Of Aftershocks, and Springtime

I headed off to work this morning with my nerves still jangling from the big aftershock. I planned to do all the errands on the way to work that I hadn't done on Saturday, because everything was shut. So it was first to the post office, then to the bank. Which turned out to be shut again, due to the aftershock. It was no use going to the next nearest branch on my route, or the one after that, because they have both been behind cordons since the initial quake. So I just went to work, and sorted the travel money later. No thanks to the call centre, which directed me to the web site. Or the web site, which claimed all branches were open, with the exception of the two behind cordons that I already knew about. I guess it is difficult for them to keep up, because things keep opening and closing and opening again - including the airport, so I have my fingers crossed for Friday.

I had my camera with me, since it was the first time since the quake I had had to drive from one side of the city to the other. But I realised that I was in absolutely no mood to take photos of ruined buildings. The newspaper is doing a great job in that respect, so I'll buy the book (there's bound to be one). Along the way I drove over a couple of bridges with suspicious bumps in them that weren't there before - I presume they've been inspected and approved as safe - and along a number of roads where safety fencing partly blocked off one lane at intervals, where rubble had fallen.

But then I did stop to take photos (see above). As we'll be away for just over two weeks, I'm hoping there will be no aftershocks when we get back (feeling a bit guilty about leaving the family behind to put up with them. Even if they are grown up enough to take care of themselves). However, I can also guarantee there will be no daffodils when we get back - or at least, only shrivelled ones.

It reminds me of Housman when he wrote of cherries:


LOVELIEST of trees, the cherry now
Is hung with bloom along the bough,
And stands about the woodland ride
Wearing white for Eastertide.

Now, of my threescore years and ten,
Twenty will not come again,
And take from seventy springs a score,
It only leaves me fifty more.

And since to look at things in bloom
Fifty springs are little room,
About the woodlands I will go
To see the cherry hung with snow.

So, it suddenly seemed important to stop and take photographs of daffodils, since I probably have considerably fewer than fifty springs left.

Christchurch is glorious in springtime.

It Goes On...

I was sleeping in a bit this morning when the latest aftershock hit, a very sharp jolt that had me leaping for the floor to shelter beside the very solid bed without any hesitation. The power went off for the first time since Friday morning, but it was restored fairly quickly.

It was brief, fortunately, but strong enough to have done significant further damage. Our own house has a couple of cracks in the stucco that we are pretty sure weren't there before. Hopefully there is no major structural damage, I don't think it is unsafe but we will have to have the assessors in. Presumably all the city buildings that have been assessed as safe will have to be assessed again.

I am going to head out and hope that banks are open as I have a major "to do" list of errands put off from the weekend.

I want one of these chairs..

What's Been Lost

A year or so ago I had the opportunity to tour the beautiful gardens at the historic Ohinetahi homestead. This near derelict building and grounds was restored over many years with much hard work by architect Sir Miles Warren and his team. Sadly it has been severely damaged. The quake collapsed four upper gables and sent stones tumbling on to the building.

Other buildings have sustained even worse damage - however, this was one I have personally visited and had photos available in my collection.

Tomorrow I will cross the city for work and no doubt see more damage. In some cases, there will be gaping holes where badly damaged buildings have already been demolished.

We have had a relatively calm day after several big aftershocks overnight. The biggest at 5.4 had me wondering if I should get out of bed and take shelter. While I was still pondering, it stopped. Another of the same strength later in the night didn't even wake me. I guess I am getting used to them (and we are all getting very tired).

Apparently advice is that rather than getting out of bed, it is OK just to put a pillow over my head. Or to roll onto the floor and lie against the bed - then if the ceiling collapses, there will be a small safe space adjacent to the bed. (If the floor doesn't fall in. Our bedroom is on an upper floor).

I spent a couple of hours tonight discussing holiday plans with my husband. Our flights and a week of accommodation were booked a while back, however we still had to book a rental car and accommodation for the first night. It was good to forget about earthquakes for a while. And to know that they are rare in Australia, where we are heading.

