Posts by ChrisW
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My preparation today for Anzac Day involved visiting the Gisborne district war memorial cenotaph to photograph it complete with its marble soldier on top. The monument was damaged in the December 2007 earthquake. Subsequent investigations indicate it is in poor structural condition on weak foundations close to the riverbank. The soldier is to be removed immediately after Anzac Day for safe-keeping, associated with a decision to restore and rebuild the monument more robustly at major expense.
“The Sorrow and the Pride” expressed in marble and bronze in the early 1920s – the dislocation of the column not to be ignored.
No hint of glory in this soldier. The pohutukawa leaves turn up in a fresh breeze to complement the marble.
That marble soldier seems thoroughly expressive. I’ve never seen this with clarity before, so high out of reach of the naked eye view – unfortunately so.
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The fig tree is starting to get autumnal as yesterday’s early sun finds its way through the dancing gaps in the alder foliage beyond.
Then this morning –
And lo! the fig-leaf of the east has caught
The sun’s delight in a golden glove. -
Capture: Autumn lite, in reply to Nora Leggs,
Wonderful doorstep view, and the air looks so clear down there. Is the whole hillside going to change colour in the coming weeks?
Half those trees are evergreen, and the deciduous ones are all out of synch in their timings, no overall change in the spectacle?
Yes Gisborne air often has beautiful clarity with sharp colours, definitely much clearer on average than Auckland's, but we have all sorts. And Auckland too has good clarity some days - here's one from Cockle Bay near the family home of my youth, meeting the clarity test of the side-ridges of Moehau being visible in the afternoon*. This echoing Cecelia's photo from Whangaparaoa to Little Barrier - perhaps a quintessential Auckland view?
Like Simon Bennet's above, made by the Norfolk pine :-)*Doubtful perhaps in the photo, but I seen it!
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Sitting on my doorstep 10 days ago, Saturday morning (with Kim Hill and Anne Ruefle: Poetry and Life as it happened).
Today's autumnal update, mid-afternoon hint of soft sun through thinning cloud.
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Yesterday
interestingly dull
greys prevailed hereUntil late afternoon
textured blues emerged
in the northern skyAnd in the west
a bolt of blue lightning
sundered favourite trees.
Or is it land and sea
Pelorus Sound-like
through forested hills? -
Capture: Got the blues, in reply to Nora Leggs,
Yesterday blue sky was glimpsed through a hole in the cloud...
It took me a while to sort this out –
That’s it - looks like the product of a damaged hole-puncher at work on the grey clouds, complete with hanging chad highlighted. -
Capture: Someone, Somewhere, In Summertime, in reply to Jos,
Lovely combination of the regular geometry and the organic. Maybe my tired eyes exaggerate the movement but those fiddle scrolls seem to be rolling and unrolling - won't quite stand still ...
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Up Front: Gathered Together, in reply to Ben Austin,
The various speeches in support from those on the right - Banks, Henere, or Burrows are especially moving, given the expectation of a contrary view.
Suggest you listen again to Chester B*o*rrows’ speech. He wrong-footed me and many others while teetering on the pivot point between the ayes and noes, before falling back with the noes as in his second reading speech.
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The eyes have it.
A kereru visiting my place is a rarity. This one perched on the walnut tree the other day seems to convey a message this morning – no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should, all’s well with the world.
That raised toe in particular, corresponding to raised forefinger from the steering wheel - an acknowledgement from provincial-rural NZ.
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Even when spiky-looking in silhouette, cabbage trees/ti kouka have never seemed fierce to me. Though I can imagine thinking this one perhaps just a little spooky.
This an unexpected appearance of a ti kouka next door, emerging in longish exposure photograph of early dawn in November, over my woodshed roof. Even more unexpected was the silhouette of the tree at left, a houhere, looking remarkably like an early chart (say James Cook's) of the coast from here = Gisborne/Poverty Bay/Turanganui-a-Kiwa, around East Cape and Cape Runaway into the Bay of Plenty, while the silhouette at right is a feijoa tree (from South America, on the opposite side of the eastern ocean), so between them the ti kouka and Southern Cross and Pointers against the deep blue sky representing that South Pacific Ocean and its islands and us here.
So not at all fierce or spooky I think, but positively putting a characterful face to something quintessentially of here, emerging from the dark.
