Summer At Last!

I've been reading in the paper that globally, 2007 is expected to be one of the hottest years of the last 200 or so. 2006 was pretty warm also. But locally, many places in New Zealand had their coldest December on record. On the other hand, in the last few days, December's cold and wet have been left behind, and the sun has been shining.

My daughter is staying for a few days, and my studio is also our guest room. Since she works shift work, I waited until she got up this afternoon before heading for the computer. Now that I'm here, I find the sun has warmed the upstairs room so much that all the things I planned to do seem like too much effort. If the sun has indeed arrived to stay, maybe I need to move the computer downstairs for the rest of the summer.

We have extended family coming for dinner, and I have a pavlova in the oven to go and check on shortly. So this is just a quick post with some photos of my walk around the estuary a couple of days ago. Mostly lately I've been walking up and down a nearby hill, which is a rather bare grassy landscape with sheep and magpies. My fitness campaign means that each time, I try and jog a little further before dropping back to a steady walking pace. It was a pleasant change to take my camera, forget about fitness, and just stroll round the estuary. It was low tide, so the birds were mostly far away across the mudflats, but I photographed these among others:

A heron wading in a small stream



Two swans glide past the end of the jetty (or are they Canada geese?)



By the roadside at the end of the walk, in the dry grass, a sudden blaze of colour