Fresh Water (Wai Máori)

Wetland Wander

Noelene Landrigan rsj

Looking for inspiration I donned my gumboots and armed myself with a camera, pen and paper and headed to the seclusion of the wetland...

A crawl into the mānuka (tea tree) bushes.

What a sight!

Five juvenile blackbirds sitting very still, like dark plums on a dying tree,

beaks pointing parallel with twigs and feathers speckled like the tango of light and shade within the thicket.

Hidden juveniles

Camouflaged by mānuka

Dependent on mum.

The bright colour of yellow dandelions caught my eye.

A bunch of picked flowers added to the bowl nature has provided.

Wild dandelions flowerBlooming where they

are plantedChildren have been

here

Summertime conjures up memories from my childhood.

Long grass to play and hide in,

Seeds galore for little birds to feast upon.

Summer seeds itself

Atop swamp sedges

Dense roots purify

As a child, I ‘innocently’ broke open a spider web nursery, to see the thousands of wee spiders run around everywhere.

Here’s “Dolomedes”Spiderlings balloon away

Dispersing freely

The outer leaves of the harakeke (flax bushes) were trimmed away, leaving the rito (growing shoot) and two awhi rito or matua (parent leaves) on either side.

The traditional way to plant harakeke is to plant the puku to the sun, so that the bulge fan faces halfway between the rising and setting sun thereby protecting the baby fans as they emerge at the back of the clump.

Harakeke fanRemembers its

ancestorsAnd waits the weaver

Mānuka (tea trees) flourish around the wetland.

Visited by the honeybee and other insects.

A beautiful classroom for cooperation, mutuality and reciprocity.

Hard yet beautiful

Nitrogen fixerDelicate bee

food

A myriad of aquatic insects.

One surfaces. Twists its body to momentarily display a ‘solar panel’ to the sun above.

I wish I could do that!

Beneath the mirror

Fresh water insects aboundInvertebrate

food

Strong wind gusts.

Threatening heavy rain drops repeating the words of Miriam Therese Winter,

“The world we live in, that lives in us”.

Diversity reignsA miniature

universeSustained by its

principles

For information about World Water Day, March 22nd, visit the United Nations website.