Selected Stuff

I'm not sure how to tie all these things together in a snappy title--some of you will be happy that my puns seem to have failed me! Anyway, here are a few things of interest we've done in the past few days... Frank had read about a vintage auto barn within an hour's drive, so we ventured north to find it. By the way, Frank says he will, at some point, write a posting of HIS New Zealand--the wings and wheels (planes, bikes, and cars)--stay tuned!!

First stop, for morning coffee, a cafe overlooking Papamoa Beach. This pretty area seems very affluent, with big fancy beach houses unusual for NZ, and we were jokingly calling it Palm Beach--imagine our amusement when suddenly a team of guys carrying potted palm trees marched by! No idea why or where they were headed, but had to snap a pic, it was so timely...


Anyway, off we went to the vintage auto barn--here's Frank going in (looks like a man with a mission, eh?)--but I declined that thrill, and went next door to Kiwi 360, a tourist attraction celebrating the success of the Kiwi fruit, originally known as the Chinese gooseberry. Down here they now have a golden kiwi, much sweeter and with no bitter pith in the middle--smoother skin, too--hope it reaches Canada soon. I decided against a guided tour in the kiwi-shaped mini-bus cars, but explored the orchards on my own.



Today we headed off to Hamilton to orient ourselves before this week's meetings, but were distracted by a huge market happening in Cambridge as we went through. Ya gotta love these guys, the local country band, who provided background ambience to the market. Those are dolls, not midgets along the front of the stage, by the way. Lotsa local flavour. The kids really seemed to love this wonky tractor ride--the wheels under the kids' seats were deliberately off-centre, giving them quite a bumpy ride! Frank and I found lots of terrific secondhand books and loaded up for this month's reading pleasure--I snagged bundles of 10 back copies of NZ Gardener for $2 each!


Back at Chiddingfold, I enjoyed an evening stroll around Sally's beautiful garden. I was photographing the unusual bark pattern on a mammoth copper beech when I realized that what I was photographing was cicada exoskeletons left behind on the tree as the insects molted!! EEK! Cool, though, eh? The sheep in the side paddock gave me the eye as I finished my walk--there really are more sheep (about 40 million) than people (under 4 million) in New Zealand!