Autumn foraging

Today I was lucky. I went down to my neighbourhood park to see if there were any quinces from the tree there, and all of these were lying on the ground. Often these are picked up quickly by those "in the know". I also found some chestnuts. Unfortunately, some have been squashed by a contractor's truck working in the park and others have been eaten by rats or mice, but there are enough here for one evening's snacking. Foraging for food is getting more common here; at one time hardly anyone took free fruit and nuts, but many of our new immigrants from Europe and Asia come from traditional food-foraging cultures. Now we have a large part of the city where there are gardens and fruit trees but no houses (what we call the Red Zone where earthquake-damaged homes have been demolished) foraging has become a good way of using some of nature's bounty that would be wasted otherwise:

http://www.stuff.co.nz/life-style/food-wine/food-news/67690529/fruit-foraging-in-christchurchs-red-zone

The weather has been quite warm today, but has been followed by a dramatic weather change this evening. I spent half-an-hour this morning raking up leaves in the garden, making piles of them for the cats to run through and scatter. Great fun! I spent the rest of the day getting all domestic, moving my furniture around my living-room just for a change of scene and also to put my dining-table near the window, so I can use it as a painting and crafts table. My little painting nook in the sunroom is far too cold in those winter days when there is no sun, and it's a waste of money just heating that room for me to work in it for a few hours a day. So things look the same but different. Now I need to make some new cushion covers to make the couch look a bit fresher. I'm a lousy seamstress, but I can probably manage cushion covers. I hope.

Thinking of the people of Nepal

Thinking of the people of Nepal after the terrible earthquake there. Having been through this ourselves, people here in Christchurch have great sympathy for them. The aftershocks are terrifying. People already traumatised will be in a constant state of fear. The earthquake will have huge ongoing consequences for Nepal, apart from the initial problems of food/water shortages, disease, need for shelter and medical care. I hope that help can be quickly and efficiently organised by the various organisations that will be involved there. We had an earthquake here in Christchurch, New Zealand in 2011, and are still experiencing aftershocks and the social and economic effects of that. New Zealand has pledged a million dollars, to be distributed through the International Red Cross, and has a (sadly) very experienced search and rescue team ready to go to Nepal on request from that country's government.

Setsugekka - Flower white as snow reflected by the moon

Flower of Setsugekka sasanqua camellia

Jiro-chan photobombs Setsugekka. I put the flower outside trying to get a better photo and...

Strong in the rain

This is the book I have just finished, "Strong in the rain" by Lucy Birmingham and David McNeil about the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disaster that occurred in Japan in March 2011.
   I hadn't read or seen much about this, deliberately avoiding the subject as it occurred soon after our own disaster here in February 2011. 
   Compared to the Japanese experience, our earthquake was really minor. We did not have a tsunami nor do we have nuclear power stations. We do not have millions of people packed together in tall buildings. The nuclear power angle to the Japanese tragedy was for me the scariest part of this book. The Fukushima-Daiichi plant is still not de-activated; it is only kept stable by pumping thousands of gallons of seawater daily into the outer casings of the reactor chambers. It prompted a bit of research on my part as I realised that I really don't know how reactors work. I didn't know, for example, that the spent fuel rods have to be kept cool for about 2 years in pools, until they can be safely shipped to reprocessing plants. Of course, they are still radioactive as well as very, very hot. A reactor in crisis cannot just be shut off either; there is no off switch, it continues to react until all the fuel is burnt away, but of course, everything around it continues to be radioactive for many thousands of years.
   And one has to question the wisdom of placing nuclear reactors not just on a fault line, but on one of the most active faultlines on earth, on a faultline that generates 20% of the world's magnitude 8 and above earthquakes. Not only that, but to locate the reactors right on a seacoast notorious for its devastating tsunami. It is still unknown where the melted fuel actually is inside the reactors that malfunctioned; has it burned through the containment vessels or is it still in the reactor chamber? The reactors at Fukushima are still live and could still go critical if there is another event, which seems quite likely. I wish humankind had never discovered how to split atoms; it seems a foolish thing to want to do in hindsight. (And it was a New Zealander who did it first, much to our misplaced pride)
   There are two excellent documentaries on youTube. The first,
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TPHl3P-FedM Japan's tsunami: how it happened explains the technical side of the quake, the tsunami and the reactor problems. The second,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oArd_9uZOnE Japan's tsunami caught on camera is a very powerful documentary of individual experiences of the quake and the tsunami that followed.

