Green for Turbos!

Now we have the new lighter version. Also fluoro.  

 Turbos supporter. Of Irish extraction. 

With matching rainbow polyprop- stretches over cast for winter warmth.

fluoro orange

My heavy old cast with a new orange coat, 

plus extra wiggle room for my (still swollen) fingers and thumb.

blogging break

We will be having a small break in blogging transmission..... I have broken my arm.....

 but my sister has been an angel and came down and filled my freezer with meals I can just put in the microwave....

What makes you come alive?

 Foxton Estuary

"Don't ask yourself what the world needs.
Ask yourself what makes you come alive,
and then go do that.
Because what the world needs
is people who have come alive."

~Howard Thurman

Manawatu Estuary, Foxton Beach

There was a doozie of a frost here this morning: at least one website told me minus 3C. But the morning was calm and sunny, and I had a new GPS unit to test out, so I set it for a journey to the Manawatu Estuary at Foxton Beach. And en route, you could see snow on the tops of the Tararua Ranges- so it was no surprise we had such a frost!

Quite a few people were at the wharf by the Estuary when I arrived, enjoying the peace and calm of such a Sunday morning.

The Manawatu Estuary is in fact listed under the Ramsar Convention as a wetland of international importance. It hosts various birds from the Arctic, including godwits, that make their way down here for feeding during our summer months, then return north to breed in the northern summer. 

In autumn the godwits leave our shores, but the Manawatu Estuary then plays host to some visitors who arrive from further south in New Zealand, such as the royal spoonbills and the pied oystercatcher, who spend their winter in slightly warmer climes.

So here are photos of four of the birds I saw at the Estuary today. (Maalie- I know you will correct me if I have misidentified any of these!)

Pied Oystercatcher

Pied Stilt

White-faced Heron

Royal Spoonbill

Extramural Contact Course

This week has been the 'contact course' for the extramural paper I am studying this year through Massey- Flora of New Zealand. 'Full on' and intense, but ahhhhhh it has been such a worthwhile week. Suddenly, seeing things in the lab/field, all those 'words' that you read about in the texts just 'come alive'.

And I felt like a little kid again, seeing some 'simple' things that I just never really knew about before, and being surprised by them. Joyful, joyful happy days!

I was a bit anxious when the week started with two microscopes in front of me that I never knew how to use: I worked out it was 35 years since I had last set foot in a biology lab with a microscope! But the lecturers and demonstrators were all very helpful through the whole week, so that hurdle was soon crossed....

So, what exactly did I get excited over, looking down a microscope? First day, it was seeing the little green Chlamydomonas alga swimming around at lightning speed- and even better, the colonies of Pandorina and Scenedesmus algae going slowly enough for me to watch them dancing on the slide! (I found it hard to sleep that night- I had dancing algae swimming in front of my eyes!) We also got to see Chara, and 'seeing is understanding' rang true here: all the things we had been reading about Chara and the transition from certain green algae to land plants suddenly made perfect sense.

Seeing the details on bryophytes was another highlight. By now I was getting the hang of the microscopes..... And on the liverwort Marchantia I could see the gemma cups, the air pores, the ventral scales. Looking at the 'jelly-like' substance that was Porella liverwort it became obvious what is meant by 'no true leaves'. And I could have watched the beauty of the capsule and operculum and peristome teeth on the Funaria moss all morning if I had the time!

When we started looking at ferns, I discovered that I had a 'trilete' spore on my slide. I had read about these often, and now suddenly, there right in front of my eyes was one I had scraped off a fern sorus....

Next came floral formulae. Ever since I began this course, my walks have been 'ruined' as I keep stopping to examine things that I pass. But now, we were being equipped to examine the flower parts in a structured way, that was soon going to help us quickly see some differences between some families of flowering plants. (The young demonstrator for this lab was amazing by the way: how he managed to find so many relevant flowering plants in winter was a real tribute to his dedication.)

Two days in the lab peering down microscopes can tire even the most enthusiastic soul though, and Wednesday we took off for a field trip to look at some forest remnants. And just to give my loyal readers some of the photographs they have come to expect, here are a few...... First photo is taken from one of the terraces as we travel 'downhill' to the Rangitikei River.

And here we are at river level, where we parked to go and explore the Pryce's Rahui Reserve.

In this reserve, we all learned how to use a 'key' to identify various plants. Then we divided up and went into different parts of the forest to examine the type of growth. One of our esteemed class members memorably described his section of the forest as the 'crap forest'. I was glad to find I was in the 'swampy' forest- any excuse to get muddy is fine by me!! There were some large kahikatea and many pukatea with their wet feet buttressed in the swampy ground, and the plot was quite fascinating.

And now another quite irrelevant photographic stop: there were some beautiful fungi in this damp forest.

