Autumn is like that...

The leaves are falling like crazy lately.
Before dark last night I swept and swept,
and swept the leaves out onto the street.

When I woke this morning I was very happy.
It was the street sweeper truck.
Up and down the street he went and all the leaves were gone.
Our lawns were green and tidy.

Secretly I think I like a bit of control and order.



However,
this afternoon
the wind blew and the leaves again fell
like confetti at some demented wedding.
Now it is both blowing and raining.

I'm back to square one.

Mother Nature's the boss around here.
Listen..
I think I hear her laughing out there in the dark
in the wind and rain...

Te Pahu.. a walk in the country..

Te Pahu, at the foot of Mt Pirongia, was our heartland for over thirty years.
Yesterday friend Kath, who like me moved into the city in recent years,
and I returned there to have lunch with friend Josie.
Kath left her car at the local garage for it's Warrant of Fitness.

Kath, her dog Bebe and I opted to walk back to the garage to collect the car after our lovely lunch.
About three k's walk on a beautiful autumn day..

I saw our old farm, looking very green, and how the pines have grown,
that sons Steve and Ross planted as youngsters with grand dreams
of one day making their fortunes.

We passed the gurgling streams that come from the mountain,

and the homes and farms that once belonged to neighbours and friends.

We peeped in at Lois' latest little piglets born in her orchard.
I know Lois sells the piglets to buy wool
to knit blankets and clothes for orphans in Romania.

Along the way the cows were very interested in us and came to the fence to
look us over closely.

It was a sleepy, hazy sort of day
and the pastures shone in the gentle autumn light.

This is a place of belonging and memory.

I am the richer for having lived in this community,
with the mountain forever the guardian
of a special place.
Te Pahu.

A Monday out walking...

Today I walked into the CBD to the movies
(a 12 minute walk) to see the Met Opera movie of
Le Comte Ori
by Rossini..

..I am in love with this young Peruvian tenor
Juan Diego Florez, who played the Comte.
His wife had given birth to his son less than an hour before the opera began.
No sleep the night before.. but what a performance.

I am in love with the Met movies. I just can't get enough of them!
I am putting NY and the Met on my Bucket List!

The walk home was lovely in the late afternoon.
Dora's, a very favourite cafe, was closed but there looked to be plenty of ozone in the blue sky above..

and the trees everywhere were looking beautiful and very Autumnal.

The round-about signs made me think of how fast the seasons seem to come round
these years.

I love the way the late afternoon sun picks out leaves
and parts of trees and makes them glow with colour.

Light is colour.
Colour is light.

Without sunlight...
no colour...

and is the colour really only in my eye.. and in my brain ?

I have a sneaky feeling the world in more like Alice's Wonderland
than we realize...

A Good Book..

The oak tree is almost bare.
Soon I will be able to see Te Aroha Mountain again
through the naked trees.


This morning there was a soft fog

and my small garden is full of leaves..

and it seemed like a perfect morning for hopping back into bed
with my book.

I have almost finished reading THE GOOD EARTH by Pearl S Buck
and I have loved every bit of it.
I am reading slowly now..
I am sorry to be coming to the end.

Maybe I'll leave the last chapter for a quiet moment later in the day
and go and see to those leaves!

Farewell to the Zinnias...

today
I picked
the last
tussie-mussie
of zinnias

a small
precious
momento
of summery days
now gone



the spent plants I pulled
and tossed into the bin
to make rich
compost
maybe
for another year of zinnias
all
 red-pink-orange-creamy
around
 dark and gold-dust-starried eyes

 'mal de ojos'
the spanish said

these are hard on the eyes
this brightness
such gaudiness

but in my tiny garden
under the  intense sun of our southern land
small zinnia
you were perfect

Patchworking with Gloria..

I've been on a sewing course with wonderful Gloria Loughman
of Victoria, Australia.


Gloria makes the most exquisite quilts

and taught us many of her patchworking and quilting techniques.

It was a most enjoyable time

and the quilts produced were pretty wonderful too.
All quilts pictured here are Gloria's.

Little Bugs...


Maybe it was because I'd caught a little bug
that these little bugs appeared in my doodle book.

Strange little bugs
in a strange week.

I'm fine again now and enjoying a couple of days of fabric art with Gloria Loughman from Australia.

( I've used Zentangle's Mooka pattern here, based on the art of
Alphonse Maria Mucha. )

Kiwi Halloween..

I remembered I'd made this little felt toadstool
and thought it was just the thing for my Kiwi Halloween ..

The first of May and it is chilly outside.
The leaves are falling fast now, dancing in the breeze.
I've had a sore throat so I've stayed indoors.
It gives that
withdrawing-into-my-cosy-cave
sort of feeling.
Two thirds through Autumn ..
Winter is near.

Just the time for thinking of those we love who have gone before us.

So I made a little mandarin lamp to glow in the evening as the days grow shorter
and earth tilts
and we move further from the sun.

Today is Kiwi Halloween..

30 April 1997
Ross
Forever in our hearts.

Loving thoughts America!

Loving thoughts to the people of America suffering from the terrible twisters.
So scary!

Royal Weddings..

I thought I'd share a little treasure.

The little book made by son Steven, then aged four and a half,

after watching the wedding of Charles and Diana in 1981.

The Glass Coach

Princess Diana and The  Dress

and inside St Paul's... The Royal Family sitting waiting and Charles and Diana walking down the aisle.


Diana looked the perfect fairy-tale princess that day, but we all know old fairy-tales can have a very black side.

The day has dawned fine with blue skies here in NZ.
May the day be beautiful for the Royal Wedding in London today too
and may this be a fairy tale wedding that really does comes true in the Happily-Ever-After sort of way.

for William and Catherine.

The Wedding!

I went to the dentist early this morning
and noticed the rather humble building,
where my wonderful dentist Helen
works minor miracles on my somewhat aging teeth,



goes under the rather posh name of
CORONATION CHAMBERS
erected in 1953
the year of the coronation of our Queen Elizabeth.
I was nine and remember the excitement of that event.

Those were the days when little sister and I collected newspaper and magazine
cuttings for our Royal Family scrapbooks.

The Queen's coronation and her tour of New Zealand was very exciting..
 My schoolmates and I stood very close to the royal car
from which she alighted when she visited Pukekohe.

I have been inside Buckingham and Windsor Castles, and the palaces of St James and Kensington.

We were in London when the Queen Mother died, and stood on the Mall and watched the princes as they walked behind her coffin.The darling little crown sat on top ..the same crown we had seen at The Tower of London.
I've been in Hampton Court and Glamis Castle...

Oh, and tomorrow night  I will be tucked up in my dressing gown, slippers and tiara..
 watching...

The Wedding!!

I'm such a Royalist at times like this.