Fire and Ice

After a long, gentle, mild autumn, winter finally arrived here a week or so ago bringing with it snow on our nearby hills. This is not a common occurrence.

The next night or two saw frosts coat the rooftops, cars and grass. Another relatively uncommon occurrence given how close we live to the Pauatahanui Inlet and its maritime influence that moves or warms the air.

We have a number of flowering cherry trees in and around our garden and they had been very slow to turn into their autumn colours.

This bitter cold snap has seen a dramatic change and some very striking colours emerge.

The nice aspect after a good frost, as seen here along a fence in the garden

 

is the stunning sunny, blue sky day that can often provide a clear backdrop to this firey beauty in the cherry tree leaves.

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Wordless Wednesday

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The froth and fizz of spring

Our neighbour has a flowering cherry tree alongside the footpath. It has looked a picture for a few days now and with inclement weather upon us I was determined to get out and see what I could record with my camera before the elements bruised and battered the beauty too much.

The tree is simply a mass of flowers and the scent strong and sweet. A Tui was enjoying the nectar but gave me a merry chase and managed to stay mostly out of sight.
The Tui appears as a black object in the centre of this image.

The wind was blowing about and the light glarey but sometimes that can work.


It has been an excellent day for blogging, not so good for enjoying photography.

Sunday stroll

I live near the delightfully simple and beautiful Aotea Lagoon. It has some lovely grassy areas, a duck pond, a rose garden, fern house, children’s play area, barbeques to use for picnics, a petanque piste, a windmill and of course the tidal lagoon that you can walk around.

Aotea Lagoon

It is a very popular spot for people of ages. It is free and offers so much ordinary pleasure.

Today with spring in full bloom I snapped some photos on a warm and sunny October afternoon. It was easy to feel the gentle energy and soak up the goodness.

Wisteria

Japanese maple in verdant red

Frothy flowering cherry blossoms

Vibrant cineraria

A lull on the blog

I’m anticipating a lull on the blog in the next while.

In the meantime here are some photos of Flowering Cherry Blossom as spring continues apace.

Thank you for reading and following my blog. I hope to be back very soon. Feel free to have a dig into the archives or visit the other bloggers I follow.

The glowing colours of late autumn

Our largest flowering cherry tree is later to blossom and later to shed its leaves compared with the other two in our garden. But the frosty nights and colder days now, plus the decreasing number of daylight hours have meant we are offered this glowing, warming display right now.

Acorns and fairies

We took our cameras down to the grove of Flowering Cherry trees (here they are in glorious spring last year) which is near our local Kindergarten and Primary School.

Near the school car park are three large Oak trees. My children all attended this school and at this time of the year they would bring home piles of acorns, collected in sweatshirt pockets, empty lunch boxes or in their school packs.

Today the ground was littered with acorns and the little cups that drop off the acorn. The little cups are the fascinating means that allow the acorn to form and hold it on the tree until the seed is ripe enough to tumble to the ground.

Did you play with acorns and the little cups when you were a child? I did, pretending the little cups could be drink containers for fairies or tiny hats for tiny heads?

And do you remember this rhyme about Oak trees and acorns? We used to chant this at each other during acorn seasons long ago.

“Don’t worry if your job is small and your rewards are few,
Remember that the mighty oak was once a nut like you”….

I’ll post some photos of the flowering cherry trees in their autumn colours in my next post…..:-)

A walk to the cherry blossom trees

Yesterday I walked down to the stand of cherry blossom trees that was planted on city council reserve some years back in honour of our sister city Nishio, Japan. The display this year is breath-taking. Beneath these trees are millions of spring bulbs, which have almost finished flowering now but they were a picture a few weeks ago too.
Whoever thought of this initiative deserves to be acknowledged and thanked for the special pleasure this area brings.