Seasons Greetings

[AlwynWellington]

Being from way down under we do things a little different.

The attached photo, taken about an hour ago, shows some of those differences.

Firstly, in many coastal places is found our own Christmas Tree - read flower with green leaves. By new year, the flowers will be gone but the leaves (as with nearly all our "bush" - or sub-tropical rain forest) stay green year after year.

And being summer, grass on hills tends to brown off quite quickly. Walking, it is almost 8 km (5 miles) from where I took the photo (near my front door) to an airfield below the hill on the left. This hill is named Round Knob (410 metres above sea level - about 1,350 feet asl) with the airfield a little lower at 350 m asl. The hill on the right is named Cannons Head and is 380 m asl (about 1,250 ft asl).

One of my training routes is the 8 km to the airfield and down the other side 6 km to a wide river valley. There I can choose to go up river about 20 km or down river about 10 km before getting public transport back home.

I start from home at about 90 m asl, drop 40 metres down to the first valley, then up 150 metres to the next ridge, down 50 metres to Duck Creek Valley and up 250 metres to the airfield. This is a total elevation gain of about 400 metres. This is an ideal training ground for France and Spain.

So, Seasons greeting to you all.

For the year ahead I say, kia kaha, kia māia, kia mana'wa'nui (take care, be strong, be confident and patient)

 

[Tassie Kaz]

How lovely @AlwynWellington; brilliantly vivid flowers against the green foliage...& is that a Kangaroo Paw I spot LHS of the shot?!


I echo Alwyn's 'Seasons Greetings' to all from the corner of the globe we share.

 

[AlwynWellington]

& is that a Kangaroo Paw I spot LHS of the shot?!

Sadly, but no.

In the immediate foreground is a flax tree (bush), well beloved by Tui for the nectar they can forage down the long shaped flower using their long bill that has developed for just that purpose: sadly, the heat has dried that source up for the present.

But we might try to swap a Tasmanian Tiger for a Moa!

Kia kaha

 

[Tassie Kaz]

But we might try to swap a Tasmanian Tiger for a Moa!

If we can pull that off, we'll both be famous! A searching we shall go...

Thanks for clarifying the plant species...now I've zoomed in on your photo, I can see the difference.

And I'll certainly take a tui over a kea any day!...a kea did it's best to dismantle my hire car with swift removal of my wiper blades & rubber door seals!

Have a lovely Christmas

 

[AlwynWellington]

Thanks for clarifying the plant species

My wider local whanau had a Christmas lunch and activities two weeks ago before they dispersed to others further afield.

Sven of us did the trek to the Manawatū to meet my daughter and her husband. Virginia had arranged some activities for the youngsters - an introduction to my mother's (and grandmother and great grandmothers for the youngsters) family tree. There I learnt that my mothers father (aged 8) and his father had migrated, first from Devon to Christchurch. Then very much later, in 1894, a very much larger family group hired a boat and took themselves and their equipment up through Cook Strait and along the coast to then then almost thriving port of Foxton.

Their objective was to continue their trade of Flax Dressing near where the Oroua River joins the mighty Manawatū River, a trade that, like the trade in Ostrich feathers came to naught with the onset of WW1 some 20 years later..

So the flax tree in my image has a symbolic meaning for me.

 

[DoughnutANZ]

If we can pull that off, we'll both be famous! A searching we shall go...

Thanks for clarifying the plant species...now I've zoomed in on your photo, I can see the difference.

And I'll certainly take a tui over a kea any day!...a kea did it's best to dismantle my hire car with swift removal of my wiper blades & rubber door seals!

Have a lovely Christmas

Here is a friendly Tui that dropped in to say Hello to me.
View attachment VID_20210219_172156~2.mp4