Showing posts with label earthquakes. Show all posts
Showing posts with label earthquakes. Show all posts

Friday, 16 August 2013

A "menacing" Sam!

“Your situation is never permanent.  It’s what you make it.  
Life isn’t solid .... it’s fluid and it changes.” 
~ Anon.

Wow ... NZ’s sure been rocking and rolling today!  

A rather large 6.6 quake in the Cook Strait just after 2.30 this afternoon was even felt in good ole Aux.  I’m still coming to grips with what they feel like and sometimes the sound and the movement pass before I register what it is.  It’s raining and blowing gales here as well which doesn’t help when registering if the movement one feels is coming from the ground or caused by the wind.

My world rocked ... quite literally!

I’ve been feeling a little aggrieved with Mother Nature today.  The earthquakes compound that aggrievement. She’s been leading us up the garden path as far as the arrival of spring is concerned.  We’ve been blessed with the most glorious of sunshiny days over the past 2 weeks and then suddenly winter has been flung back at us with a vengeance!

It was icy in the wind.  Even more so when standing on the edge of the waves throwing rugby-balls for our mad-as-a-hatter hounds.

Even caffeine, that elixir-fixer of all evils, wasn’t able to take the chill out of the wind.  
It was miserably cold.

Mother Nature has even fooled the doves into believing spring is in the air.  They’re doing what most of our furry and feathered friends do in spring ... pro-creating.  Collecting materials to build nests in palm trees takes on hazardous dimensions when carried out in winds of this strength.

More than once Mr. Dove was tossed backwards through the air, twigs and all, as if in a tumble-drier.  He was nothing if not persistent though and, after settling his ruffled feathers, continued with his task. 
He is a tenacious wee beastie.

... and so is Bandit.

Bandit LOVES to herd the hounds .... and they’re just not having any of it.  Lots of vocalisation takes place as Bandit runs alongside one or the other trying to force them in the direction in which he THINKS they should be heading.  Most of the vocalisation comes from Bandit as our hounds struggle to bark when they’ve got rugby balls in their mouths.  
Growls emanate instead.

I think he’s given up with my hound but Sam’s still fair game. 

It makes for many humourous snaps of an aggressive looking Sam snarling back at a teasing Bandit.  Sam doesn’t have an aggressive bone in his body but he looks absolutely menacing in the photos.  
The power of the image.

The icy wind eventually got the better of even us hardy souls so we gathered up the hounds and the balls and headed home.

For once I was grateful to reach the sanctuary of my front door.





Thursday, 25 July 2013

Who pissed off Mother Nature?

Oh wow .... who pissed off Mother Nature?
The Sacred Kingfisher on the beach on Sunday last week
Geonet tells us there have been 1300 earthquakes in the Cook Strait since Friday.  That’s a whole HEAP of seismic activity and no clear indicator of why it’s happening. Scary kind of stuff ... particularly for those living in the regions most affected by these current quakes.
Sam has a new Chiefs rugby ball ... only it's never HIS when he get to the beach.  It becomes the HOUND's
Makes me kinda glad to be living up here in Aux.

We just have unexplained fog that lasts for hours on end and makes photography impossible.  Even the hound was perturbed.  She likes to SEE where she’s swimming and that just wasn’t happening on Monday. 
Shadow joined us on the beach on Friday.
Today, that’s Wednesday, has been a funny old day. 
 It feels like the world ... well, my part of it anyway ... is holding it’s breath
.... as if it’s waiting for something to happen.

And no, I don’t mean an earthquake.  We fortunately don’t get many of those in Aux and certainly NOT big ones.
.... and Sam got RATHER dirty!
Maybe it’s just the weather.  It’s indecisive, unsure of itself 
and that  pretty much describes how I’m feeling at the moment. 
 I don’t like grey cloudy dismal days.  
There’s a heaviness to them that’s oppressive.  
She has the NEW ball ....
If it’s going to rain, I’d rather it just rain.  Rain I can handle!
.... and Sam has the OLD one.

