I first noticed the tree from the passenger seat above Whangamatā, where the road bends hard and the sea appears too blue to be useful as evidence. The pōhutukawa were already out, not politely but all at once, vermilion over basalt and leaf, as if the cliffs had been underlined by someone impatient to close the year.
A calendar printed in flowers
In town, the signal is less poetic and more practical. School bags sit unopened by the door, courier vans idle in the heat, and every conversation ends with a tide time or a cousin who has a bach key. The tree does not decorate the season; it announces a change of pace with a colour nobody mistakes for anything else.
Summer here is not a postcard mood. It is a collective instruction to make room for salt, shade, and slower sentences.