Although it wasn't quite so reassuring to learn that in 1989 an earthquake in Newcastle, north of Sydney, killed 13 people and injured more than 160. And it was only 5.6 - not much stronger than the biggest aftershocks we have been getting. Of course, since earthquakes are rare in Australia, their buildings aren't built to cope with it, as ours are. That rarity is why I fully expect to forget about aftershocks for the two weeks we are away.

Earthquake Poetry

One of the few things that fell in our house during the earthquake was the metal panel with my magnetic poetry on it. I picked it up but left the words there for a day or two. I was feeling too strung out to put them all back in an orderly way, so I have scooped them all up into a box in the meantime.

When I am feeling a little less jumpy I may see if I can write a poem or two using these words.







Schools, libraries and universities are still all closed. Buses will resume tomorrow, but the bus exchange in the central city is in the cordoned off area, so the buses will go to and from the city fringes only. The rubbish collectors and the postmen, bless them, are working as normal. We will hear in about 24 hours whether the water is safe to drink unboiled or not.

My workplace is unaffected, but my work computer seems to rattle a lot more loudly than my home computer during aftershocks. We had several this afternoon around a magnitude of 4.0. One of them further damaged some buildings that had been damaged in the main quake, and they had to be demolished.

We are very glad that the forecast bad weather has not eventuated so far. High winds and heavy rain are not good for buildings with crumbling brickwork or holes covered by tarpaulins.

More Earthquake Photos

There's a shortage of things to think about round here at the moment. Despite many suburbs looking normal, nothing is running. No buses. All public buildings (schools, libraries, movie theatres etc) closed till at least Wednesday. I can't even keep busy doing big piles of laundry, as I had planned for the weekend, since we are supposed to conserve water. I'm tossing up between doing some small loads of essential laundry, and going on holiday at the end of the week with a suitcase full of dirty laundry to do when I get there.

So, with not enough else to do, and feeling pretty edgy anyway, I went for another walk. Watching the damage on TV, I was pretty sure I knew where the nearest badly damaged buildings in walking distance would be. And I was right.





The yellow spray paint reads "Falling Debris NG (no go) 5/9/10 11.00 a.m."

I suspect these buildings will be pulled down, and replaced with something like the shiny but bland modern block across the road.

I have work tomorrow. Probably will spend the day picking up files from the floor and sorting and re-shelving them. My Monday-Tuesday-Thursday job is in a home office at my boss's home, which is undamaged (apart from all the files ending up on the floor).

I think the office for my Wednesday-Friday job is OK too, except that I may have to take a rather roundabout route to get there, given that the central city and a few other parts are still cordoned off, and some bridges are closed.

It sounds as if the gale force winds that were predicted have just reached us. That won't do some of the damaged buildings much good.

My daughter works at the university library (closed for the week). She gave me the link to photos of the library here. I think she has way more picking up and re-shelving to do than I have.

Before our holiday, I need to get to a bank. My usual branch is in a badly-damaged, cordoned off area. I'm assuming I'll be able to find one that's open somewhere not too far out of the way.

More earthquake photos at Christchurch Daily Photo

Earthquake Day 2

Superficially, everything around here seems normal, except that it isn't. Parts of the city are still without power and water. We are being asked to boil water and to flush sparingly as the waste systems are not fully operational. There are no buses running and the central city is still cordoned off. I am grateful, of course, that the damage wasn't far more severe. I had planned to be in the area where the worst damage occurred, running errands, just a few hours later. There can't be a much better time of day to have an earthquake than 4.30 in the morning.

The photo is for Carmi's Thematic Photographic theme for this week, transportation. This old style delivery bike stands outside Johnson's grocery, a store near the centre of Christchurch which looks very much like the grocery stores of my childhood. It has managed to survive by providing specialty items such as imported biscuits, cereals, sweets etc to the immigrant community who want the items they remember from home (especially the UK). I have no idea if the shop will still stand undamaged when I can next get into the centre of the city.

We are still experiencing frequent aftershocks. It's a bit unnerving.

