Christmas Eve Dinner

What a magnificent spectacle, a water wheel driving a spit roast. The heat from this fiendish roaster was intense and mouth watering. This was a really enjoyable, community dinner in the Far North at Ninety Mile Beach

Deer

A few snaps of Deer from over the years. Controlling wildlife is important to some people.
Would we be more repulsed if the deer were mounted in the pose they died just before their corpes were dragged into the taxidermists' workshop. I think it may not look so macho if the head was drooping with the tongue flopping out and oozing blood.

Wooley Christmas

The amount of skill, patience and love that go into hand knitting this amazing scene stuns me.
There's something about the simplicty of detail that reminds me of a very pixelated digital photo.
I hear rumours there is a huge resurgence in people taking up knitting and taking it to exciting new directions.

Christmas

Op shops, especially those directly connected to a church are totally irresistable. I feel drawn to them. There maybe some bargins, There are always visual treats. This one is in Oxford

Spike & Albert

Dear friends recently tragically, lost their beloved guinea pigs, Spike and Albert. The suspect is a small dog that most likely got into their cage and abducted them. The death of a pet is utterly taumatic. I felt great sorrow on a numerous levels. I had nick named them Nibbles and Timmy. Timmy was the name of my guinea pig when I was was a kid. Nibbles was named after a hampster on a popular cartoon sitcom.
The above pic is one I took when we were blessed with looking after them for a wee while. a wee while ago.
Much pleasure can be obtained just watching animals going about their daily existence.
Rest in peace, Spike and Albert.

Demolishing

There are many mean and brutal looking hunks of steel chomping their way through Christchurch at the moment. It reminds me Japanese monster movies.

Cyanotyping

Cyanotype is an old process that requires the sun and water to create a photographic image.
An emulsion is created with a mixture of Potassium Ferricyanide, Ferric-Ammonium Citrate and water.
This is then applied to a good water colour paper and left to dry in the dark
When it is dry the paper is ready to print with. Using either a Black & White negative or flattish objects such as leaves, feathers, lace etc It is then sandwiched under glass and put in the sunlight. Around 10mins exposure should be enough.
In a room that has no sun light entering it, remove the sensitised paper and place it in a tray of running water. After about 5-10mins it is fully developed and ready to hang up and dry, giving you a beautiful blue image.
The pic above shows a cyanotype in the process of exposure to sunlight.This was from an afternoon session of cyanotyping I had with friends recently on one of those rare Christchurch warm sunny days. It is being created in an old printing frame from the days before enlargers, or machine printers, when stuff was made of wood, metal and glass. If you wanted the whole process can be done with out the use of electricity.

Farewell Crow

Crow has passed on. She has always been scatty and slightly prehistoric looking. Her death was not unexpected. Araucanas are known for their blue shelled eggs. Crow only laid about six eggs in her short life. They were however, the most beautiful eggs I have ever seen. Too exquisite to use. I still have a couple I want to preserve somehow.
Chicken behaviour is endlessly fascinating, the night after Crow died, the other Araucana cuddled up with the two shavers on the floor of the coop, she has never done that before, preferring to sleep on the top perch.
The top pic shows Alex our second born attempting to dig Crow a grave with the assistance of Belinda. Eventually we had to lock her away or there may have been the need to dig the grave a little deeper.
Farewell Crow

Flower Power

Amid all the quake abandoned dwellings, the flowers continue to inhabit and blossom unabated. Most seem to flourish without the ever present gardener constantly 'tending' and controlling them. They feel to me like beautiful teenagers, seeking their own direction.

Pink

It's a shame the colour pink has been appropriated by the manufacturers of girls play stuff.
A glimpse down any toy alley in a major retailer will cause instant blindness and nausea.
I'm sure the above pic is actually a pretty princess pile of of puke!

Suppression

The urge to inflict our vision of how other life forms should live out their existence is alive and well! Most people appreciate and enjoy the way trees express their individuality in the way they grow, others sadly feel they must be controlled. Both these snaps were taken recently in Akaroa. The first image with Cabbage trees saddens me, they have had their outer protective leaves brutely torn off and discarded. Probably because they look 'untidy' and may drop off. The irony to me was the rest of the garden was overgrown and ramshackled.
I wouldn't want to have to get down this fire escape in a hurry in bare feet. It ends in the middle of a sawn off Yew tree, bizzare!

