The Call of the Hills

I just had time after work to go to the start of the Bowenvale track (above) and grab a few photos. Just reminding myself that last summer I used to go for hour long walks up here in the evening. Now, if I can just find a free evening or two, I will be able to do it again.

The track fades out into a sort of spaghetti tangle further up. Supposedly one can walk right up to the Summit Road from here, but I haven't found the route yet. Time to try again soon.

Boat Landing on the Heathcote River

This is a canoe landing spot by the Heathcote River. I believe the posts were painted by local schoolchildren, though tried to check this online and couldn't confirm it.

I couldn't decide between a wide view and a detail, so I have posted both.

Classic Cars Outside the Heritage Hotel

It's the start of Heritage Week here in Christchurch and these classic cars (and others) were on display outside the Heritage Hotel in Cathedral Square. The Heritage Hotel was formerly the Old Government Buildings and was converted to a hotel in the 1990s, when considerable earthquake strengthening work was undertaken. This made it one of a select number of heritage buildings to survive the earthquakes of 2010 and 2011 and after repairs, it reopened in 2013. The new wing of the hotel, however, is still boarded up and unoccupied. I'm not sure whether or not it is to be demolished.

Saturday: Tree Fern

Tree fern in our garden. I climbed up a ladder to get a photo from above.

Patterns

Here are a few more photos from the last few days, for Carmi's Thematic Photographic theme - patterns.

This is a workroom at the Christchurch Polytechnic Institute of Technology. The windows look directly onto the pavement on High Street, and for some reason the lights stay on when the students go home. I have always found the view into the workroom, with its row of garment patterns hanging from a rack on the wall, quite fascinating. These may not be quite the sort of patterns Carmi had in mind...

so here are a couple of photos of patterns from nature, from my walk at Travis Wetland (see yesterday's post)

dead leaves hanging on the trunks of cabbage palms

and the twisty, almost hexagonal branches of a species of kowhai.

The Gift of Water

When the second big earthquake struck Canterbury in February 2011, many areas were without running water supplies. Farmers drove tankers into town and stopped at schools and parks, where residents queued to fill buckets and containers. In some areas, old capped wells and springs burst open - inconveniently in the middle of living rooms, or more conveniently in front gardens, where some benevolent home owners rigged up pipes and taps so that passers by could fill up on clean fresh artesian water.

Eventually we had water running in our pipes again (I can still remember the utter joy of turning on a tap to find water flowing freely out of it). After even more weeks, we were told it was safe to drink without boiling first. And after another few months, the City Council were able to stop adding chlorine to the water supply in order to make it bug free.

Still, quite a few people seem to have developed a taste for the artesian water that flows from the springs. This one in the photo above is still flowing in Ernle Terrace, near the reserve where I went for a walk today. I never pass by without seeing a stream of people arriving to fill bottles transported there in car boots. Walkers fill their smaller water bottles, and those walking dogs will sometimes set down the dog's dish so that their canine companion can refresh himself.

It was a hot day, I hadn't taken a water bottle but I did stop on the way into the reserve and again on the way out to scoop water into my hands and quench my thirst.

Swans and Cygnets at Travis Wetland

I had a meeting to attend on the other side of the city, very close to Travis Wetland, so I took the opportunity to walk round the perimeter track and take lots of photos of the birds there. It turned out to be a great time to do so, being spring, with lots of cygnets, ducklings, and other youngsters. In the bird hide, the welcome swallows were nesting in the eaves, so were flying in and out really close to me.

The above is a taster (after I finish my photo a day project at the end of the month, I may go back and edit and post some of the extras). A pair of black swans with their surprisingly white chicks.

Green Stairwell

Something about this green stairwell grabbed me, when I passed it while returning to my car after a poetry reading tonight.
(Great reading - Helen Heath, Kerrin P Sharpe, Roger Hickin and an unusually excellent selection of open mic readers).

Tuesday Poem: The Godwit'sSon, by Kerrin P Sharpe

the godwit's son

left the world
in a feather bag

he left his cottage
his horse at the window
the warm wishes of snow

he left chimneys of willow
the dark voices
of dry stone flagstone

he left his mother
the whisky maker
unable to drink

and with hundreds of others
slept as he flew
and flew as he slept
to where he was

Kerrin P Sharpe

Used with permission.

"the godwit's son" is the final poem in Kerrin P Sharpe's latest collection from Victoria University Press, There's a Medical Name for This. The book was launched at the recent Christchurch Writers Festival, and Christchurch residents will have another chance to hear Kerrin read, tomorrow night (Wednesday) at the CPIT (starts 6.30 with open mic readers).

Kerrin completed Bill Manhire's original composition course in 1976 and published her first collection, Three Days in a Wishing Well, in 2012. Fortunately for her fans, it was not such a long wait for her second collection of beautifully strange and yet evocative poems.

For more Tuesday Poems visit the main hub site.

