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.