Easter happiness

   I've said it before and I'll say it again, I love autumn! Especially Easter, because it's such a relaxed holiday, a real holiday, unlike Christmas with its focused panic and consumer madness. 
   Here in New Zealand, the Easter holiday is also a time to get the autumn cleanup started in the garden. And it's the time of plant sales, as garden centres and nurseries get rid of tired and damaged stock for the winter. I am a bit of an addict for plant sales; show me your tired and sad plants and I'll be in to rescue them, especially if they are only $1.99 each! This is my car boot, filled to the brim with bargains. Some treasures - Anemone pulsatilla, a giant cowslip, white primroses, dwarf pale yellow foxgloves. And also a few things that I have a sneaking feeling that might be invasive and I'll be cursing them a few years down the track.

My foraging basket, full of walnuts, a little catnip (good for relaxing tea and for sad cat) and one solitary quince.

After getting hot and cross in the garden, have a hot cross bun. (Rereading Mapp and Lucia - good fun)

Cleanup in progress; the Baroque bed gets re-defined.

Walnuts drying out. Picking these up always reminds me of my childhood. We had three huge walnut trees in neighbouring properties, which used to rain walnuts into our garden every year.

And in other news, we get to keep our flag! The referendum on flag change has decided that we will keep our current flag, which, altho' it's not the best flag in the world, has been ours for some time. The really good thing is that this is one in the eye for our appalling Prime Minister, who wanted a new flag as his "legacy project" (and because he was always being wrongly seated under the Australian flag at international diplomatic shindigs, because the rest of the world can't tell the difference). Reading the comments in The Guardian about this was quite an eyeopener for me; people in the rest of the world are colossally ignorant about my little country. One person asked why we even need a flag, because we're "not a proper country"! Yes we are. We have a parliament and a democratic process and everything. Other commentators bemoaned the fact that we had decided to retain the British flag as part of our own, neglecting the chance to "shake off the yoke of their colonialist oppressors". There's very little colonial oppression going on here now; most of the oppression is from our very own democratically elected neo-Liberal government.

Rant over. May the spirit of Easter fill you with peace and hope and chocolate.