The Shaky Isles

We are quite used to small earthquakes in New Zealand, but nothing as big as the one that woke me this morning - as big as the one in Haiti, apparently. After the rumbling and shaking stopped, my husband went around the outside of the house with a torch, reported no apparent damage, and since the power was out, we went back to bed - by far the warmest place.

It wasn't until the power came back on about 10 a.m. that I was able to switch on the TV and see what the damage was like. Around my neighbourhood, there is nothing much to see at all. But the soil structure in Christchurch is very variable, and apparently parts of the city have severe damage, while others are relatively untouched.

You won't see any really dramatic photos here. If that's what you want, head on over to Stuff. I spent most of the day being a good citizen and staying at home as requested. But I did go for a bit of a walk around the neighbourhood, where all seemed pretty much normal...

it was a beautiful spring day...



except that I'm sure this crack across our street wasn't there yesterday.





And a small cluster of three or four houses all had chimney damage.



I've never seen the river quite this colour before, even after heavy rain. It's not usually so full, either. We have been asked to keep away from the water because of sewage contamination.



But the whitebaiters either didn't know or didn't care (whitebait are the young of several species of native fish, considered a delicacy).



The hospitals are not too busy, some minor injuries and two more severely injured patients. But they are braced for potential gastroenteritis in the next few days. I suspect the whitebaiters will be among the first patients.

(Lots of aftershocks. We had about three or four small ones while I was writing this post).

A Couple of Oddities

Or perhaps not so odd...
When I logged in to post, I saw that blogger has enabled automatic spam detection, which explains the first mystery.

A spam comment appeared in my e-mail, so I immediately logged in to the offending post to remove it, only to find that the comment wasn't there. It appears I receive spam comments by e-mail, but blogger removes them for me. Thanks, blogger!

The other little oddity was that I was at the Moo website. Moo recognized that I was from New Zealand, and invited me to click through to the site for my closest Moo retailer. This, it turned out, involved redirecting me from the US site to the UK version. Huh? Last time I looked, the US was closer, or has the world rearranged itself while I slept?

Thematic Photographic: Floral

I have many, many flower photographs in my files. Most of them, to be honest, don't excite me very much. I've been thinking about it all week and realised that it is probably because it's hard to improve on a flower.

I can take a photograph of a detail of a dilapidated building, and feel that I've made a silk purse out of a sow's ear. With flowers, I'm more likely to feel I've made a sow's ear out of a silk purse.

I keep trying, of course. Maybe if I capture the light shining through and making it translucent, or zoom right in for a spectacular close up ...?

The first two shots are not particularly special, but they are recent. Spring has definitely arrived (although a cold polar blast is on it's way). The centres of rhododendrons particularly intrigue me. Apparently those patterns of little dots and splashes help guide the bees to the centre of the flower.






The third photo is one that does continue to excite me - a rather spectacular flower as photographed in the courtyard of St John's Hospital, Bath.



And the last two also continue to appeal to me, even though the flowers captured here are less than perfect. I like to think they show that age can also be beautiful.



Sunflower, Avebury Manor, England



Unknown flower, Inverness.


For more flower photos, visit Carmi here

The Birthday List #3

Finish this quilt:





I pulled it out of a drawer a few weeks ago and added the two outer borders. Now, I just have to decide how to quilt it. Machine or hand? Hand is slower, but has the potential to be more sociable. Hand quilting gives a softer line, machine quilting is more defined.

I'm thinking shells or seagulls in the borders, and something wavy in the long rows of triangles.

See my post about the birthday list here.

A Birthday Meme

It's my birthday month. And somewhere, in my web surfing of various blogs, I spotted the same meme in several places - a list of "x things to do before I turn x years old" - posted on one's birthday as a goal list for the coming year.

I'm not shy about my age, but the internet is a very public forum, and I realised in another context that posting one's exact birthday and age is not necessarily a good idea - a date of birth being an important part of the information needed for identity theft.

Besides, such a list is all very well for a thirty year old, but the older a person is, the more items to fill the list - with perhaps less energy to get them done!

