This morning I looked out over the bay and thought it was a misty morning. It was, in fact, a rainy morning, with gusty winds, which would not have mattered so much but for the fact that today was also the day of the agility championship dog trials, and these, it seems, are always held outdoors.... Sign in to see full entry.
Sorry to have been away from the keyboard so long... It was the 4 day road trip, then all day yesterday at TePapa, the natural history and art museum in Wellington, and coming home feeling... shall we say, gastrically unsettled...? Lord of the Rings is a part of me, has been since I first visited... Sign in to see full entry.
Today, Marika and I are off to help at an obedience training dog show. All I'll probably be doing is assisting with the timing of certain events. One thing the pups have to demonstrate is the ability to Sit and Stay for two minutes. That means having their butt planted, even if they squirm around a... Sign in to see full entry.
Wind, like light, is only seen in its effects. All night the wind has been blowing, not quite howling through the trees, but try opening a door a little, or a window...! The trees are whipping around, those that can, and one appreciates not living under tall trees that could come down across one's... Sign in to see full entry.
Yesterday I collected my first NZ seashells, strolling along a narrow strip of sand and rock. The shells are mostly cockles and clams, but there are also little round molluscs, and pointy long ones like unicorn horns, and something like abalone, called paua (pronounced 'pow') and many little limpets... Sign in to see full entry.
This small Anglican churchyard has stones that date from the earliest days of New Zealand's European settlement, mid-1800s. Wandering around reading them is like a walk through a particularly poignant story book. But the stories are incomplete: hints, suggestions, a glimpses of lives and deaths, of... Sign in to see full entry.
the morning of the day I arrived--you can see the tide is low and the shallow flats and sand bars are starting to be exposed. The next morning, the sky was unaccountably clear, and the sun --which is extraordinarily sharp and bright here--glowed on the hills to the west, and made the quiet patches... Sign in to see full entry.
The house looks small from the approach--in fact, it looks like a garage. To the left is a moderately high white stucco wall with a modest iron gate. Trees and vines overhang everywhere like the Gardens of Babylon. But come through the gate or the garage, into a little garden--no lawn anywhere--and... Sign in to see full entry.
I have begun to load photos onto photobucket, though it may be a slow process. Computer speeds don't seem to be very fast here. But anyway, if you will pardon me an assumption here, these are some of what you're looking forward to: Inside the house, and the views from it--It's a wonderful house,... Sign in to see full entry.
shining out between the clouds of the New Zealand sky. The first leg of the flight, from Seattle to San Francisco, was from drenching rain to sunshine over the clouds, and down into a pleasant enough California afternoon. With a layover of a couple of hours, I walked a good long way to get to the... Sign in to see full entry.