DIARY OF A GARDENER: TICKLING THE WATERMELONS

I learnt the most fascinating thing yesterday. I learnt that you and me, humans can assist watermelon plants breed, get pregnant, become fertile, pollinate – whatever the term is in garden lingo. My best friends Brother Brent and his wonderful partner Michelle showed me how by using the male flower to tickle the female stem or bulb can fertilise the plant. So my friends regularly give their plant a helping hand if the female bulbs look a bit barren. Watermelons self-fertilise, with the female flower being pollinated equally well by pollen from a male flower on the same or a different plant. They’re not strictly hermaphrodite though and unlike worms which are, watermelons need the wind, bees, birds or loving human guardians to transfer the pollen along the same plant or across to a neighbouring one. So I found this titbit of knowledge fascinating because it was so rudimentary in a cycle-of-life, universal inter-connected co-existence kind of way. I suppose the smallness of the deed – the tickling of a bulb to produce substanance to feed not just a small family of four but an extended whanau and friends totalling over 100 (a large well producing plant can bear over 20 watermelons), that’s humanity at grassroots level.

My two friends Brother Brent and Michelle, they’re clever people. They live in Mt Albert the same suburb as me and my little family. That’s not why they’re clever; they’re smart because they can grow food in a tyre. The couple reckon it retains heat especially when the temperature drops and I suppose it’ll be a great deflector of frost in winter almost as good as a glasshouse. They have full, healthy kamokamo and tomatoes packed into that broken truck tyre. As soon as I saw it, it brought back memories of my neighbours the Meads in Galbraith Street. They had blue, green, yellow swans made out of discarded car and truck tyres. The Meads planted flowers; pansies, carnations and daffodil bulbs inside the hollowed-out middle. I always thought them ugly. But a tyre with food in it, now that’s a much more attractive sight, practical, principled, purposeful.
I won’t be as ambitious for my garden as Brother Brent and Michelle are with theirs. I can’t be because I’m starting over again after a ten year hiatus. I have to relearn things, how to grow what to grow when to grow. It’s a whole new relearning. But more than that I’m older and the back isn’t as strong as it used to be and what used to take me an hour seems to take me a day. It was good to visit my friend’s garden. Wonderful to watch Michelle tickle the watermelon bulb, discuss the merits of discarded rubber tyres and to spend time and share food with wonderful people.

DIARY OF AN URBAN GARDENER

Today I decided to go meet the neighbours and take a look at their gardens. My little family and I are new to the neighbourhood and I thought it would be a great way to meet people. So my little 2 year old and I toddled up the road to find ourselves a vegetable garden or two to examine, photograph and hopefully meet the owners. I didn’t need to go far. Almost directly across the road, I saw a family sitting on the doorstep watching an elderly gentleman tending a large relatively newly planted vegetable garden. Up the path we went. It turned out that Falakiko Kaitapu, his wife Sita and family are from Ha’apai in Tonga. They have been in New Zealand for about 10 years. Ha’apai is actually a group of coral islands - 62 in all. 45 are uninhabited and almost all are low coral islands with vibrant reefs and kilometres of deserted coconut tree framed white beaches. Your classic South Seas paradise postcard picture, it’s stunning. I grew up in Tonga and know Ha’apai. So when I heard that the Kaitapu family came from that group of Islands I thought what a huge social and cultural sacrifice they’ve made to be here in Aotearoa New Zealand.

There’s just over 50,000 Tongans in New Zealand but in terms of Tongan immigrants, the Kaitapu family at 10years are new comers to the country. Tongans have been voyaging to Aotearoa for more than 100 years, but it wasn’t really until the 1950’s and 60’s that significant numbers started arriving. The notorious ‘dawn raids’ of the 1970’s saw the rise of the Polynesian Panthers and Tongan urban leader Will Illolahia. Today Will and his Waiata Trust are behind the Owairaka Community Garden initiative. Will established the garden to bring warring teen gangs together. In January 2002, two Somali youths were charged with murdering a 21-year-old Tongan, Elikena Inia, in a night of brawls between Somalis and Pacific Islanders in near-by McGehan Close. The garden is still being maintained by Will, Waiata Trust and local youth. I’m not surprised Will chose a garden as the mediary for peace. Nor am I surprised that Mr Kaitapu has such a magnificent vegetable garden. All Tongans back in the Islands have a family plantation. So both Will and Mr Kaitapu are working with and on, what they know.

The main staple of a Pacific Island vegetable garden is taro. Mr Kaitapu’s garden is no exception. He also has banana trees and something I haven’t seen in a domestic garden since I was in Tonga and that’s peanuts. Looking forward to seeing how they nut out! There were also tomatoes, silver beet and cabbages. His garden is on an incline, ideally placed to maximise all day sun. What amazed me was that Mr Kaitapu didn’t use any fertiliser. None at all. All he does is tend to the plants himself weeding and turning the soil daily and over a period of hours. A real labour of love.