I will admit to being somewhere between fifty and seventy. And I am making a list, but it's not complete yet. I have a little over forty items so far. They range from quite large goals such as "learn Spanish" and "write the history of my father's family" to small items, often things I've been meaning to do for a while, like "order postcards from Moo" (Done - including the photo above). The good part about not having enough items yet is that it allows for spontaneity. If at any time in the year, I suddenly think "oh yes, I'd really like to do that", I can add it to the list. And after all, who knows a year ahead what opportunities will come their way? For instance, I would never have known in advance that I would try firewalking. But the chance came up some years back, and I took it. With only a small blister to show as a result. (I'm glad I did it, and I plan never to do it again!)

Updates may or may not appear from time to time as I complete items from the list.

Blue #3

When I stopped to take the photo in the previous post I noticed quite a large number of pukeko in the adjacent field. I had to use all my zoom to get this photo (and then crop it).

The English name for these birds is "swamp hen" though it is not much used these days. They can fly, but look rather ungainly while doing so. Mostly, they like damp fields, so it must be the winter weather that is bringing them out in large numbers. They are one of our more colourful native birds, although the light on that particular day made it difficult to bring out the brightness of the blue plumage. I may go back and try again.

And More Blue...

Close to the middle of Christchurch is Cranford St, where there is a shrinking area of market gardens in between the city and the outer suburbs.

I was thinking of this scene when I wrote the poem below. The sky was blue when I left home to get photos for this post, and it was blue after I took the photos and left - but while I was there, it was cloudy. So I've tweaked the blue up a bit in Photoshop. And I was thinking of a frostier day when I wrote the poem, and a farmer on his tractor rather than a few abandoned vegetable crates... other than that, I had a scene in my mind something like the photo.

The poem will be in the book "Flap: The Chook Book 2" soon to be forthcoming from my small poetry group, the Poetry Chooks.

For more blue photos, head here.

Winter Landscape

Farmer in a field digging onions,
skins the colour of old vellum,
the bulbs’ fat uncials a tracery of dried stalks
like capitals on an illuminated manuscript.
He stamps his feet on the frosty ground,
blows on his hands.

The plains stretch and stretch,
last tendrils of morning mist lifting
from rows of distant poplars
which his grandfather planted
to tether the sky, lest he go mad
from so much blue.

Thematic Photographic: Blue

This week's Thematic Photographic theme is "Blue". And I have no photo bluer than this one, which was taken in the Singapore Aquarium three years ago. It was a Sunday afternoon, and the place was packed with tourists and locals, all hustle and bustle. In the midst of it all were these jellyfish in a tank performing slow balletic moves - I found them absolutely mesmerising, and would have loved to stay and watch longer, if we hadn't been on a tour with a tight time schedule.

(Oh, and it makes a lovely desk top image, too. If you would like it, e-mail me for a larger version).

Winter Morning in Hagley Park

Taken on my way to work last week. At least when we have a hard frost, it means a beautiful sunny day is coming.

Moo!

I received a nice surprise in the mail today - a packet of postcards from Moo. I had ordered them, but wasn't expecting them nearly so soon. The order went in on July 31st, was completed on August 5th and reached me today - the 11th - even though the original estimate for delivery date was August 26th. So I was most impressed, both with the prompt service and the quality of the cards.

I chose thirty of my favourite photos, and ordered a packet of 60, so I have two of each, one to send and one to keep. I could have had postcards printed in New Zealand, but to get a reasonable price I would have to order a hundred or more of one design.

The image above is one of the cards - it reminds me I haven't been walking in the hills since the beginning of winter. We do get sunny days in winter, so perhaps I will try and get back up there one weekend soon.


*******

The full recipe for the hummus and kumara burgers referred to in the previous post:

1 onion, peeled and chopped
2 and a half tsp minced ginger
1 and a half tsp ground cumin
2 300g cans chickpeas, drained
300 g jar of hummus
1 and a half cups cooked and mashed red skinned kumara (sweet potat0)
3 tbsp freshly chopped coriander (cilantro)

Gently cook the onion and ginger in a dash of oil until soft but not brown. Stir in the cumin and cook for one minute.
Process the chickpeas in a food processor till coarsely chopped. Turn into a bowl with half a jar of hummus. Add the mashed kumara, coriander and cooked onion, mix well. Shape into 8 burgers and refrigerate for at least 1 hour before cooking.
Heat a dash of oil in a pan and cook for 2 - 3 minutes each side.

