Over and Out

Christmas is over,the family have gone home, the house is empty and already I am missing the sounds of the little voices. We ended up with six adults and three children so it was quite a houseful. Especially with only one bathroom!

But - summer is here and its time to adjourn to the beach. Barbeques, afternoon siestas, sitting around and catching up with friends and relatives, long lazy walks fossicking for shells along the beach in the evenings, making endless sandcastles for the little ones to knock over, towing kids on body boards through the shallows, and bush walks on those very hot days when it is too hot at the beach. (the term 'bush' is used in New Zealand to mean native forest)

Thank you for following my blog this year - and especially those of you who have left comments. I have valued your comments and views, and hope that you will return next year. All the very best for the New Year 2009!

I will be back on or around the 10th of January - probably with lots more photos of our wee space in the world.

I leave you with some garden photos - the hydrangea flowers seem to be bluer than ever before this year.

Angels singing Christmas Carols

I love this clip of Romanian children singing a Christmas carol. I have no idea whatsover of the meaning of the words!

Christmas Reds

It is the time of the year when we are surrounded by magnificent Christmas reds......

a Santa red,






there are strawberries in abundance,








my little red car,










bougain-
villea red,














and the best red of all................

our own New Zealand Pohutukawa known as the Christmas tree

Flax(harakeke)

These are some photos of flax on the Chatham Islands. It is in full flower around New Zealand at the moment - some varieties with golden flowers, some with red. I always associate the flowering flax with Christmas - and of course also the Pohutukawa tree - some photos of that later.

Flax - which is actually a lily - is a magnificent plant and had many traditional uses to the Maori in pre European times.

Most Maori settlements had their own flax plantation. They grew different varieties - some for their strength, softness, colour and fibre content. No plant was more important to them than the flax, or harakeke as it was known.
It was used for clothing, footwear, mats, plates, baskets, ropes, bird snares, fishing lines, lashings and nets.

Other parts of the flax were used also - the tall dry flower stalks were used for floats and rafts. Nectar was used for sweetening.

Flax also had many medicinal uses. The sticky sap or gum that flax produces was applied to boils and wounds and used for toothache. Flax leaves were used in binding broken bones and matted leaves were used as dressings. Flax root juice was routinely applied to wounds as a disinfectant.

Today, flax is used in soaps, hand crèmes, shampoos and a range of other cosmetics. Flax seed oil can also be found for sale. There have even been experiments to make flax into wine!

It is still widely used by the Maori to weave into traditional kete (baskets), cloaks and pois.

The Hollyhock story

These plants are not just hollyhocks. They have a story.

I had a very dear elderly friend who was a keen gardener. She grew the most amazing hollyhocks, all self seeded and all in glorious shades of red.
I envied her plants and several times I took the seed home with me, scattered it around the garden but they either never germinated or if they did none ever grew to maturity.

She died two years ago, aged 103. The first spring after she died, all these hollyhocks appeared in my garden, even though it had been a few years since I had planted the seeds.

Now, for the second year I have these beautiful red hollyhocks growing as prolifically in my garden as hers did.

Different garden, but they are my friend's flowers. I have accepted her mantle with pride.

Shhh - the Kiwifruit are hatching

Some facts

Some random facts about the Chatham islands.
*the sun rises first in the world there
*varied and spectacular scenery
*solitude and remoteness.
*fishing, diving and abundant seafood,
*situated at around 44degrees south
*the weather is often windy and wet.
*The Te Whanga lagoon is a major geographical feature, it covers 20,000 hectares and is about one fifth of the island
*Chatham, the largest island has a population of around 695 people,
*no public transport, no taxis.
*about 180 kilometers of roads, mostly gravel.
*freight to the Island is expensive - $200 per cubic metre by ship., $3 a kilo by air.

More Images

1. The beautiful endemic Chathams Islands forget-me-not.
2. The basalt rocks are all five sided.
3. The amazing rock formation on the coast - basalt rock columns.
4. A shepherds hut.
5. We ate lots and lots of seafood! Farming and fishing are the two main industries on the Islands.

