Even the flowers are depressed

I’ve had enough of winter already, thank you thank you…

It’s never really been my cuppa, even when I was a kid in the northern hemisphere in the wilds of upstate New York where the snows fell 4 feet deep and snowdays meant you got to play outside in it all day long in the middle of the week. Yeah, for me it meant the other kids would leave me alone while I curled up in bed with a book.

But that was then and this is now and there is no snow, no endless expanse of white to gaze at in the morning. Instead it’s this endless y-light, the colour of the light that manages to squeeze itself through heavy blanketing rainclouds, fat a soggy with endless drops of rain. Endlessly dreary and sad and cold and damp and, well… duh… I’m not enjoying it.

Hauled myself over to the Wintergarden in the Auckland Domain today and discovered the flowers are feeling pretty much the same as I am about the whole thing. Kinda wretched, kinda beautiful… we’ll all be happy when October gets here… but that’s sooooooooooooooo far away!

 

 

Playing in puddles

 

Remember when we used to run and jump in puddles instead of carefully walking around them… fortunately, the raindrops have never grown up and got so dull…

2 Angels

I can’t help wonder a bit if the arm that’s missing was the one that held the umbrella? And also… what would it be like to have your sole companion through the centuries to be a blind, deaf mute? Is there any point in complaining if no one knows?

After the Storm

The last day of our week-long stay on the South Island. We’d had perfect weather every day – but this morning awoke to heavy cloud cover and light rain. We decided not to take the Crown Road from Wanaka to Queenstown as it crosses the Crown Range and conditions can change very suddenly, leaving the steep, hair-pin turn heavy road slick with ice and slush. In this kind of weather, it was not advisable, so we headed down the long way, heading east and then south through towns and across vineyards and through the bottom of the ranges before heading back west to Queenstown. We were barely out of town when the rains began in earnest, bucketing down so visibility was bad and the road was scattered with slick patches.

We drove for nearly an hour in these conditions, under the relentless tension from being hyper alert and aware of everything around us. But as we headed into the southern section of the mountains, the sky lightened and within ten minutes, the storm cleared. And here was this enchanting vineyard framed in mists under a cerulean sky. We were running late to return the rental car, no time to stop. So I snapped this out of the car window as we whizzed past.

At all

Some ruins of a 14th century church out in the back end of the Scottish Highlands. The people moved or were moved away, this was left behind.

If there is no fight, no ongoing battle to keep her from claiming the things that escape, that we raise up over her – Mother Earth comes for them. She comes with quiet hands and carries it all off, back from whence it came. We move too fast to notice and then turn around, stunned at what has happened. That’s her way. She always wins, sometimes leaving seemingly careless traces of what has gone. We treasure them, lay our hopes in their eternal glow. She’s toying with us. They are not symbols of hope, but reminders of how much has gone, and so, how much more will go. All of it. Everything. As if it never were. At all.

Blue

Yes, it’s raining again here in wonderful New Zealand… Raining and raining and raining…

Blue.

Summer rain

It was mid afternoon, it should have been bright, but the clouds were so heavy and the rain so dense it seemed more like dusk. Yet the pongas (ferns) seemed to glow as if there was some celestial spotlight aimed at them.