Serve with coriander and yoghurt sauce:
Combine the remaining hummus, half a cup of plain unsweetened yoghurt, 1 - 2 tbsp fresh lemon or lime juice and 2 tbsp freshly chopped coriander, mix together.

(Although, I rather like the burgers with salsa instead of the coriander and yoghurt sauce).

The recipe used to be on the Food in a Minute website, but I can't find it there any more. I guess they take the old ones down.

More Pantry Clearing

I'm continuing with my plan to declutter by using up, rather than throwing out. At some time in the past I bought a packet of couscous - perhaps I was trying out a recipe that required it, I can't remember now. I found the taste rather bland, so it has been sitting around largely unused.

I decided it was time for it to go. I made up a single serving quantity, soaked cut up dried apricots in hot water, and added them to the couscous along with left over cooked pumpkin and kumara (sweet potato). I also added some cinnamon and cumin. It ended up tasting reasonably good, although I might increase the spices next time.

If I make some for lunch once a week for the next month or two, that will take care of that packet.

I'm guessing it would appeal to vegetarians. I also had a couple of cans of chickpeas that I had bought to make kumara and chickpea burgers. Basically, they are made from cooked mashed kumara, the drained chickpeas and a pot of bought hummus, whizzed together in the blender with coriander (cilantro) and other flavourings. Then brown in a little hot oil. I rather like them, but my family are confirmed meat eaters so I had the chickpeas sitting round for quite a long time.

In deference to their tastes, I cooked some gourmet sausages as well. The burgers are good with sauces such as tomato salsa, and the jar of capsicum and apricot salsa that is sitting in the fridge.

Thematic Photographic: Orange #2

The last two posts may have sounded somewhat more miserable than I really am...I don't do winter particularly hard, mostly. I just don't like to feel there is all sorts of fun going on that I am missing out on, by being out of step with the rest of the world. When summer comes here, everyone else will be commiserating about winter, and posting winter themed photos, and again I will be out of step.

Still, I am over whining, I think. I realised when I arrived home from work that the days are getting longer. The rain had stopped, there was still almost an hour of daylight, and I had letters to post. So I walked round the block to the Post Office, and when I came out I spotted this building across the car park, with the sunset clouds above it, which seemed to fit the orange theme perfectly. (Actually, the building is terracotta. It's come out looking more orange in the photo though, and I have tweaked the saturation and contrast in Photoshop to dramatise it a bit more).



Then I walked home around the river. There were bright orange diggers there, but I decided they weren't particularly photogenic, and instead took this shot of the river at twilight.



Spring is coming! (Yay!)



(Photo taken in my garden last Saturday)

Thematic Photographic: Orange

Yesterday I commented on how I tend to feel out of step with the rest of the world while roaming the internet. And today I read on Carmi's blog that this week's theme for Thematic Photographic is orange: "because summer seems to offer up countless examples of this bright colour". As New Zealanders say: Yeah, right.

Today a freezing wind from the Antarctic struck us, with rain, grey skies, and snow in the hills. Summer seems very far away.

Nevertheless, I had one orange photo that I took yesterday - when it was cold, but not raining - a remnant of last summer:



and here is a more summery one from a year or so ago, just to remind me that summer will come again (although by then most of blogland will be enjoying winter sports, or commiserating about the cold weather)

Distance and the Internet

I used to think the Internet had shrunk the world. Now, I wonder.
Certainly, it was wonderful to be in almost daily contact with our young adult offspring when they were travelling. Our daughter criss crossed North America, not staying in one place for long, but she found an internet cafe every couple of days and we had frequent e-mails.

Then too, through blogging and various e-mail groups, I have made contacts from around the world, amazing people I would never have had the chance to meet before the internet.

As for my family history research, there is no way I could have done what I have done if I had to visit all the archives in person.