Moody Sky

Taken on the way home about five o'clock this evening.

Colourful Fence in Linwood

I spotted this while driving on an errand to my daughter's house after work today. There was a row of small shops on this corner which were badly damaged in the February 2011 earthquake and subsequently demolished. The site was quite messy for a while, but it has now been tidied up and fenced. The words on the fence read "Our love for our community is our strength".

Evening

I was at an indoor function all day today, came home just in time to mow lawns and catch a quick shot out the window before dark.

I don't think I will ever get tired of watching the sky from here.

Saturday: Spring Snowflakes

I am currently taking a four week poetry workshop series with Joanna Preston at the South City library. It is a beautiful modern library (albeit propped up with a lot of red steel girders since the 2011 earthquake, but that is another story). Both inside and outside are full of fresh green - the sofas and armchairs inside, the trees and grass outside. In contrast to the spring green, I was rather taken with these handcut paper snowflakes on the window that separates the meeting room from the main library. Two seasons at once.

Being strongly backlit, they were rather difficult to photograph. Somehow the eye manages to read them as crisp white, but the camera doesn't.

Friday: Windmill

This windmill is on Riccarton Road outside an area of shops known as the "Windmill Centre". It does turn but otherwise doesn't appear to do anything functional. Whether there was a historic, functioning windmill on the site I am not sure. But it is a bright colourful spot in an otherwise ordinary street of shops.

On Beauty

There was a lunar eclipse last night.For once, not only was New Zealand perfectly placed to see it, but the skies were clear. Those who saw it claim it was stunning. I didn't. Desperate for an early night, I had completely forgotten about it and gone to bed.

Nevertheless, if you really want to look at photos of the blood moon, you will find plenty all of the internet. As for me, for today's photo I have posted instead a shot of a tree that is just outside the door of my office. Because really, there is beauty everywhere, everyday. It's just that we don't notice it so much because it isn't rare.

A blood moon? Well, the sky was darker than it would normally be at the full moon, and the moon was redder. But a yellow moon is beautiful, too. And so is a sunset. And a rainbow. And any of the exquisite variety of flowers, and birds and all sorts of other things. So I refuse to be too disheartened at having missed the eclipse. (I would really like to see an aurora, sometime in my lifetime, though)

Imagination

Street art spotted on a wall near the poetry reading I attended tonight.

"My life is so much more interesting inside my head".

Tuesday Poem: Sonnet

Sonnet

These grey days, I hunger for colour. I scavenge
in produce aisles, take home bags overflowing
with orange-skinned mandarins, broccoli, dark
as pines, purple grapes, tri-coloured capsicums.

I sip herbal tea and read your messages.
Mongolia’s as hot as Korea, you say, but drier,
Everywhere is dusty. The vegetable soup is greasy
with mutton fat, and not much fibre in it.

You will pass through Osaka on your way home,
visit temples with gardens of pebbles
and carefully-raked sand. By the time you return
the maples in our garden will be swelling with new buds.

The Japanese have a special name for it.
Shinryoku – the tender new green of spring

- Catherine Fitchett

(first published in The Chook Book - Free Range Organic Poetry

I have published this poem on the blog before, but it seemed ideal to go with the photograph above. I am posting a photograph a day during October.(Missed yesterday - oops!). The trees around the corner from my work are suddenly bursting with tender green shoots and they put me in mind of this poem written one winter when my daughter was just finishing a couple of years teaching English in South Korea.

For more Tuesday Poems, visit the main hub site.

Aglow

A late afternoon view of the city (very zoomed in) from our living room window.

Heron

Our house is not really that far from the centre of the city. However, when we moved here, my son commented "I pass cows on the way home, it's not Christchurch!".
And yes it is true, we are in some ways quite detached from the rest of the city. At the foot of the hill, at the entrance to the subdivision, there is quite a rural area of flat paddocks. Christchurch is desperate for more good housing land since the 2010 and 2011 earthquakes, however this land probably won't be built on any time soon as it is only a metre above sea level, despite being quite a way inland, and consequently very prone to flooding. Which makes it popular with birds. I frequently see pukekos here (also known as swamp hens), but it's only recently that I've spotted white faced herons and spur winged plovers.

So today I stopped to take photos, the pukekos were in the shade and came out rather blurry but I was pleased with the heron photos. No spur winged plovers today, but as a bonus there was a brown duck with a whole host of baby ducklings.

Friday

Posted a day late - one last photo on the theme of "messy". I have heard that you shouldn't change anything in a garden for the first year after you move in. Well, we have been here ten months and I have yet to discover any redeeming features in this overgrown corner, so I am planning to dig it all up and use the space for something useful. Since it is sunny, and handy to the kitchen, there will be herbs of some sort, and other edible plants. I am thinking of tomatoes, runner beans, or perhaps some blueberry bushes and other edible plants.

For more messy photos visit Carmi's blog here.