s e v e n i s a j o u r n e y

So, it’s feeling more real now, but between listening to folks kvetch about the sad state of the Buffyverse, planning to see X2, and Stephen organizing the open house… it feels like half of my life is being lived without me. Weird.

Here are some Saturday shots from around the house. Starting with the house itself. There isn’t the emphasis on “curb appeal” in NZ that there is in the States (not to say that C&N’s place isn’t perfectly appealing). What a house looks like from the street isn’t nearly as important as what you see when you look out of the house (including how much light it gets — very much an issue in steep-sided valleys), which seems perfectly sensible to me. The second shot is what you see when you look out of the house (from one of the multiple decks, actually). Those saturated colors are straight out of the camera — it really looks like that. Third up is Chris, with an armload of the wild and savage rosemary he whacked back into submission. Natasha is off to the left of frame, doing battle with some weeds we haven’t worked out the proper names for yet. Next is one of the new fiddleheads on one of the ponga tree ferns in the front of the house. Nearly every aspect of traditional Maori art is informed by the repeating spirals found in the various local flora. Finally, after a hard day of gardening, cool down with a nice refreshing can of SARS ! I’m given to understand that this unfortunately branded sarsaparilla soda has fallen on hard financial times. Can’t imagine why, as we’re buying it up as often as we find it. ;^)

Sunday took me farther afield, to a local reservation. The neighborhoods are cris-crossed with little alleys like this one, convenient shortcuts that often save a lot of extra trekking up and down hills. The park is also quite steep in places (lots of reservations get made where it’s too steep to put houses), hence the steps. The view from the top is worth it, though, and I really can see our house from here ! On the top here, there’s enough sun for The Enemy: gorse. Looks happy, doesn’t it ? Somebody thought it would be clever to import the stuff as hedging, and now it’s like the local kudzu. Only very pointy, and even harder to kill. The little fern up next may also be an invasive alien for all I know, but it’s much more friendly-looking, isn’t it ? It climbs trees, too. This particular reservation is mostly beech forest. The beeches here have leetle teeny leaves, but like all beeches, very shallow roots, which means there’s not much undergrowth, except in dampish hollows where the big ferns in the next photo are growing. Those are the famous New Zealand silver ferns, and I have a pic of my hand turning up one of the fronds to show the silver underside, but believe it or not, I’m not posting every single nifty photo I take here, although it must seem like it. I sincerely apologize to those of you having to suck this all through a dial-up. I’m planning to start up a gallery section where I can put most of the photos, and henceforth only put a couple of the more significant ones here. I couldn’t resist the last one, though, of a baby beech growing up from the knees of one of the largest trees I saw on my walk.