Look what I found

It's hard to spot amongst all the overgrown fruit trees, calla lilies and rampant passionfruit vine but look carefully...

As of yesterday afternoon the side view now looks like this and you can better see what it is.

A little glass house. Hopefully with better weather and a little more motivation my attempts to get into the garden will prove more productive and I will show you what it looks like on the inside.

We won!

It was quiz night again and everyone was there.

Warriors and Rockers

The all blacks

And Te Stig (no that's not a typo, he's the Maori Stig)


But Flower Power prevailed and if you look carefully you can see Niall, the quiz trophy on the table. Actually in an unprecedented result and even after a tie breaker round we were declared joint winners with another team so we have shared custody of Niall for the next 12 months. We are studying up on our sports for 2011.

Almost too much weather

If you like weather then NZ is definitely the place to be. Earthquake and hundreds of after shocks; enough snow to collapse the Invercargill Sports Stadium (seriously); 300km/hr wind gusts (that was the highest, most of us just got 100-140km/hr breezes); driving rain and the attendant flooding and land slips. All up perfect rugby conditions really and Taranaki won against Canterbury in these perfect conditions on Saturday (Yeah!).

The earthquake woke me up but I slept through a storm at 2am this morning that tore up trees and took off roofs. This has lead to high seas and a very active Wind Wand which apparently will continue well into the weekend.

Bumblebees

Yup, real big fuzzy bumblebees. When we visited on holidays when we were little we thought they were fantastic but were never allowed to bring one home in a matchbox (customs would not be amused). Somehow this fellow got inside and was beyond help when I found him so I took the chance of a photo up with a bread tag to give you an idea of how big they are.

He proves that spring is definitely on the way!

Context

I found this on the Geonet website. All the little orange dots are earthquakes over the last 10 years and the star is the latest one in Christchurch. You can see why it was a bit of a surprise, not being on any of the 'usual' faults. I guess it does make us all a very special kind of nuts to love living here. Mind you I'm a bit hoha about bush fires and sharks having grown up with them so I guess it's kind of the same thing.

Being prepared

Christchurch is very slowly starting get itself back together after their 7.1 quake on Saturday morning which did actually wake me up although I didn't realise that's what it was. Today there is serious flooding in the lower Nth Island and we had horizontal rain for most of the afternoon.

So have I heeded all the warnings and got my emergency kit together?

Kind of - I have emergency chocolate, muesli bars, baked beans, cat food, candles and first aid stuff. Yet to come - water, a decent torch and probably a whole bunch of other things but at least it's a start.