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.
It's a shame the colour pink has been appropriated by the manufacturers of girls play stuff.
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.
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 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.
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.
