Linking up with Our World Tuesday and My corner of the world.
At Totara North, last time I visited I drove past the local museum and stopped to admire these murals painted on various buildings.
Painted by artist Chris Wilkie who joined up with local Bruce Sanderson, they illustrate the area's history such as the Lane and Brown timber mill.
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Linking up with Skywatch Friday.
These are some of the roses that are blooming at my work at the moment. The scent is amazing and although I already have 3 in pots in my outdoor deck I keep seeing more that I want.
Linking up with Our World Tuesday and My Corner of the World.
We have our national elections due in October and this year for some reason it seems so lackluster. None of the parties are really sniping at each other....yet and it just seems so boring.
I do have a question about gardening though. Do any of you grow roses like I do? If so, what do you do to get rid of aphids? I've tried the old dishwashing water on the plant but if there is any other method please let me know.
Have a great weekend, kia kaha. Photo above from Devonport Wharf looking across to Auckland City. Linking up with Weekend Reflections.
But we are thankful that although I grew up here we don't live in the city anymore. We are well into Spring and I in amongst me working 4 days a week I have been out in the garden planting new plants and trying to propogate cuttings such as hebes, fuchsias, daisies and succulents.
There's something about the sun that just cheers you right up. Linking up with Skywatch Friday.
In 2016 MOTAT commissioned a number of murals to make the site more vibrant and appealing for their visitors. This mural named "A world without plastic" is part of a partnership with Pangeaseed's "Seawalls: murals for oceans" which was an international event that took place of that year.
Here in NZ, plastic bags of a certain width and weight with handles have been banned. So in supermarkets you can only use the thin plastic bags for vegetables, meat is obviously enclosed in plastic - if you go through the checkout they only supply paper bags or reusable bags that you have to buy or you can bring your own bags. But we still have a long way to go, companies need to get in on the act by not wrapping every single product in plastic.
Linking up with Mural Monday and Our World Tuesday.
Most of you out there know by now I have a thing for old historical churches and cemeteries - this one I had been meaning to explore for some time. The Rawene Methodist Church is on NZ's heritage list and was built by a William Cook in 1876 and is an example of a timber building made in gothic style.
Due to a failing congregation the church is now privately owned and the owners were granted $18,000 in 2019 to carry out work on it that respects the history as part of the National Preservation Incentive Fund. Apparently it will be transformed into an artists studio - I can't wait to see it when it's finished.
Linking up with Skywatch Friday.
Another one from Russell, this time it's the Fuller's Ferry that runs between here and Paihia Wharf. Unfortunately because of Covid since February there have been a decrease in people travelling especially since no one has been able to travel in or out of Auckland while it was in level 3. We watched as this one was going back and forth empty - a sad way of today's world at the moment.
Linking up with Our World Tuesday, Pictorial Tuesday, Tuesday Treasures and My Corner of the World.
I'm one of those people who likes to walk around other towns looking to take photos of things I see that others don't think much of. Last week in Rawene while B was spending a penny I spotted this mural on the front of a garage door in the main part of town. It's a NZ Tui bird with what looks like a monarch butterfly to the right - I've no idea who painted it, despite researching but I think it's a very pretty piece of Kiwiana.
Our Tui live throughout the country, they have different coloured feathers of blue green and bronze hues with a tuft of white featers under their necks. They are not a threatened species but love to eat fruits and nectar such as Puriri, Kowhai, Fuchsia, Rewarewa, Flax, Pohutukawa, Gums and Banksias.
It is such a treat seeing them as they are so different from other birds.
Linking up with Mural Monday.
I have been spending alot of time in the garden this week and less time online like I usually do. I planted some marguerite daisies that I bought from my work and also am propogating several cuttings off it as they are so easy to grow along with Fuchsia, Hebes and some succulents. I have also been following several tutorials on how to crochet, so far I've just started learning how to make a throw/blanet after buying half a dozen balls of wool. I discovered our town has a local wool/craft shop which I visited yesterday with my daughter - that has been very dangerous as they have so many things that appealed to us, so far I've bought 2 different sized crochet needles off them.
As for Corona news here I think people are getting more and more over it. Auckland has had one more death and is now in level 2.5 with level 1 being the lowest. I think it's going to be quite some time before life goes back to normal. The instructions from HQ has been wear a mask as much as you can but it's easy to see most people are taking it as not serious and with this weekend bringing more fine weather there will be less social distancing and more people thinking they can do what they want.
Linking up with Weekend Reflections.
Yesterday we drove past Rawene to visit Northland's boulders. Koutu Boulders are located in the Hokianga region and are only accessible on low tide. Along with the obligatory "no camping" sign the road to the beach looked very dodgy with potholes so we parked further back and walked.
This part of the beach was an estuary with many mangroves and mudflats, you can see how far the water comes up from the puddles leftover.
From the beginning of the beach were smaller boulders leading to bigger ones. Some of them looked like they had been cut in perfect shapes and formations, some of them looked to be sedimentary rocks and others looked volcanic.
B is standing next to one of them so you could see the rough average size of the boulders, the Hokianga harbour is in the background.
Further along the beach was this old abandoned caravan that looked like it was falling apart. This area has a few holiday houses scattered here and there, I imagine it would still be very quiet over Summer.
An island in the distance that you would be able to get to if you had a boat, we were wondering if it was used many years ago by Maori possibly to bury their dead (we've heard that some tiny islands like this are sacred places).
We are wondering if at some point there was a volcano in this area which spit up these big boulders, quite interesting thinking about what this land use to look like before people came.
Linking up with Our World Tuesday, Pictorial Tuesday, Tuesday Treasures and My Corner of the World.
On our recent re-visit to the Symonds Street Cemetery right next to the Jewish section is this mural painted on the side of an old building....