A little gardening

Spent a few hours in the garden this afternoon. It was nice and sunny after our cold snap, but still not really warm.

Harvested the red basil. Any day now we'll have the first frost and these leaves will blacken and be unusable. They didn't like the hail the other night, so I really needed to get the basil in. I'll freeze this in ice cubes as I don't have a blender at the moment to make pesto. I could do it the old-fashioned way with mortar and pestle, of course, but....nah. Fabulous colour.

Treated myself to a new garden pot the other day. You can't see from the picture here, but it has a sort of crackle matt glaze which makes it look quite Japanese, and I thought I could use it as a water feature under my autumnal maple, replacing the Victorian urn. It does look very nice there, and I will use it next summer and autumn but for the coming spring I've planted it with Iceland poppies and  double pale yellow "Verona" tulips. I hope the warm colours of those flowers will look good against the blue/grey of the pot. 

Russian spies; Winter is coming

Photograph by David Walker, published in today's Press. Sheep huddling in the snow on Banks Peninsula.

Recently I have become aware via my viewing stats that every two days someone or something in Russia scans 21 pages of my blog. I assume this scanner is an autobot, as who reads exactly 21 pages of a blog every time they log in? Today I had 42 page-visits from a   Russian; 2 x 21, in other words. What are they looking for? There's always an automatic 1 page scan in the USA within two minutes of my posting a new post on this blogsite, but the Russians have upped the ante on the USA. And why 21 pages? Why not 22 or just 20? If this is you in Russia, stop it, it's freaking me out. I did have a problem with someone piggybacking on my blog, using my content to boost their stats, but that has stopped. Or has it?

  Winter weather has come upon us suddenly with a crack of ice. Last night I had to go to a meeting, and came out into a hailstorm. Very cold and bleak, and quite uncharacteristically early in the year.  I had to get up early to go to a workshop in town. As I was standing by the parking meter trying to get it to accept my credit card payment, fingers numb with cold, I wondered for not the first time why we do so many things we really don't want to do. Money, I suppose, and a desire to be thought worthy and not a loser, too? I have a day off tomorrow, though, so I can stay in bed, oh bliss.

Trying to be creative

 Carrying on with my watercolour class. Trying to free up my technique a bit, as I tend to be too careful and not sploshy enough. Sometimes the best results come when you're not really trying. I've invented a thing I call 'the sploshy' where I just paint any way, not being too concerned about getting things 'right' and just enjoying putting paint on the paper and seeing what happens.

This is an arrangement I set up in class this week; a tall red glass bottle, an apple, a tomato and a dahlia. I borrowed a cup from the tea area, a wonderful vermilion colour. This is not a finished work, rather what I would term an exploration or inquiry, more about colours and arrangement than perspective.  I like to place a temporary frame around a picture, it seems to give a better idea of things.

This is a more careful study in coloured pencil, slightly altered; no dahlia but a bashful apple instead. This was to suit the width of the paper that I had available. I like coloured pencil, but it is always more subdued and takes longer to produce, but I find is quite a calming, meditative process, building layers of colour up and slowly darkening and intensifying them.

Here's a photo of the arrangement, with  green glass standing in for the vermilion cup, which belongs to the Baptist Church Drop-In Centre and had to stay behind. This was taken at night, so isn't a real guide to colours and shadows. I might try this in crayon, to get another insight into a different medium. And of course, just a straight pencil drawing for darks and lights. A good arrrangement and well worth exploring.

Autumnal

Mona Vale, Christchurch NZ

Pentstemons bravely flower on...

Today is the first day that I've felt chilly all day, autumn slowly sequeing into winter. Even though I was keeping warm with gardening, I seemed to have cold hands and feet all the time. A fog came over in the morning and went away again for a brief time in the afternoon but the day never really warmed up.

...as do the dahlias.