Images of the Chatham Islands

1. a spectacular fungus growth
2.Moriori tree carvings (dendroglyphs)- the age of these is unknown but they are very very old. There are 1145 documented carvings and they were thought to have been done by the Moriori to mark special occasions eg birth of a child.
3. Moriori rock carving
4. typical Chathams scene - a windswept tree by a bluff.
5.the flax was just beautiful with gold and some red flowers.
6.Fossicking for fossilised sharks teeth. I found three.
7.More windswept trees.

I'm Back!

Chathams Part One
Here is a map of the Islands - they are 860kms west of Christchurch, an hour and a half flight from Wellington.

The Summer Begins ! Shark Sighting at Bay of Plenty beach

Shark clears water on first Summer weekend
1:18PM Monday Dec 01, 2008
John Cousins

A close encounter with a big shark added an edge of excitement to this summer's first beach weekend when bathers were sent scurrying from the surf on three occasions at Papamoa Beach yesterday.

The 2.4m thresher shark swam so close to shore chasing fish that at one stage it was clearly visible as it sliced through the shallows.

Papamoa Surf Life Saving Club's acting patrol captain Ross Merrett said the shark was seen swimming around the back of the flagged area at 1pm and when it did not move away, swimmers were told through loud speakers to leave the water.

Swimming conditions were not exactly pleasant with large numbers of jellyfish floating about. When 10-year-old Morgan Lyall heard the alert he thought it was because of a big poisonous jellyfish.

"If we knew it was a shark, we probably would have sprinted out."

The appearance of the non-aggressive shark coincided with the hottest part of the day and the beach was packed with people.

Guards waded into the shallows to underline the warning. Senior guard Ashleigh Cleverley said when bathers who asked were told what the trouble was, their walk turned into a rush.

An inflatable rescue boat was used to scare fish off to encourage the thresher away. The beach reopened 10 minutes later once the shark had swum off.

Half an hour later it was back, coming right into the shallows to chase fish and herd them into edible quantities by swimming in circles and using its tail to thrash the water. When it returned a third time 30 minutes later, Ashleigh said some swimmers started to dawdle and even sit around rather than get out.

Mr Merrett said people became curious and some bathers waded back into the surf to waist depth get a closer look.

Guards told them to back off because a blow from a thresher's tail was extremely dangerous and sometimes fatal.

Mr Merrett said it was not uncommon to see thresher sharks in the area in front of the clubhouse, with half a dozen sightings during the patrol season.

At least two sharks were feeding in the shallows along Tauranga's coastline yesterday because the second warning at Papamoa Beach coincided with bathers at Harrison's Cut sighting another thresher.

- BAY OF PLENTY TIMES

Chatham Islands

Tomorrow I am going offshore to the Chatham Islands for a holiday. I am very excited - the Chathams are a remote location with a very interesting history and flora and fauna. The islands are only home to about 600 people, of European, Maori and Moriori descent.

They are rather wild and windswept and I certainly won't be expecting shopping malls and theatres! There is telephone access but I am not sure if I will be able to access a computer while there. So I will be offline for about 10 days or so.

Some information below:

The archipelago of the Chatham Islands (Rekohu in the Moriori language and Wharekauri in the Māori language), is a territory of New Zealand and consists of about 10 islands within a 40-km radius. The remote islands, located over 800 kilometers east of southern New Zealand, have officially belonged to the country since 1842.

The first human habitation of the Chathams involved migrating Polynesian tribes who settled the islands about 1500 AD, and in their isolation became the Moriori people. The exact origins of these people remains a matter of some dispute. The Moriori population of the islands numbered about 2000.

On November 19, 1835, a British ship carrying 500 Māori armed with guns, clubs and axes arrived, followed by another ship on December 5, 1835 with a further 400 Māori. They proceeded to massacre the Moriori and enslave the survivors.

After the invasion, Moriori were forbidden to marry Moriori, nor to have children with each other. All became slaves of the Ngati Tama and Ngati Mutunga invaders. Many died from despair. Many Moriori women had children to their Maori masters. A small amount of Moriori women eventually married either Maori or European men. Some were taken from the Chathams and never returned. Today, in spite of the difficulties and genocide that Moriori faced, Moriori are enjoying a renaissance, both on Rekohu and in the mainland of New Zealand.

The current population of 609 individuals have European (66%), Māori (57%) and Moriori origins.