Flax

My Dear Princess and Dear Fellows,

I was delighted to see this in our back garden. It is a flax plant which puts out these beautiful flowers. The best thing about them is that they encourage nectar-drinking birds, like tui and waxeyes. 

Our little baby flax plant is probably not big enough for tui which are about the size of one and a half blackbirds. But maybe next year.

Flax is considered a weed here in NZ, and you do see it everywhere, but I'm glad the landscapers planted some in our back garden all the same. They knew we wanted to attract wildlife, and this is the way to do it.

Flax is also part of one of my favourite stories about the New Zealand Wars, which took place in the middle of the 19th century. 

They lasted over about 30 years, and were a series of engagements between the Maori and the British army. The British, with modern military techniques and arms, expected to win easily. But they hadn't reckoned with the ingenuity of the Maori warriors who looked at the British artillery and decided to invent trench warfare 50 years before World War 1.

The Maori built massive earthwork forts, called Pa. There are loads of places still called Something Pa all over New Zealand, a remnant of those times. The British cannons would pound these forts, but basically just threw dirt into the air. 

The only way to break into the forts and over-run them was to dig your way in. So the British would dig trenches up to the forts. And obviously the Maori would throw shit (not literally) at them. Shoot at them with rifles, throw spears, handy rocks, etc. 

The British decided the best way to prevent this was to cover the top of the trench with woven flax leaves. And that worked pretty well. They would eventually get to the Pa, storm in with their rifles and...

...No-one home. The Maori would have all effed off out the back. 

And it was at this point that the British would realise that it was the Maori themselves who had been weaving the flax rooves for the trenches, selling it to the British and then effing off, having made a nice profit. (With which, one assumes, they went and bought bullets).

I have to admire that. 

As for me, I shall not be doing anything with my flax, other than watching birdies alight on it. And I think that is probably just as well.

S.