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?