Yesterday, I paused to smell the snowdrops. Snowdrops (Galanthus) have an ethereal scent of honey. There’s some effort required in smelling the scent of snowdrops because you have to kneel down beside them and turn their flower towards your nose – snowdrops are around 10cm off the ground and their flowers face downwards.

Smelling snowdrops reminds me of going round Dad's garden. Dad would squat down, chewing on his pipe, pulling out a matchstick to rootle in the soil looking for new bulb sending shoots up to the surface, turning snowdrop faces up to the sun to examine their markings and check their scent. His shade garden, under an oak tree from which we have a descendant at pa harakeke, hosted a proliferation of flowers including snow drops, cyclamen, pulmonarias, miniature daffodils, primroses and fritillarias.

Dad was content with his life. He emphasised how ‘content’ was different from happy. “You can’t be happy all the time, but you can always be content.” Dad’s garden was central to his contentment. He loved seeing plants grow in combination to create a greater whole, he loved seeing  bulb shoots pop up every spring and their flowers follow. He got the work done and also he took the time to smell the snowdrops as they arose.

I wasn’t literally smelling snowdrops yesterday morning because I was in Wanaka, rather than at home in Gibbston. However, I allowed myself to do…just what I wanted to do. I was in Wanaka because I’d performed at an open mic the previous evening and didn’t want to drive home over an icy Crown Range Road. In the morning, my brain kicked into its normal ‘what should I be doing’ mode. So many things to do calling me home – packing for our imminent cycling trip, tidying the vegetable garden preparatory to leaving, cutting the last of the flax flowers, cleaning the house, recording my ‘Big and Beautiful’ song, tidying up files from the hundred plus hours spent collating documents to justify sacking a bodycorp manager at our Christchurch apartment, filing my tax returns...

My first reaction was to get up at 7am and hurry home to get started on my list. My second reaction was to be where I was. I was in a beautiful place. Snow had fallen overnight and the mountains surrounding Wanaka wore white coats. The air was still and fresh and the sky was perfectly blue. What I wanted to do was take some time. I took the time to spend an hour chatting with a friend about his recent hunting trip. I took the time to walk over Mt Iron and I enjoyed the views so much that, when I got to the other side, I walked over it again.