      Planted lots of seeds today - carrot, parsnip, florence fennel, radishes, red cabbage, cavolo nero, mesclun, chicory, artichoke and corn salad. Also sweet peas for next year. Some of the seed I have little hope for; it's old seed that will probably come to nothing, but I'd rather sow it and take a chance than throw the packets out unsown. 
      I'm trying to save more of my own seeds now and sow them straight away, as they would be sown naturally. I saved and sowed some chive seed, and the germination rate has been something fantastic. The florence fennel seed is my own too, and I found an old seed-filled head of red onion today that can be put out soon. 
      Reading disturbing reports of various seed-libraries in the US of A  and UK being destroyed or dispersed. The reason? Apparently the bodies administering them are facing crises in funding. Which is very convenient for those who produce seeds commercially. Heirloom varieties, ie. non-hybrids that produce every year from saved seed, are being sidelined for hybrids that are sterile, so we will have to buy seed every year from the mega-companies like Monsanto. Eventually it will become a crime to save non-hybrid seed, an act of subversion punishable by fines and prison terms. Home gardeners saving and swapping seed will face the same kind of penalties as drug-dealers do now. Mad, mad world.

I am hopeless

Every morning I say to myself "today I'm going to eat healthily". And every day I don't! Today's menu: 1 stale hot cross bun, 2 cups coffee. 1 Apple. 1 glass of wine (so far) and cheese. Probably have potato chips for tea. I am so stupid! I have healthy food in the house and the garden, but do I eat it? No. The concomitant of this is that then I get to feel disgusted with myself for being such a ninny. No wonder I don't feel too good most of the time. I should post a picture of myself with the word 'fool' written in large letters underneath. 
   Self-excoriation over. Normal transmission will be resumed at next post.

Lazy day

Easter Monday, and I have done nothing all day but read, sit in the sun, play with cats and read more. Very nice!

Oamaru New Zealand "The Real Oamaru" destination NZ

The first and last words are from Michael O'Brien, the craftsman bookbinder in whose retreat I stayed.

My birthday present to me

I splashed out and bought this glass pendant in Oamaru. 
It's made by Nikki O'Brien, who makes glass beads and jewellery.
 (see https://www.facebook.com/Bubbles.and.Beads1) for more of her work). I bought it at The Glass Gallery in Oamaru, as a souvenir of a very enjoyable trip to this fascinating town.
    I wish I could have stayed longer there, I only feel that I scratched the surface of the place. I would have liked to explore the countryside and beaches around the town a little more. Still, I think its a mark of a good holiday when you want to return to a place. Oamaru has a big festival in November to celebrate its Victorian heritage, so that might be a good time to go. There is also a steampunk festival at mid-winter, but I don't enjoy travelling at that time of year; I like to hole up like a grumpy bear when it gets cold.
     Back home again now with the pussies. Thomas greeted me warmly when I arrived, but I got the cold shoulder from Jiro for a few hours. They still aren't really what you'd call buddies, which is sad, I hoped they would become fond of each other. You never know with cats!

More buildings from Oamaru

St Lukes Anglican Church - Victorian Gothic in limestone. Prime site - the Anglicans were always good at picking these.

Insurance building - these Victorian neo-classical buildings make good use of corner sites.

Waitaki County Council Building - spectacular!

Column and entablature of the ANZ Bank building

Detail of Criterion Hotel facade. The urns on the balustrade were removed for many years because of earthquake fears. Fortunately they were stored and preserved, and returned and secured after earthquake strengthening was carried out in the 1990s.

Another bank building. Much money was washing around Oamaru when these were built. Banks liked the neo-classsical style with its resonances of stability, solidity and order, so there are very few Victorian Gothic style banks in existence.  There is a very fine Victorian bank in the Gothic style in Melbourne though, which I saw many years ago on a visit there.

Row of facades in Tyne Street. I don't think many New Zealanders appreciate what a rare thing this is, to see a whole streetscape of buildings of this age and style. If this was Italy, it would have been put up for a World Architectural Heritage designation, but sadly here in NZ these are just old buildings which some feel should have been demolished for something shiny and new. It's one of the things I hate so much about my country; so often, philistines rule, with their argument always being "we can't afford to restore", but strangely, we always seem to be able to afford to demolish and replace. There are so many of these buildings here in the town, these few pictures are not all of them, this is just the area with the greatest concentration of examples. There are also several lovely buildings in the Art Deco style, all in limestone too.

It's been a good trip. I hope to return to Oamaru some time in the not-too-distant future, and visit the penguin colony, the limestone quarries and explore some of the surrounding countryside.