Source: Radio New Zealand
Here in Raglan the summer has felt endless, perfect. Not a single cyclone, barely any rain, just blue skies and long days and warm dusky surfs until the glow is gone and only starlight shows the way down the dark glassy waves. My festival costumes rarely required a jacket. I spent lazy hours in the hammock on the deck with my daughters while we all read our own books about dragons. (Theirs, graphic novels. Mine, just… graphic.)
But this week, for the first time, there was a chill to the morning air. And right on cue, the first handful of feijoas fell from our Unique and Kaiteri, the two earliest varieties. Of course I burrowed straight into the grass and ate almost all of them—although I did save a couple for the kids.
Usually, my partner and I look forward to autumn. The change in the light, the harvests, the kids actually going to bed before 9pm, the gathering momentum of the year’s projects. This time, though, I’ve enjoyed such a lush sunny season I don’t want it to end. I keep thinking of how my friend Josh once called feijoas a ‘consolation fruit’—a solace for the dying days of summer.
Supplied
