Passport!

Six butterflies have been successfully hatched and released into the garden.



Yay! My new NZ passport arrived today.

It's all coming together...

Sorry Tiff! I know you don't like butterflies, but I'm very happy the first of them has hatched. A few more look like they are almost ready too, must be the warmer weather speeding along their development. No more cute fat caterpillars. Brilliant news for me - consultation with the max-fax surgeon next Wednesday and a surgery slot saved for me the next day. Plus my HPC (British Physio registration) has been approved, I just need to pay the fee.

Taffy Den sent me a surprise book called 'The Welsh Girl' and a handwritten letter. I love letters, they are pretty rare these days. Thank you, Denise! Now I will just wait patiently for my new passport.

Lyttelton Summer Street Party

Yay for the Lyttelton Summer Street Party! It was a gorgeously warm day to drive through to the tunnel to the harbour. Mel and I 'moseyed' around the mainstreet and the local Lyttelton Coffee Company cafe, which was absolutley brilliant. It was like being on holiday for the all of 3 hours we were there.


This guy at Lyttelton Coffee Company was multitasking - roasting beans and DJing some groovy 70s music at the same time. Talented! The coffee drum (?) is swishing around behind him, sending out some delicious aromas.



Lyttelton Coffee Company. I like all the artwork, incl some of the local artists. There are lots of antique chairs and touches, like sugar in fondue pots and water kept in the old glass milk bottles in wire milk carriers. Wish I'd kept a few now. Mel spotted a toddler wandering around munching on the end of a whole telegraph cucumber like it was candy. We'd never seen anything like it before!


Harbourside walk. Mel was telling me how in her childhood, her dad used to sometimes translate for some Russian sea captains and once she went on board one of these ships and ate up a lot of a friendy seaman's fancy chocolates.





The Lyttelton. From the sign beside it, it does go on harbour cruises.


This is the Seafarer's Centre, which was holding it's own mini garage sale. I liked the various flags hung up on the inside. They had eclectic things like black velvet Kiwiana posters and garden gnomes. There is also a stand full of booklets called 'Message to Seafarers' which is in many different languages including Norwegian and Russian, about what to do if you are abandoned at a port many miles from home.

Here's a Lyttelton icon, the Volcano Cafe.

Butterfly Babies Again

Someone might recognise the pot... it's vintage, an ex-'money tree' (it grew gold coins) from my 16th birthday and signed by some very good friends. We have a total of 12 chrysalises and two fat caterpillars (all called Charlie) making their way through the swan plants. There were so many caterpillars on the original swan plant at one stage, we decided to feed them pumpkin as a substitute as suggested by www.monarch.org.nz in an effort to save the plant.

One of the chrysalises stars in Mum's ESOL lessons - clear, transparent, opaque... etc.

Hopefully I'm off to the Lyttelton Festival tomorrow, I'll take my camera with me. I do love going through the tunnel and seeing the harbour on the other side!

Dunedin

The Octagon


Bagpipe crew


First Church


Temple Gallery


The Modern Miss - buttons for Yi Lin!


Dunedin greeted us in a mist of rain and fog, coming over the hill. Here are a few pictures for any Otago alumni, including you Tiff! Something to remind you of some happy days - bagpipers, First Church and the Octagon. It was a bit of a whirlwind visit so there weren't too many photo opportunities, but lots of fun anyway. Yi got settled into her new flat (Dunedin flats are not something I particularly miss from my student days!). She's back on her course on Monday.

Art Attack

I haven't actually done anything arty for a while, but I'm trying to get some practice with the close-up on this camera... so here are some bits and pieces of things I've done in the past.

Looking forward to getting some new Teesha Moore rubber stamps in the mail - they will be fabulous for preparing my travel journal!

Bad news from the dentist... my two lower jaw wisdom teeth need to come out before I head overseas )-: I will have to eat custard for a few days.

The whole family is off to Dunedin in the weekend to send Yi back to her studies. I can't wait to explore old haunts (look around the Octagon and the Uni). I haven't been back there since graduation in 2004. Also looking forward to catching up with Annette.

Lazy Saturday

Here's a lazy Saturday afternoon in Christchurch....
I went out to town by bus to wander through the city, and caught up with the family at Strawberry Fare for Ruey's birthday dessert.

A wee bit muggy, but the flowers in Victoria Square were gorgeous~!
I'm off to the Town Hall for my citizenship ceremony on Monday. Very excited, hopefully in a few months I will finally be off on some travels.