Meanwhile back in my humble garden. I cleared a few centre-metres of leaves and turned the soil, but came to a crashing halt when a rat the size of a cat scuttled past me. I didn’t scream hysterically but rather used a string of profanity, that would make Mike King proud! I know where the rat’s come from. There’s a creek that runs along the back of the houses on our side of the street. Its part of the Oakley Creek, Maori know it as Auaunga Awa. So I’m going to have to lay bait or something. I won’t set a trap that means I’ll have to manually remove it or them if there’s more than one. There’s no humane way to get rid of varmints. But if you do have any other suggestions on extermination methods, other than baiting and trapping, I’d gladly welcome them.

DIARY OF AN URBAN GARDENER

I’ve cleared another metre of ground, making way for my urban vegetable garden. It’s slow going for me. Whereas some gardeners would have cleared the same space in the wink of an eye – unfortunately I’m a cm-x-cm kind of girl. Lucky for me the garden’s relatively clear of weeds, thanks to the heavy leaf cover on the ground. It’s been a well maintained garden over all. This is a new home for me and my little family. We’re living in a three bedroom ex-state house. The house itself has good solid bones, nothing leaky about it except for the taps that don’t twist all the way to off. Unlike other state homes in our street our yard isn’t quite your ¼ acre section (it’s more like an 1/8th), but compared to the homes we’ve owned in Grey Lynn this property feels almost farm-like in its proportions.

When I was a kid growing up in Galbraith Street which is just around the corner from where we live now, it was a true ¼ acre section. My parents bought the state house from the Government using the Family Benefit as a deposit. That was 1960’s Auckland and we were the only Maori family in the street. In fact the closest Maori family to us were the Webbs, cousins of ours from up North. They lived in Potter Ave two streets over. The Webbs and us were part of the Labour Government’s ‘pepper-potting policy’. This is where Maori families were sprinkled around Pakeha neighbourhoods to encourage assimilation into Pakeha society. I suppose we could count ourselves lucky to have been allowed to ‘pepper-the-pot’, because twenty years earlier (the late 1940s) Maori were excluded from mainstream state housing, on the grounds that their presence would 'lower the tone' of state housing communities. At that time there was state assistance for Maori housing in rural areas but it came in the form of loans. The monies were used to replace dilapidated housing. The replacement buildings were smaller and less sophisticated than the state-sponsored Pakeha housing.

Anyway I digress.

It was the size of the sections I wanted to talk about or rather what was on the sections. I can’t find any policy similar to that of Canberra Australia requiring residents to have set number of trees and shrubs on their properties. But back yard Kiwi state houses of that era, all without exception grew the same trees – feijoa, plum, apple, peach, lemon and a loquat. A mini orchard. Galbraith Street still has one of two original plum trees and the feijoa tree. Both are over 50 years old now and still fruiting strongly. Alas the apple, peach and loquat succumbed to my brother’s over exuberance with an axe, 40 years ago. Many of the state homes in my street today have very mature fruit trees, apples, plums, lemons and loquats mainly. You can tell they must have been planted over half a century ago because of the moss covered bark, the gnarled leaves or the general skeletal frames reminiscent of our own frail elderly. As well as fruit trees, state houses from the 40’s to 70’s also had the most magnificent vegetable gardens. It was no surprise to see 10 metre rows of silver beat stand knee and thigh high beside shoulder tapping tomato plants and head topping corn stalks. Potato plants were abundant along with cabbages, beans, peas and beetroot. Lettuces weren’t at all popular, well not in our neighbourhood anyway.
My section won’t be the ‘long rows akin of old’. Instead I think I’ll have boxed sections, it’ll be much more manageable for me. But I better get going otherwise I’ll still be talking about it this time next year.

POSING NUDE ON A STREET CORNER

Someone told me – don’t know who, that having your photo emblazoned on a large billboard in a public place made you feel exposed like posing nude on a street corner.

Last night our Local Board hoardings went up all over Owairaka a subdivision of Albert Eden Roskill. When the first hoarding was hoisted high, regulations restricting it to 3 metres from ground to top, I didn’t feel exposed, laid bare. Quite the opposite I felt detached, removed from the situation almost as though I was watching a scene unfold that had nothing to do with me. I have no idea what that means in psychological, cerebral terms except to say that if I get tagged, I’m going to ask Maori Party’s Martin Cooper for advice on how to prevent it from ever happening again! It’s the small but significant things that cause you the most pain though; having your face defiled, is the ultimate personal insult. Even though rational folk know those that do the defiling are the unhinged it still cuts to the personal core. So while I didn’t feel exposed like standing naked on a street corner, I did wonder how long it would take before the billboards were bombed. It was then that I felt vulnerable. This brought me back to one of the many reasons for me standing for the Local Board. I’m tough on crime.