But lately (perhaps it's the greyness of winter) I've been feeling more than a little grumpy about how far away from everyone else we are down in this corner of the globe. It seems it's summer in Interwebland. Projects like Susannah's summer break are springing up everywhere. Prompts spring up on blogs all over the place that assumes the whole world is sunlit. People are travelling at the drop of a hat. Bloggers talk casually of going to Spain for a weekend, or Italy for a week, or gathering in Morocco. I used to think, oh well, Europe has a lot of countries close to each other, but North Americans are as isolated as we are. Until I started getting newsletters from VisitScotland in my inbox, offering amazing air fares from North America to Scotland, for about the same price as it costs us to visit Australia - and I realised that the North Atlantic is really quite narrow compared to the vast expanse of the Pacific.

It seems that here in New Zealand we can't win. If we're here, we're a long way from everywhere else. If we're there, we're a long way from home.

Jenny Diski wrote in one of her books of being in New Zealand for a writer's festival and finding that people constantly commented to her that we are such a long way away. Which she thought was strange, because as far as she could tell, we are all exactly right here. (Only she put it much better than that). Well - true- but I think we do have that in common in New Zealand, that we feel very far away. I remember when we returned from the UK, flying across Europe in a couple of hours - less time than it takes to get from Christchurch to Sydney. And then we flew on, and on, and on... And after a couple of days in Singapore, we got in another plane and flew on, and on...

At the moment I'm reduced to taking surreptitious photos in various shops. (Why is it that it seems OK to take photos in Moroccan bazaars, but not in shops in one's home country - even if they stock the same goods).

National Poetry Day

Today is National Poetry Day in New Zealand. It's also Friday, and the end of a busy working week, and I'm feeling rather tired.

In the US they get a National Poetry Month. That seems much more civilised to me. Even a week would be good. I never seem to get to any Poetry Day events, since the main one in Christchurch always takes place at lunch time, at the university, where, if I did manage to slip away from work for an hour, there is never any spare car parking.

There is also Poetry for Pudding, at Borders Bookshop, but that is a purely "bring your own" event, no guest readers, and I'm just too tired to make the effort to go and hear the same people I hear at every open mic night.

But I couldn't let the day go past without at least posting a poem here. I offer this in honour of my day spent sitting at a computer. I had the line "the city is a spreadsheet" in the back of my mind for quite a long time before coming up with this poem. It will appear in "Flap: The Chook Book 2" which will be launched by my small poetry group, the Poetry Chooks, on October 16th. It first appeared at Blackmail Press in their Secrets issue.

Gridlines

The city is a spreadsheet
laid on the plains block upon block.
There are some in their airless offices
who affect nothing.
Don’t count on it.

In the hidden mathematics of the city
there are unexpected connections.
You might add a small number
at a crucial junction
and buses run late all over town.
Hum a tune and you might see
a single bird fly over,
or dancing break out in the streets.

And watch that girl with the blue hair,
when she enters the equation,
how it changes everything.

More from Orana Park

We arrived just before giraffe feeding time...


but the otters are really my favourites...


although the new baby rhino is pretty adorable, too!

Up Close and Personal

It is close up week at Carmi's Thematic Photographic, so I thought I would post these photos I took at the weekend in the walk through kea aviary at Orana Wildlife Park.



These birds are very curious and not at all scared of humans, I was quite surprised how close they would come to us. They are mountain parrots, and are known for the damage they cause to cars parked at ski fields, where they will strip the rubber away from windscreens.



When they fly, they display the gorgeous orange on their backs and undersides of their wings.

Orana Park is New Zealand's only open range zoo. Many of the animals are in fields separated from the visitors only by a wide moat. These are a habitat for water birds, including the swan who posed obligingly for my new banner.

Morning and Evening Doings

There was such a spectacular sunrise this morning, I just had to record it on my camera, even though I was on a tight schedule to get to work.



