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Picture: Sandra Simpson
September 2010
The magnolias are looking gorgeous in my part of the country just now, but that's in spite of the rain, thunder, lightning and hail that we had at the weekend - must be spring! I think I used a magnolia picture as my spring illustration last year, so to mark the new season this year is a picture of Prunus yedoensis Awanui, a flowering cherry that was developed in New Plymouth. Some of the hybrid names for the flowering cherries are lovely - Falling Snow, Pink Cloud, and, considering our recent weather, Thundercloud!
Awanui does well in Taranaki where there's high rainfall (not all cherrries do) and has a nice, spreading habit that makes it a good shade tree in summer. It lines the main street of Te Awamutu. Keith Adams, QSM, was the nurseryman who propagated what he named Awanui after it grew as a wild seedling on his property. It is arguably one of the country's most popular cherry blossoms, noted for masses of single pale-pink flowers. In his retirement Keith was also a keen collector of vireya rhododendrons, making trips to Indonesia and the island of Borneo in quest of new plants.
It's amazing what people do with their spare time, isn't it?
Spring seemed like a good time to add two more poets to our Showcase - Margaret Beverland and Kirsten Cliff, both from the Bay of Plenty. Click on their names to go directly to their Showcase page, or use the Showcase option in the menu at the top of this page and then click through to Index of Poets.
wind chimes across parched fields a dandelion drifts
- Margaret Beverland
at opposite ends
of the haiku pathway
young poets old poets
- Kirsten Cliff
I chose to feature this example by Kirsten because it feeds very nicely into a point made in this month's article by Michael Dylan Welch about cultural references. Her poem echoes that of Jeanette Stace, which is engraved on a boulder on the Katikati Haiku Pathway:
at opposite ends
of the park bench
a man a woman
And Michael has not only given permission to reprint his work, but added a postcript to update it for readers.
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