I cant believe its not better

Nope, it’s not a typo. Sumner is one of the costal “suburbs” of Christchurch and very nice it is too.

This little bunch of snaps were taken on the 22nd August, and that’s the last week of winter here, give or take a day or two. Spring officially makes it’s grand entrance on the 1st of September, but as you can see, it looks like it’s already arrived. Sumner is a lovely place to live and it’s about 45 minutes from Lincoln, just a little too far to commute these days, where twenty minutes is as much as I can be bothered with.

This little patch of wild bush was on the way up the hill from Scarborough beach, the spring flowers out in force.

I little further up the hill, facing the sun of course, the bloom is out in force.

A lilly. Lovely. Thing is, it was slightly past it’s best, suggesting that spring had been around for longer than we’d expected. Hardly surprising that we didn’t expect it just yet, it’s still bloody winter.

Ah, the Red Army marches against the grey backdrop of the new industrial cities of the new China … perhaps not.

A close up of a tree. Hard to describe it better than that, I simply liked the texture of it and it looks much better on A3. You can simulate that effect by getting really close to your screen …

Delicious succulents. I love the way they do that …

A close-up of the sex organs of a plant, or is it one of those asexual ones? Not sure I want a picture of “that kind of thing” if it’s asexual.

Is there a happier colour than yellow? Not in this picture there isn’t.

Along Scarborough beach, there’s a cafe called Scarborough Fare. How clever is that? I wonder how many times people have asked that question: “Are you going to Scarborough Fare?”.

Winter? ….

Winter, my arse!

Too many choices for this little batch of photographic nonsense, but “Parrots of the Caribbean” wins it over “Are you lookin’ at my bird?”, but only just. It’s stretching the point a bit, given that there’s a hint of snow in the background (it’s about two meters deep, as it happens), but why spoil the party with trifling details like the truth.

They are parrots, but obviously not from the Caribbean. They are the world’s only alpine parrot and they’re cheekier than a bag of monkeys. They’ve been known to let the air out of a car tyre, steal mobile phones, rip windscreen wipers from cars and they have destroyed the padding on the seats of a number of the chairlifts in a devastating trail of wonton destruction.

In short, they are the Scousers of the bird world, and that’s what makes them so lovable.

They are a decent size, too. We’ve seen a few of them now and they seem to exist on a diet of chips and pies (bloody hell, all they need is the tracksuits, you know what I mean?) and they can make a right mess of the car. Their numbers are in decline and that’s a real shame, because they are fascinating to watch (when it’s somebody else losing things from their rucksacks, that is).

Is it just me, or does he look like he’s crossing his legs, desperate for the loo, or what? Must be the cold or something.

This was the view back from Porter’s Ski Field in Canterbury, probably the closest of the ski fields to Christchurch, not much more than an hour and twenty from home and quite a nice ski field, but since we were there on a Sunday, it was too busy for our liking. The thing is, the lift queues were the problem, the slopes were empty. Big field, crap lifts.

As you can see, the slopes were nice and empty … still, it would be a great place to visit during the week when everybody’s at work.

One of the great things about where I work is the journey to and home again. Actually, it’s by far the best thing about the job, but let’s not get started, eh?

I drive North to work, South to return home. To the East, we have the Port Hills and in front of that there’s fields, farms, and not much else. To the West, there’s the Southern Alps and the Canterbury Plains. At certain times during the year, you can get snow, hail or frost on the Port Hills and they look even nicer. However. when the Alps are covered in snow, they are majestic … I have been meaning to stop and take a couple of pictures on the way to work, but never have my camera with me until last week.

Prompted by the frost pattern below, I thought it would make sense to chuck the camera in the car and take one or two shots. It was a wise move …

Frost like this only occurs when there’s plenty of moisture in the air then a rapid cooling – exactly what we’ve had plenty of, with the rains over the last couple of weeks reaching epic, nay Biblical proportions north of here.

Snow on the mountains, blue sky and somebody has let the sheep in with the turnips … the lighting could have been better, but it was early in the morning and the Port Hills to the east were still casting their shadow.

The day started so very well and didn’t improve much until about 4.30 …