Visitors

Friends teach us about what life is for, what things matter, and how precious time is. Rob and Shona visited from the UK. Rob was my Best Man when Laura and I got married. He teaches people how to make violins at the Violin making school in Newark On Trent in England, Shona works with Xrays at their local hospital.

Passive Smoke, Sharing Tragedy

Later on Sunday the weather changed, and a strong, hot wind blew to near gale force at times, first bringing with it the heat of dry Central Otago, then, by afternoon, the sky thickened, clouds lost their boundaries, touched, joined, and merged into a mantling orange lens. The sun lost its light. Not entirely, but enough to make some of our rooms have a Rembrandt like ambience at 4pm on a summer afternoon. We felt anxious, hot, weighed down by it all, and the temperatures climbed with that ever present gusting wind.

News of killing bush fires in Australia came over the radio through the day. More than 70 dead. A village destroyed. The smoke reaches to us, high in our bit of sky.

We think of our friends and family in Australia, and all those people who we don't know there.

Southern summer flowers and morning sunshine!

I have been reading some delightful potter's blogs recently and enjoying news of life in Devon and Scotland. It would seem that winter in the UK is rather cold and snowy at the moment, so I thought that I would post some sunshine and summer flowers on my site to compensate!

The view across farmland to the hill was taken from our front doorstep first thing this morning. I have cropped out the main road from the front of the picture (who needs them!).

I took some photos yesterday evening in our garden of flowers and some fruit. There are apples that will be ready in a few weeks, and a quince growing amongst the red berries of a viburnum.