Bench

A while back I saw a couple on a park bench communicating to each other in a very emotional manner. This got me thinking how many lives have been altered, changed or distrupted by conversations or other interactions on park benches. I'll be hunting down a few more park benches, and snapping them. I'd like to put them into a book format with either a blank page next to the image so the reader could make up their own story of what may of gone on, on that bench or I could have a go at creating the stories.
I'll work on it.
This bench is on the main street of Geraldine, a great town full of excellent local food and beverage manufacturing.

New Bench

I whipped up this garden bench a few weeks back from the remnants of my once proud micro forest of native trees, that were sacrificed as part of a house de-dampening scheme. There are also a few bits of driftwood. Most of the timber is Lacebark which is fast growing and can get out of control in the blink of an eye. The grain, colour and hardness of the wood has been a very pleasant surprise. It is light blonde and has a very pronounced 'ray pattern' similar to quarter sawn oak. I'm also looking into making jewellery and small sculptures with it.

Wording

Just down the road from this sign is 'Smart Street'.

Boy Stuff

These pics are from an open day at the Christchurch Airport maintenace centre a couple years back. The top one is a Globemaster C17, used by the American Antartic people for mass cargo deliveries. There are so many offensive and disgusting things about this plane. The obsence amount of money to manufacture it that could go to much better causes, its part of the global military industrial complex. I'm pretty sure it's using huge amounts of natural resourses to produce, run and maintain it. Just the name Globemaster is so assertive and macho. Despite all this it makes the hair on the back of my neck stand to attention when the enourmous engines are throttled up full tilt. The whole plane is shuddering, the tarmac is shuddering, your spleen is shuddering. It's terrifyingly, repulsively awesome.
The other pic is the undercarrage of a passenger Boeing 777. The precision, design and materials used fasinates me. How everthing doesn't come flying to bits when the plane slams onto the runway at hundereds of kilometers per hour, leaves me breathless.

Quake sound track

Once the rumbling and smashing sound of a large quake stops, other sounds fill the air. Car alarms, cell phone ring tones, emergency vehicle alarms, helicopters, gurgling liquefaction, burglar alarms beeping- altering you that the power is off and then planes flying over.
This image is of an Airforce Orion that was sweeping over the city within a couple of hours of the Feb 22 quake. It has a very distinitive sound generated by huge propelers, rumoured to be the second largest props on any aircraft.

Loo Views

Portable toilets are now another part of the new landscape. Here are a couple of seldom seen interior pics, one looking up, the other looking down.
My apologies to the squemish.
The blue and white pic was taken with flash, not my usual choice of light. In this case there wasn't much choice, it was very dark down there and getting a tripod setup in there would be a real challenge, and could lead to some spectators.

Quake Protection

This lovely cabbage tree is on Wakefield Ave in Sumner. There are two containers on top of each other, strecting for about a kilometer, keeping the rocks from the cliffs adjacent from doing more destruction. I'm finding more Cabbage Trees are being either exposed or framed by the new landscape.
I'm a sucker for Cabbage Trees, I'm drawn to their wild unkempt appearence, and slightly mad shape.They also have an amazing rejuvinating ability, they can be chopped or burnet to the ground, and within weeks are sprouting new leaves. Many tidy, fussy types hate them because they gift their leaves to the ground very genoursly. Many councils banned the leaves from being put in the organics recycling bin, because the mulchers they use are rotary, and jamb up very easily. I feel this tree represents a lot of the qualities I see in many great New Zealand citizens. If ever there was going to be a national tree, my vote goes to the humble Cabbage Tree.

New Vista

The picture with the Cabbage Tree was taken in 2008 and was part of an exhibition I had at the CoCA gallery entitled 'Still Lives'. As part of the blurb I wrote something along the lines of: trees don't move about much except for swaying in the wind or shaking in an earthquake. Another coincidence, the exhibition closed on Feb 22, two years to the day before the quake that trashed a big chunk of Christchurch. The other photo was taken a few months ago.
Sadly the CoCA Gallery has now closed indefinably, due to no one coming into the central City

Carrot Pants

Spring is starting to get my gardening juices flowing. I've been preparing the vege patch with lashings of pony poo and straw from the chicken house. Hopefully I can grow more exquisite carrots such as the one I grew last year. It looks to me like a cyclist has tucked their stretchy pants into the their socks and and then inflated them with the tyre pump.

