Now That's a Hedge

There are two quotes from modern films which come into my mind fairly frequently: 

The moment in Pretty Woman as Vivian gets her own back on the rude shop assistant:

1. Shop assistant: “Hello, can I help you?”
Vivian: “I was in here yesterday, you wouldn’t wait on me.”
Shop assistant: “Oh.”
Vivian: “You people work on commission, right?”
Shop assistant: “Yeah.”
Vivian: “Big mistake. Big. Huge. I have to go shopping now.”

The second was from Crocodile Dundee when Mick Dundee and Sue are accosted by a knife wielding mugger and Mick says  "That's not a knife.  That's a knife." in this sketch.

Well when I was driving back from Tauranga a few weeks ago I stopped in the Te Puke area and realised I was enclosed by hedges around the Kiwi fruit orchards.  In fact hedges like this are common in the fruit growing areas of New Zealand which includes, of course, Hawkes Bay where I live.  Anyway it occurred to me that when in the UK we talk about our hedges an appropriate reply would be:  They're not hedges.  These are hedges:

Better Than Shears

Today the hedge was cut.  Actually that's rather an understatement.  At 0730 a tractor arrived with the most lethal looking piece of equipment I have ever seen.  The hedge needed somewhere around 1.5 metres lopping off it.   Boy did this baby achieve its objective.  The Cottage is probably 30 or so metres away and was showered by the debris.

A Spectacular Hedge: Revisited

Every day I pass the Spectacular Hedge about which I blogged on 31 March. The fact that I couldn't find out what it was was beginning to rankle. So I did the obvious and cut a piece off and asked at a Garden Centre. The answer is Cape Honeysuckle (Tecomaria capensis). As the name suggests it's a native of South Africa. It is, potentially, a weed in New Zealand because it very vigorous and produces a dense mass, smothering or replacing native vegetation.

A Spectacular Hedge

On the way into Napier there is a stretch of road with hundreds of metres of fabulous red-flowered hedging and shrub covered bank. Unfortunately I can't identify it. Perhaps CJ will be able to identify the family and then, hopefully it can be identified either on the New Zealand Native Plants website (which I have searched without success) or somewhere else - I know not where - if it's not a native plant.

In amongst the shrubbery is another plant