Thematic Photographic: Orange

I've had great intentions lately of posting more often, and in particular, I did intend to come back to my blog several times last week and put up new photos for Carmi's Thematic Photographic.

I have to admit it, though, it probably won't happen. So, when Carmi announced this week's theme, orange, I decided to post a whole bunch of photos in one go. Interestingly, most of my favourite orange photos seem to have some blue in them.

One of my earliest favourites taken on my first small digital camera:



Shipping containers stacked in the rail yard between my home and the city:



Boats in the port of Lyttelton:




Kayaks on the beach at Paihia (clearly not summer as this is a holiday resort which would be crowded in season):



All this blue and orange reminds me, I must finish this small quilt sometime:

On Holiday with Laptops

There are two reasons for going on holiday. One is to visit new places, take part in new activities and do all sorts of fun stuff that you wouldn't do at home. The other is to do all the relaxing that you don't have time to do at home. Technically, you could take a holiday at home and do that, but you would see all sorts of things calling at you, like the garden that needs weeding, so it's more relaxing to go somewhere else.

I suspect most people fall on a line somewhere between the two extremes - for me, I'm a little closer to the "doing new things" end of the continuum than the rest of my family. Or at least, so I believe.

I don't own a laptop - my computer is a desktop Mac computer which I like very much. I'm quite happy to leave it home when I go on holiday. Picture this - four people in a hotel room (timeshare, actually), three of them absorbed by the contents of their laptop computers, and me with a book. Only I finished the book, eventually, and anyway, I'm not used to having time to read a whole book uninterrupted, and I get restless.

So here's what I did on everyone else's "rest day"

I went for a walk up the hill through beautiful native bush






The view from the top, firstly towards the small town of Russell across the bay ( you can see the ferry heading from Russell towards Paihia)



and secondly towards Waitangi, where the Treaty of Waitangi was signed in 1840 (Most of the buildings are in fact the Copthorne Hotel, the treaty grounds are behind that)



and later in the day, after school was out, I went over the road and indulged my curiosity about the sculpture in the school grounds









The sculpture by Martha Meyer and the children of Paihia School was inspired by a long list of artists, including Pablo Picasso, Joan Miro, Antonio Gaudi and Friedrich Hundertwasser. Hundertwasser is the artist responsible for New Zealand's most photographed public toilet which is in Kawakawa, a small town near Paihia where we stayed.

And here it is:

Home Again

Actually, I've been home for a few days. However, we arrived home on Sunday evening, and I was back to work first thing Monday. And then there was the backlog of mail, and e-mails, and laundry to catch up on. Not to mention a couple of engagements on Tuesday and Wednesday evenings. So I have hardly had a spare moment since I returned.

I'm just beginning to sort, label and edit my photographs.

I intended to do some revision of old poems while I was away, and maybe even write some new ones. I took a fat folder with me. But somehow, once I was there, I didn't want to write. We did a fair bit of sightseeing, and on "relaxation days", I did some reading, and some walking locally. In general, it was a time for what Julia Cameron calls "filling the well".

Now I'm back, and wanting to write, but without the time. Maybe this weekend...

Here's a small taste of where we went. More to come