Life in the freezer

More disruption pics. All our beautiful Cabbage Trees have had their leaves bent and disfigured by the inescapable burden of snow. Our cat, Scud was excited by the thought of being a snow leopard. The chooks took one look and stayed in their house for two days. Whether it was the cold or the hottie I slipped into their coup, our chook that had not yet payed her way with a supply of eggs, has finally started to deliver us beautiful blue shelled eggs.
Thankfully all that is left now is the slowly dissolving stump of a snow person, leaking into the back lawn

Snow

An eerie orange glow accompanied a big dump of snow last week. I think it was from the street lights reflecting off the snow flakes as they plummeted mercilessly entombing the city in a cold and vulgar crust of disruption. The pics above were taken around 11.30 pm. The top one is our front garden the other is the street outside the front garden. I can never understand the joy that grips people who ski?

Signage

A bunch of signs that have recently caught my attention.

Roaming

Our chooks have been allowed out to roam the backyard. The vege patch has been well weeded and dug over. We are still being rewarded with a plentiful supply of yokey orbs of goodness. The chook that was laying blue eggs, ceased fire about two months ago has oddly started up again. The only creature I know that is hungrier than a chook is a teenage boy.

Rust Fossils

I first stumbled across this bed of what appears to be rust fossils about 20 years ago. They are only visible at low tide. The place is Kakanuni about 10 kms form Oamaru. My theory on these is, many years ago this area was used as a dumping ground for old unwanted railways bits. Because this is at the bottom of a cliff it was easy to to just shove the rubbish over. The continual tumbling of the waves and rocks eventually pounded, corroded and fused the bed rock and rubbish together. This whole area is part of an extinct volcano around about 35 million years old.
I took these snaps recently. I met a geology student taking measurements for part of his course. He told me how old the area is.

More Hearts

More hearts lurking in the wilderness. The top one is in the McKezie country the other is in an Oamaru beach. I have a friend who collects heart shaped rocks. She has some displayed on the windowsill above the toilet. That last big quake in Christchurch flung them about, resulting in a smashed toilet bowl.... Nature creates and nature takes away.

Sea Sick?

I stumbled across this rough heart shape on a beach in Oamaru a few weeks back. This beach is well known for Yellow Eyed penguins. There are signs pleading with visitors to be off the beach by 3 pm. I was there at 1 pm.This beach is also inhabited by fur seals. I saw one as I surveyed the beach. I was looking for the best way to stroll with out disturbing the seal. You don't see the other eight until you nearly stumble over them!
I think mark on the sand maybe some sort of bodily fluid ejected from a seal.

Crust

Nature works in very mysterious ways. Is this a sign from the local sparrows and starlings, thanking us for feeding them, or just a random design pecked out in a hurry before a cat, lunges at them from the surrounding bushes?
I've been noticing a few shapes that we interpret as love hearts have been turning up in places I been lurking in recently.

Daisies

Heading out of Oamaru towards Dunedin, I found these daisies bursting out of a concrete retaining wall. They were like a pink, white and green cushion, just hanging there. There were several others of smaller size. I'm intriqued with the way plants just get on and grow where ever they can.

South Island

Still in Oamaru, this masterpiece of the plasterers skill was being accentuated by the early morning sun. It resides opposite the railway station. There is a real southern pride coming through, who needs the North Island?

Fabrics

A couple of weeks ago we were in Oamaru for the weekend. Helen was adjudicating a speech competition and I was free to roam and snap or scavange. The busyiness of these printed fabrics so carefully displayed, were just begging to be photographed. I was tempted to purchase some and have a shirt made.

Fishing Trophy

I invested a dollar in this symbol of male competition and blood lust. Currently I am the holder of this highly esteemed piece of plastic. My dear friend Grae has occasionally wrestled it from its' rightful place on our mantlepiece. The cracks in the wall are from the Feb 22 earthquake. The trophy did not move at a millimeter, an indication of where it feels safe? Sadly there has not been too much fishing this year.