Friday, January 27, 2006

Picture this.


Of course adding a picture is a simple as clicking on the little picture icon. Shame on me.
This one's stolen off the net: it shows the head of Lyttelton harbour, looking east from the summit road that meanders around the top of the western port hills.
Manson's Peninsula is the long finger pointing out towards Quail Island- right in the centre of the picture. It's 72 hectares/180 acres, with about 12 hectares of forestry, maybe 20 hectares of scrubby gorse-and-broom infested eroding steep hillside, a hectare or two of bush and a series of paddocks.
We live on the other side, about 2/5ths of the way out. I am hoping to do some landscape/house photography soon, and put up some more pics.

Thursday, January 26, 2006

2006- DOOM!

2006: Radio NZ has public announcements about the precautions we should have in place for a pandemic (birdflu); there's a lot of talk about peak oil- economic growth worldwide being based on ever-more gluttonous consumption; the New Zealand economy looks like crashing; and the Chch College of Education- where I work- losing jobs, cutting back, hunkering down- and about to be swallowed by a monster....
In the midst of all this end-is-nigh apocolypse-approacheth noise, daily life keeps rolling slowly on. Cars to fix, kids to feed, horses to water. It's easy enough to blank out the noise in the hubbub chez Stowell/Mahy.
Ok, maybe I don't live in paradise- there are mosquitoes, the tide goes out and we're surrounded by mud, and I'm pretty sure paradise has a river or two flowing melodiously- while we get mighty dry.
But life is pretty good for us. There's a spot by one of our water-troughs I've sat some evenings lately- waiting for the trough to fill. There are trees, copses, forest all around, now, surrounding the paddocks. If I'm lucky I'll see the flash of a kingfisher- blue and tan. We've planted a couple of gullies in bush- and bell-birds come for the flax-nectar. Quail are everywhere this year, and a family- semi-comical- usually comes out of the macrocarpas to fossick and dust-bathe on the track.
It's a beaut place to be of an evening- dirty water swirling from tank to trough (lots of mosquito larva) and birds all settling to sleep. One day I'll work out how to post pictures. Until then, I just wish everyone could have a moment or two of this peace.
Ka kite
A sort of postscript: here's the spot. Sorry, couldn't catch a quail!