doubt his

song caused much sage head-shaking among the thrifty ants, with pred.ctions of misery in the winter soon to tome. On the warm russet and ochre I carpet beneath the pines was not a praying mantis at his matins, turned toward his Mecca’ For man is not the only creature that has Meccas. I Here is the crystal sward where i Titania and her train—the Pixies and •the Trixies —had their carnival last inight, and here is the glistening silken 'line along which Mr. Spider went softly and silently to see the merry I revels. Bottom is not far away, cliopiping down trees. Sparrows are frisking perkily on the I grassy spur where the daffodils sleep, iHow political the sparrow looks! How warily he peers about him! How he I fossicks! All things are grist to his | mil!. He promises a song, too. Yet i one must like the companionable sparrow unless one is too ardent a gar--1 dener, with the fussy fretfulness which intakes gardening a pessimistic pastime and a bore to friends. | Starlings are busy with their (autumnal chorus. This is the only time of the year to hear much whistling by these birds. They take a little j holiday in this season. Some of their .notes are like a cynical chuckle at things in general. The starling is the (Beau Brummel—the “knur”—of the 'bird world. He hath much pride in his glossy speckled vest. Never a feather is out of place; he is most pernickety about his appearance. It would be as hard to imagine the Gov-ernor-General opening Parliament in mock moleskin, bow-yanged trousers as a starling with untidy plumage. The thrush is very different. His mo.tied vest is pretty enough, but he gives no heed to it. He will sit like a vagrant minstrel on a twig—and sing, I sing! One was singing high up on a | great spruce -(which nearly perished by blight last year)-and Wellington was two million miles away. I Faintly with the glad song of Mr. | Thrush came the plaintive melody o' | a grey warbler. The little bird seems (to like loneliness. j Below the bed of the daffodils, the walker was shocked. The ground was as raw- and bare as a friendless man's new grave where the larkspurs had flashed their many colours. On four sides of the plot vandal hands had set that gloomy grey plant, which looks like drab plaster moulding from a cemeterial mason's workshop or something cut out of stiffened flannel, it is sepulchral stuff, which should be swept away. If the man is alive v.rj first inflicted that ugly thing on the gardens he should be compelled to parade Lambton Quay, Queen Street, High Street and Princess Street (in the four cenlres) in a suit of the stitched leaves.

So one turns sadly away by Anderson Park into Wesley Road and on to Auroa Terrace, where joy is restored by a late hollyhock, a colour cli't telling off the last bright hours of "Indian summer," as the rose cannot do in these islands where the seasons deceive the roses as they do the birds of old England.

Lambton Quay! Again one is >n (the spattered footpath amid the twinkling tubes of tweed, the leather oags, the satchels, the flashing hose, the stucco and the roaring cars <t!i—devils of noise i. Apart from tho-e beautiful hues of silk the only notable colour is in some wind-bitten jpraniums in boxes on the high windowfills of a public-house. But. alas, the boxes are in the shape of butchers' trays.

turn to the right . . . the gloomy lift. . . the terrible telephone . . , the

tally .... the counting and discounting. At 12 o’clock the garden walk is as dim as a half-remembered dream. At 1 o'clock one is sure it was merely a dream. There are no gardens. The birds are all dead. There is only the city. But .... there arc the typistes and the tea.