So - I was leaning out the window taking photos, and I dropped my lens cap (who designs cameras without a little cord to attach the lens cap by, anyway?). It rolled down the roof and slid out of sight. I didn't have time to do anything about it then, but when I arrived home just before dark, I got my daughter to help me to get the big extension ladder out of the garage, erected it with some awkwardness against the guttering, and climbed up to retrieve the lens cap. It wasn't there. I looked very carefully, climbed down again and we telescoped the ladder back to its compact form. Then I looked around and just as I was about to give up, spotted the lens cap on the grass. It must have bounced over the edge of the guttering, instead of dropping into it as I had thought.

This week is Te Wiki o te Reo Maori (Maori Language Week). So, when I arrived home, before the shenanigans with the ladder, I noticed little sticky notes all around the kitchen.
window = matapihi
oven = umu
microwave = umu ngaru iti
(Which I didn't know before, but it makes perfect sense: ngaru is wave and iti is small).
I asked my daughter what's the Maori for ladder. She didn't know but promised to look it up.

Tuesday Poem

I was hesitant to join in the Tuesday Poem when it started, as I didn't want to commit to posting a new poem every Tuesday. It would mean either that I would have to have a new one of my own, or one by another poet, either well known enough to me to get copyright permission, or one that was out of copyright. I wasn't sure that I could keep coming up with another one that I liked every week to fit those restrictions.

And then the group filled up, as they restrict themselves to thirty members at a time. But that doesn't mean that I can't post a poem on Tuesdays if I feel like it, or link to the Tuesday Poem site either.

I found a lovely book at the library - The Bedside Book of Birds edited by Graeme Gibson who is, incidentally, Margaret Atwood's husband. I have a bit of a thing for birds at the moment, and can't help wondering if it is something to do with living in New Zealand, which is a land of birds, which take the place of mammals in our ecosystem.

In the book I found this extract from a Portuguese writer Alberto Caeiro, who lived from 1879 - 1915 (and must therefore be out of copyright by now)

Rather the flight of the bird passing and leaving no trace
Than creatures passing, leaving tracks on the ground.
The bird goes by and forgets, which is as it should be.
The creature, no longer there, and so, perfectly useless,
Shows it was there - also perfectly useless.

Remembering betrays Nature.
Because yesterday's Nature is not Nature.
What's past is nothing and remembering is not seeing.

Fly bird, fly away; teach me to disappear.

And Is There Honey Still for Tea?

The tidying of the pantry continues. I thought I had my supplies of honey down to six jars. And then my daughter, who had been flatting and moved home, did some unpacking, and produced another jar of honey. Next, I emptied a box or two of herbal tea, and started to poke around the remaining umpty-eleven boxes of various sorts of tea, and there at the back of the shelf I found a small wooden crate containing three more jars of honey! (I think many of these have been bought on holiday, visiting road side stalls and the like).

So yes, there is honey still for tea in this household. (For those who don't know it, that's a reference to a poem by Rupert Brooke, a poet who died in World War 1).

I have been permitting myself to indulge in honey on toast for breakfast - probably somewhat less healthy than my usual cereal, although at least the toast is wholemeal.

I also used some making this dessert, from a recipe I clipped from a magazine more than forty years ago - it was a teenage magazine called "Petticoat", published at a time when it was thought teenaged girls, who may have left home, actually wanted to read about cooking, decorating tips etc and not just gossip about "celebrities"

This recipe predates the metric system - so, 1 lb is about 450 grams, 4 oz about 125 grams etc - teaspoons and tablespoons should be about the same, 5 ml for a teaspoon and 15 ml for a tablespoon, though I believe in Australia a tablespoon is 20 ml. Don't worry about it, it's not too critical to be exact.

Date and Apple Torte
1 lb peeled,cored cooking apples
4 oz stoned dates
2 oz shelled walnuts (I always leave these out)
1 egg
4 oz Barbados sugar - whatever that is, just use whatever brown sugar you can find
4 oz wholewheat flour
2 heaped teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon vanilla essence
half a teaspoon salt
1 oz butter, melted
1 tablespoon clear honey

Dice the apples, chop dates and walnuts. Beat the egg. Mix everything together until the flour is absorbed. Turn into a greased baking tin about 8 inches square and two inches deep (about 20 cm square and 5 cm deep)

Bake it at 400 degrees Fahrenheit (about 200 degrees Celsius, although actually I think I baked it at my standard 180 degrees along with the roast meat, and it came out fine), until it is firm and brown and the apples are soft, about 50 minutes.