Kea, waiting for a treat

Too many things on my mind and too much to do is the cause of my indecisiveness. There just aren’t enough hours in my day and yet, here I am ‘penning’ a blog when my time could best be spent editing photos and selecting ones to be mounted. I have journals to make, page clips to cut, cards to print and markets to apply to. 
 It’s all doing my head in ... and then I saw this on FB.  
Yes, I was wasting precious minutes on FB. 
Niko's girlfriend, who was having a sleepover at Niko's house
Don’t take your thoughts too seriously ... they are just news flashes!” 
It made me smile.  
I am the Number One culprit of OVER-THINKING things.
Thank you Marlene Neumann.

Anything that makes you smile should NEVER be seen as a waste of time. 
Posts like that on FB make me smile and writing my blog makes me smile.

Sam found himself a shovel, to help dig all those trenches.

There are always SMILES aplenty when we’re on the beach in the morning, despite the earliness of the hour OR the greyness of the skies. Even the mist on Monday morning made me smile.  I could see NOTHING when I stood on the viewing platform looking towards Rangitoto, but I could HEAR the foghorns of vessels leaving the harbour.
She just found herself a log.
It’s an eerie sensation standing in the middle of nothingness ... alone, but for the hound
 ... with the melancholy wailing of a foghorn echoing out through the mist. 
 It’s an aloneness of a different kind.

In the midst of all the chaos that’s my life at the moment I chance upon the most pertinent of quotations. This one’s just SO relevant and once again, it’s from my favourite philosopher, Rumi.
2 of the 3 Kingfishers that were on the beach.
Don’t worry that your life is turning upside down
How do you know that the side you are used to is better than the one to come.”
Yep ... Rumi definitely rocks!

Sunday, 21 July 2013

We just have earthquakes ... and volcanoes.

Happiness is NOT the absence of problems, it’s the ability to deal with them.” 
~ Steve Maraboli
Early morning reflections on the way to the market in Orewa on Saturday
Wouldn’t you know it.  The middle lemming is away in Christchurch this weekend and the country has once again been rocked .... quite literally .... by earthquakes.  The earthquakes have mostly had their epi-centre in the Cook Straight this time so have been felt more strongly in the centre of the country, not in Christchurch. 

Her earlier text to me said not to worry as there was only a little shake in Christchurch.

I guess other countries have their heat waves and flooding and out-of-control fires .... we just have earthquakes .... and volcanoes.

Mostly dormant ones of course.
Yesterday saw us walking around the rim of one of Auckland’s oldest volcanoes. 
The Pumphouse was built in 1905 to provide fresh water to the North Shore.
It's now a centre for the performing and visual arts in the city.
Exploring unexplored areas after markets is becoming something of a pattern.  Whilst we’ve travelled a lot around North Island there are so many unexplored areas closer to home that we haven’t yet discovered.  Being out and about on a Saturday afternoon after a market tends to lend to satisfying this impulse.
The Pumphouse Theatre
Yesterday we explored Lake Pupuke.  To all intents and purposes Lake Pupuke looks like any other inland body of water but it’s actually a volcano, filled to the brim with fresh water.   
Yep, fresh water NOT sea water despite being just 200m from the sea.

The hound was really eager to swim but Lake Pupuke is an ‘on-leash’ area so she had to restrain herself.  I don’t think the geese or  swans would have taken too kindly to her swimming
 ... and neither would the ducks.  They had issues enough!

One young male mallard was being taken to task by a female.  I’ve never thought of ducks as being particularly aggressive but this young mallard was being given a hiding of note.  It was compelling to watch and ended with the male, quite literally, walking on water.  His little orange legs and feet were whirling like propellers as he sought sanctuary from his oppressor.

A fascinating few minutes.


It’s the little things that wake me up to how little I know about this world we live in.  There were some rather large rather plump white geese at Lake Pupuke too.  We come across grey geese from time to time but I’ve seldom got up close and personal with a white one.  
I hadn’t realised what amazingly beautiful eyes they have .... beautiful blue eyes to be precise!

Who would have thought that a goose would have such piercing blue eyes!

A little bit of research ... yep, courtesy of google .... found me a name for this type of goose.  It’s an Emden Goose and is one of the most popular of domestic geese because of it’s size and the speed with which it reaches maturity.

THIS goose is the very image of what most people think a goose should look like ... but how many people ever picture a goose having bright blue eyes!
More visuals of The Pumphouse Theatre