The 'sad' part about this trip was that all three forest remnants we visited showed evidence of disturbance. After a lunch/discussion stop, we were off to Sutherland Mangahoe Reserve, where we climbed up to find a flat section on a ridge top that had a younger stand of nearly all podocarps- and the question was raised, had a land-slip brought this about? Then we visited McPherson's Reserve where we were faced with the huge destruction to tawa wrought by the 2004 floods. Within a year of the floods, the tawa, young and old, were dying. Some research is showing that the sediment load left behind by the floods is what has caused this- with the trees being suffocated by lack of oxygen. We have a lot of questions to address in Manawatu/ Rangitikei hill country areas about slippage and land use....

Thursday was back to the lab. We did some intense looking at flower types in different families. It was a busy time- but by the end of it- a few pennies had dropped in this brain about what it all meant. Again I was fascinated by some 'simple' things that I had never seen before, eg the globules spilling out of and down the stamen I had on the dissecting scope were pollen grains.... Then in the afternoon we were exposed to divarication - a trait special to some New Zealand plants- and we had to explore what that was and how you might measure it. Lots to think about.

But all too soon, the week of the contact course was coming to an end, and a practical test loomed on Friday morning. There were 60 plants we had to learn with common and Latin names, but specimens of them all had been laid out in the lab all week, which had been so helpful for learning them- so much easier than from photographs. Plus we had to able to draw and label and work out various things related to the week's lab/field activity. It seemed like it might be a tough two hours. But in the event, the test was much easier than I had feared. Seeing something loom down the microscope didn't elicit too many 'oh my gosh what is that' panics: mostly the details came back fairly quickly to mind...

And then it was all over, and a few of us moved across to the Massey cafe for lunch and coffee etc. It was great to meet the others studying this paper, quite literally from all over the country- as we had someone from Haast and someone from the Bay of Islands... It was a productive and enjoyable week: full marks go to the Massey staff involved.

But the sun was shining and it was a glorious winter's day. Now it was time to put the camera in the backpack, the iPod in the ears, and head out for a bit of a relaxing walk......

Random Kitchen Stuff

Oh My Goodness. Now that I am out of FB, I have time for other mischief. This might have been my next random fb photo album..... "random kitchen pics"..... But is it art?
First two pics are from my sister M's kitchen. Hubby is a great cook, who likes to cook for others, so all kinds of unexpected bits and pieces can be found there, and work is often 'in progress' when I visit.
Next two photos are from Christmas lunch and Boxing Day breakfast in Havelock North. My b-i-l 'inherited' his love for cooking from his mother.
My friend M in Chch has all sorts of interesting wee treasures in her house.
I was 'helping' get ready for a party, but got distracted by these glasses...
And just to finish..... my other friend T in Chch had brunch for her 50th last week... and here were some of the 'doings' ready and waiting for guests to arrive...
My resolution.... 'next time' I walk a Chemin/Camino..... I am going to take more food pics!!!

And beware... coming soon to you another day...more random kitchen pics.... You'll all be wishing I would rejoin facebook sometime soon....

River walk-autumn afternoon

My reward to myself today once I had finished my Massey assignment, was a walk beside the Manawatu River. The forecast was for rain.... but it seems that once again the rain mostly visited the eastern side of the ranges.

It was mid-afternoon when I walked, with the sun pushing its way through some sombre clouds.
Here are some of the groynes in the river that are designed to help push flood flows more towards the other bank. We humans have tried to 'cheat' nature here by moving the whole course of the river over away from the town. But when the water is in full flood, it all wants to find its way back to its previous course.

The water is so very low at present, it makes it hard to believe that this river can ever be badly behaved...
Today it was just a gentle river under a steely sky
Autumn giving the promise of winter.
A glorious place to stand and gently be.

From the Camino

When walking the Camino I met a French couple who had walked from their home on the Swiss side of Le-Puy-en-Velay, and who walked all the way to Santiago then home again. (And I thought I was a heroine!) They have just put some photos up on Picasa and I have pinched this one of me, taken on a very wet day at the end of the May, just days away from the Pyrenees.....

Someone has already told me how happy I look in this photo, and that's the way it was.

Just under two years before I walked the Camino, I was in the youth hostel in Cahors doing the tourist thing exploring the area for a few days. In my room one evening I met a French woman who had been walking for three weeks from Le Puy. She just looked radiantly happy and she said she was- she was loving her walk. I guess that was when I first wondered if I might ever do such a thing myself....

Well, in April 2008, it was my turn. As I emerged into the countryside after the steepish climb out of the basin where Le-Puy-en-Velay was nestled, I knew a deep, peaceful happiness that I was walking and, all going well, I would be walking for weeks. These feet were made for walking.....