I’m absolutely against alcohol consumption in public places like shopping centres, parks and reserves. The drinking ban is successful in the CBD, and we deserve to have the same law here in the suburbs. But it’s because of the CBD ban that the illicit drinking has come to our streets – it’s pushed many of the ‘homeless’ out into the suburbs and with them come the additional criminal elements, the taggers, the glue sniffers, the intimidators. This riff-raff hang out at the Mt Albert train station, in the bus stops and even in shop doorways and around the ATM machines. These criminal elements threaten honest shoppers and hard working small business owners. It’s not on and it must stop.

No one should feel vulnerable in their homes and on their streets, whether they’re on billboards or shopping at their local butcher. This is the time to take control of our streets, our suburb and our city. The people of Owairaka Albert Eden Roskill have a depth of history unlike other suburbs. We span coast to coast from Manukau to Waitemata and from mountain top to mountain top Mt Albert/Owairaka, Mt Eden/Maungawhau and Mt Roskill/Puketapapa and let’s not forget Three Kings/Te Tatua-o-Riukiuta.

Yes, Albert Eden Roskill we are indeed heartland Auckland.

So let's hope the only activity around the billboard hoardings are between the various parties vying for prime position and not between taggers and candidates.

It's About Whanau.

Our whanau represents the diverse lifestyles and multi-cultural make-up that is this great city called Auckland. We are strongly connected to our hapu and iwi in Ngati Porou and Nga Puhi. We are proud and supportive members of the Takatapui (GLBTi) community: to us whanau is paramount;. My wife Nadine Mau and I have two boys attending Grey Lynn School, Kiamana Year 5, Te Ua Year 4 and in three years time our little girl Manawa will be ready to start School at Edendale Primary. We live in Columbia Street Sandringham.

My Company Front of the Box Productions LTD has been operating in Grey Lynn for 10 years. I have built my business brand on ‘accessibility’: giving the greatest amount of people, best access to quality information in order to make decisions. As a result we are multi-award winning television programme producers and are the largest independent suppliers of Maori and Pasifika content in English to TVNZ.

My background in political reporting and current affairs programme making has afforded me in-depth knowledge of local and central government business as well as lobby and interest group strategy, policy drafting and submission. I am currently the Telecommunications Sector Leader for the National Party Maori Advisory Group.

Like all C & R members I too am determined that multi-cultural Auckland and all its diversity remains the cultural capital of not just New Zealand but the Pacific Rim. But like C & R, I too believe it can only be achieved through unity and hard work; an emphasis on safe homes, safe streets, safe communities; a focus on economic enterprise, growth and above all a unified people proud to call Auckland City home.

I look forward to the Local elections and encourage everyone to exercise their democratic right to vote. For those in the Owairaka subdivision of Albert-Eden-Roskill ward: voteclaudettehauiti.

Come November 1 we will have a new Auckland…..and that new Auckland will be built on tradition, values and connected communities.

My family has invested over 50 years of their life to this area. My parents bought our family home at 5 Galbraith Street Mt Roskill in 1960 and it’s still ours…….it’s where my brother now lives. Not far away my own family live in Sandringham.

My parents came to Auckland just after the second world war from rural Northland and rural East Coast for a better life for themselves and for us their children.

They instilled in us good, honest, traditional values……..to work hard……to know and respect your neighbours……and they showed us the value of being a part of a community.

My Mother was proud of her job as a machinist at Klipper Ties on Stoddard Road…….while my Father had a prestigious job as a Auckland Clerk of Works.

I am a legacy of their hard work….I own two Companies and am a Multi-Award winning Television Programme maker. My brother and two sisters are academics and business people in their own right.

This community will contribute vibrant business hubs….and promote public private partnerships to the new Auckland……but we will not tolerate…….bureaucratic, PC interference and meddling.

In Galbraith Street….our neighbour’s the Meads, the Heihei’s, the Saindbury’s, the Eaton’s, the Ford’s, the Dagg’s, the Casey’s…..a close knit street, we looked out for eachother……this community will contribute a sense of connectedness to the new Auckland….but we will not tolerate unsustainable urban growth at the expense of people.


On Sunday’s I used to run to the top of Mt Albert and at the lookout would stare down at our home in the distance……and wait for my Dad to open the kitchen window and wave out to me……it was a signal that our Sunday Roast Lunch was almost ready……..a little 10 year old girl could run to the top of the mountain alone…..without fear….that may never happen again….sadly……..this community will contribute safer streets to the new Auckland because there will be a zero tolerance to crime.



Albert-Eden is hosting the 2011 Rugby World Cup Rugby. We have an opportunity to show the World that we are champions……a proud Nation ……a conquering All Blacks Rugby Team……a first class Auckland City……and most importantly a unified, diversely rich…..strong vibrant Albert-Eden-Roskill.