Matariki: the public holiday we all needed

(Above: our Matariki mandala this year.)

I think Matariki is my new favourite holiday. Long before it was made a public holiday, I used to grizzle that New Zealand needed another public holiday in winter as it was a long stretch from (then) Queen’s Birthday in June until Labour Day in October.

& because, as a pākeha, it is a new holiday, I’m really enjoying that we (my family) are creating our own celebrations for it: inviting friends to share kai and reflections, and focusing on rest.

I was hoping for a cold, wet weekend so I could be lazy and give some attention to my teetering pile of delicious library books…alas, (hello, climate change?) our winter here in the Manawatū seems to come later every year. Spring is the season I brace for…here our springs are mizzling, windy (we have a phenomena known as ‘the November gales’) and cold. So the weekend, while chilly, was also sunny…which meant I had to get out into the garden.

I did some satisfying chores that I only get to when the urgent business of harvest season is over: I tidied my junky heap of garden pots and paraphernalia into virgo-level neatness again. I cleared out the greenhouse, pruned and fed the fruit trees, planted more comfrey around their bases, dug up the dahlia bulbs. It was satisfying work that called for an afternoon tea of cinnamon pinwheels and a big pot of homemade masala chai (none of that syrupy nonsense.)

(Above: just the Edmonds date scone mixture but rolled out, spread with fruit mince and sliced into pinwheels instead of dates.)

Gardeners are always thinking a season (or more!) ahead. My winter food garden is all planted now…not too much to do. (Having said that I planted rockets seed and more broad beans on the weekend.) So now I’m dreaming ahead to summer flower/herb beds, by digging up clumps of perennial herbs and flowers and dividing them. I’ve been getting very inspired by urban rewilding books I’ve been reading (more on that in another post) so I’m eyeballing the little bits of lawn we still have and wondering if I might turn them into weedy spaces full of self-maintaining weeds and ‘wild’ flowers …for the pollinators and birds.

It takes a leap deeper into wildness and unruliness which can have a mixed response in an urban setting…and yet is so important for urban biodiversity as central city housing gets denser and more and more gardens are lost.

So, I ended up not being as lazy as I’d hoped for Matariki/Winter Solstice weekend…but it all felt good, a healthy-busy…not a pushing-hustle. Dreaming into summer is a kind of rest, I think.

& I know we’ll get plenty of stormy, frigid days in spring.

I get Koanga Garden’s newsletter and in the latest one, I like this, from founder Kay Baxter:

‘This is how regeneration works: a little effort now, in rhythm with nature, pays forward in resilience, nourishment and beauty.’

Tell me what you’re up to in your gardens. x