A Storm Threatens

Around lunchtime when I went out walking, it was sunny with light cloud. There were weather warnings last night for the Tararua Ranges, and trampers were warned about the conditions and rising rivers etc. Certainly there was cloud over the ranges that I could see as I walked in town, but any rain had to be falling on the eastern side.
By 3pm though, conditions had changed. Though it was still sunny, calm and pleasant in Palmerston North, a storm could be seen threatening over the Tararuas. This first photo shows the front spilling over the ranges near the river.
And this second photo, looking towards the ranges, shows how dark the clouds had become. Soon I spied some lightning in the dark clouds over the ranges.
But no rain arrived, though a gentle rainbow just gave a hint of its presence. There was that slightly weird before-the-storm feeling, but it seems that any storm has remained mainly in the east.
As I write this in the evening, some rain has begun gently falling..... but this storm was just pretending to come here.....

ANZAC Day, 2010

Today, ANZAC Day in New Zealand and Australia, we remember our soldiers who died in War. The fathers of many of my generation fought in WW2: my father was part of a Railway Operating Company in the Middle East. His generation never spoke of the horrors that the war brought. And in WW1, a huge swathe of young men from the colonies lost their lives overseas, never to return to those who loved them back home. In 1998 I visited northern France and found the graves of two great-uncles who were buried there in WW1. It was my sad privilege to pay my respects to them at their graves in France.This morning I woke early and went to the Dawn Service in the Square here in Palmerston North. This city is home to many in the New Zealand Armed Forces today, with Ohakea Airforce Base and Linton Army Camp both nearby. Our army and air force are involved in peace-keeping duties in many places, and it isn't uncommon for children at local schools to have a parent away for months, in places like East Timor. Happily, they nearly always return home safely.

Families visiting the Palmerston North War Memorial
to see the wreaths laid in the two ANZAC Day services

The dawn parade was quiet and dignified. There was a little drizzle at times, but mostly it stayed dry. A helicopter from Ohakea passed over the stilled crowd at 6am. As the service proceeded, the birds were beginning their daily chorus in nearby trees, and the sky showed a tinge of pink as it lightened for the new day.

Unfortunately, this was to be a specially sad remembrance day here in New Zealand. Three young airmen in a helicopter from Ohakea, bound for the ANZAC service in Wellington, were killed when their helicopter crashed into a ravine.

Lest we forget.

Sunset at home, Anzac Day 2010

Camino Quiet

A slideshow of photos from my Camino, Le-Puy-en-Velay to Santiago in 2008.

Square Sunshine

It was far too glorious today to stay indoors, so I walked down to the Square and took some more photos.

And yesterday I discovered how I could export a slideshow with sliding panels.... so..... I have uploaded a version to YouTube. (This is lower quality as upload speeds in NZ are sloooooooow. If any of my teaching buddies know a local teacher doing anything on the Square or Palmie.... they are welcome to contact me for a higher quality copy!)

Anyhow.... here it is: summer and autumn sunshine in the Square..... Enjoy!!

Flying South

This weekend was a special event down in Christchurch. I had booked window seats on my flights, and was fortunate to get magnificent views in both directions. Leaving home, there was a splendid view of the Manawatu River snaking its way across the floodplains.

Once we had reached the South Island, we traveled over the sea for much of our journey. Here Kaikoura pokes out into the ocean.

I saw several large braided rivers twisting through hill country until they reached the sea.

There were special times with my friends in Christchurch- and two of us walked along the beach near New Brighton on a calm, sunny Saturday morning.

There was also time to just walk slowly and take some photographs of autumn trees. This group of coloured leaves was lit behind by the sun for just a short time in the afternoon- and most of this tree remained green.

Monday morning I was homeward bound again, this time over land in the south. Surprisingly, there was a dusting of snow over the Kaikoura Ranges.

At Lake Grassmere, where seawater is evaporated to leave salt, the colours of the pools were intriguing from the air.

It seemed like we were passing over the Marlborough Sounds in no time.... and soon we were touching down back in Palmerston North, on North Island soil.

Colour in the city.

I finished work early today, a glorious autumn day, so I decided to head out on a wee bike ride with my camera.
First I stopped in the Square, where they often have banners hanging from the heavy-duty industrial light fixtures. Sometimes these banners advertise an event, and sometimes they just seem to add colour, as these ones did.Not far away a new kinetic wind sculpture has been installed near the Convention Centre. The sun shone and it moved gently in the breeze today. I spoke with a man passing by, who works in the city council offices overlooking this sculpture: he said that last week in the strong winds it really opened up. I will have to go back one day when the wind is really blustery and watch it again.

Next I visited Rangitikei St. There are some interesting old buildings still dotted around the city, that have escaped being destroyed and replaced by bland modern buildings. Recently while on a bus I noticed the higher levels of the facades on these two buildings, that I have always missed seeing from the lower vantage point of bicycle or car wheels. So here we have a white tui, and a fascinating bit of history with a Jersey cow.
And for fun, just a bit of modern colour:
Lastly I called into St Pat's on the way home, and saw purple covered statues and crosses for Holy Week. But it was the purple and green of grapes in this stained glass window that took my eye.