This is good hot or cold with cream or ice cream - and I tell myself it is healthy with all that brown sugar and wholemeal flour.

It looks as if I'll have to make it quite a few more times to make a dent in the remaining ten jars of honey!

Decluttering

There seem to be endless books, websites, and paid professionals around aiming to help us to declutter our homes and lives. Mostly, it seems, by throwing things out. And sometimes we do need just to say, "I'm never going to use that again" and toss it.

But I can't help having serious reservations about that (apart from the fact that I live with other people. And what the professionals never seem to touch on is - what if the other people in your household don't see clutter as a problem? What if they actually want to keep all their stuff?). Anyway - it strikes me that if we just throw out a heap of stuff, all we do is make room to buy more. Whatever urge made us accumulate stuff in the first place may not have been dealt with by throwing half of it away.

I've been decluttering on a small scale, in a rather different way. I've focussed mostly on the pantry. And I have thrown out very little - rather, I'm searching out overlooked items in the pantry, and using them up. It gives me an appreciation for the abundance that I have already, and it is making my cooking more creative. Instead of cooking the familiar standbys, and repeatedly replenishing a few familiar ingredients, I'm having to think "what can I make with that?"

So far I have used:
a half a jar of dried beans
half a packet of stuffing mix
a small jar of maraschino cherries
various packets of sauce mix
a packet of chocolate cake mix - I don't know where that came from. I never use cake mix, I bake from scratch.
several jars of honey - there are still six left. We had clover honey, blue borage honey, kamahi honey, pohutukawa honey, manuka honey, more kamahi honey, and just honey.
redcurrant jelly
dijon mustard
light sour cream
butterscotch and brandy sauce
half a jar of crumbs from breakfast cereal biscuits (Weetbix, which my New Zealand and Australian readers will know about)
some travel size jars and sachets of jam (jelly, for any Americans out there)

Recipes to follow!

I have also been using up all the odd jars and bottles of shampoo, moisturiser etc that have been hanging around - including little travel sized bottles brought home from hotels and bed and breakfasts. My skin feels well cared for, and my pantry is beginning to look quite neat and tidy.

Deans Bush

I was going to post these photos with yesterday's post, but decided there were enough already.

The Riccarton Farmers' Market is held in the grounds of Riccarton House, a lovely historic home very near the centre of the city. It was owned by the Deans family, early settlers* who had the foresight to preserve a beautiful piece of bush (native forest) right near the heart of the city (probably thinking of future timber supplies considering that "conservation" wasn't a familiar concept back then).

I took a walk through this lovely area, which is now predator fenced, after looking at the market. It was difficult to photograph in the low light without a tripod, but I managed a few.


These kahikatea are the oldest trees there, about 300 - 600 years old.


I loved the way the shafts of sunlight lit up the damp air


Gnarled tree roots are another favourite of mine

*Very early settlers. The English arrived in the "First Four Ships" in 1850, only to discover that the Deans brothers, from Scotland, had arrived overland from elsewhere in New Zealand and settled on the best farming land!

Shopping for Sunlight

I was sitting at my computer on Saturday morning, wondering whether to go out or stay at home, and thinking perhaps I couldn't be bothered. Then I read Tony Hoagland's poem The Word at Mary's blog, Creative Voyage, and it was just the impetus I needed to get out of the house:

Down near the bottom
of the crossed-out list
of things you have to do today,

between “green thread”
and “broccoli” you find
that you have penciled “sunlight.”

So I headed off to the Riccarton Farmer's Market to shop for sunlight, something that has been in short supply around here lately. This is the first weekend in a while that we have had two sunny days - but on yesterday, there was no guarantee that the sunshine would continue, so I'm glad I grabbed it while I could.


Pots of sunlight




The empanadas were delicious.


The children played while their parents were busy shopping. Who remembers doing this as a child?


Feeding the ducks


This little dog apparently waits patiently in the saddle bag of his owner's bicycle every week.