A day at the beach.

This is Army Bay Beach at nearly high tide. It's before 11 a.m. but overcast and misty, as you see. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=op3Ev7WA1FA

www.youtube.com/watch?v=unk_nMIoZ9w


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QMsBtI7LTok

My beach has been reduced today; reduced by the lowered sky, reduced by the high tide. 

Reduced until it is now just a narrow strip of rock and sand between cliff and sea. If it weren't for the relative  stillness of the sea, I'd fear for my safety. Quiet though it may be, the sea is steadily creeping closer still. 

Trying to see into the distance yields little and even what there is has lost some of its reality, so my eyes turn downward and keep watch on the advancing wavelets. They are almost polite about their advance but relentless. 

I began to notice the gifts they bring with them. Little piles of baubles and trinkets of the organic and inorganic. 

I save a few especially pretty ones in my camera to show you.

At some point, when the waves have finally reached the cliff, the sea will have covered all of them again. It will shuffle them, discard what it chooses and rearrange what it likes on a later beach. 

Who knows what I'll find then?                                

-djf

In search of the 'Whitest Honey in the World.'

Some of you will remember emails that I sent out not long after first arriving here in New Zealand. I had discovered the mono-floral honeys that are produced here and was excited. Mono-floral honeys of course are those that are produced by the bees from only one source of nectar. One specific flower. (in most cases)*

I won't go in to a listing here of all the wonderful honeys we're tried. Today's post instead is about the trip I took up to the Waitemata Honey store.  I traveled for just about two hours. First, on the train to Auckland and then on two buses. The first was the Northern Express (NEX) to one of the main terminals on the northshore and then a local bus to near the store. The local dropped me just 200 yards from it. And all for free, now that I'm a geezer. There and back. What a deal. 

Just a word about this honey. I want to try to give you a feeling for just how unique I think it is. The Waitemata Company is the only company who can produce it. The pohutukawa tree that provides the nectar is called New Zealand's Christmas Tree because it has bright red flowers and shiny green leaves and because it flowers just before and during the Christmas season.

The largest single pohutukawa forest in the world is the one on Rangitoto Island. Rangitoto is a volcanic island about 4 miles off shore from Auckland. It was formed during an undersea eruption only about 600 years ago. The pohutukawa tree happens to be one of the very few trees in the world that can live on bare rock. It needs no soil. Little wonder then that the brand new island of Rangitoto was in time covered in pohutukawas. 

Waitemata Honey Company Ltd. has the exclusive right to transport it's bees out to the island every year and produces only a given amount of honey during the short pohutukawa flowering season. It is called the 'whitest honey in the world' and it is in fact very light colored. It is also my very favorite honey.*

The following pictures show you views from my double-decker NEX bus seat as I headed north out of Auckland and across the Harbour Bridge. 

The only downside to my excursion is that I discovered that the honey has almost doubled in price since I was last at the store three years ago.  Oh well, it's still worth it.  I don't really fault them for charging whatever they can get for it. A very limited quantity, of the whitest honey, from a single type of flower, that grows on a volcanic island, in the south Pacific. Pretty cool. I think of it as creamy white gold. 

(I'm sure that lots of honey that is produced elsewhere in NZ has some small percentage of pohutukawa nectar in it. Afterall, the trees grow all over the place here. BUT, Rangitoto is the only place where pohutukawas comprise the dominant species. Further, this honey is made and collected from the bees only during and immediately after the flowering season of the Rangitoto pohutukawas. The honey is tested and can be shown to be pure pohutukawa.) 

 The top of the double-decker bus with the stairwell in the foreground. 

 Heading up Quay Street. 

 Maybe some day I'll do a post on the Auckland Fish Market. 

 The Harbour Bridge in the distance

Very overcast this morning. 

 The north shore

 Here I am at Te Kea Place. Honey store dead ahead. 

It's just a little place but does good business. Their honey processing area and warehouse are next door. 

 The first time I walked into their showroom, I was a little taken aback. It is so small and unassuming. Their pohutukawa honey is not sold in any stores. You have to either come here to buy it or order it on-line. 

And here is the shelf that offers this most amazing honey. It shouldn't, it seems to me, have to share a counter top with some common multifloral honey. It ought to be displayed on a higher pedestal of some sort. Something with spotlights shining down on it. Arrows pointing, "This is it! One of the rarest honeys in the world!"  

As I approached Auckland on the return leg of my journey, I saw an enormous cruise ship tied up at Queen's Wharf. It turned out to be the Golden Princess, London.  It's 951 feet long and 118 feet wide with 17 decks. It can cruise at 25.9 mph. That's the biggest cruise ship I've seen here I think. It carries 2,600 passengers and 1,100 crew.  My jaw dropped. Take a look...and yes, the sky was clearing up and turned out to be quite a nice afternoon. 

 I think the Golden Princess must be mostly empty right now. The sidewalks were crammed with tourists. 

* You may have noticed that I used the asterick twice in the first six paragraphs. I'll explain.

In most cases means that there is one type of honey produced here that is not made from nectar. Instead, the bees collect  what's called 'honeydew' from a certain type of aphid. (scale insect) This aphid feeds on the sap of beech trees that grow on the South Island and secretes a sugary, thick liquid as a waste product. The bees collect this from the aphids and make their very dark colored, strong tasting honey from it. How bizarre.  

It is also my very favorite honey, (referring to pohutukawa), means that I like it best for taste. Because of the weird and wonderful way Honeydew honey is made, it has to rank as my overall favorite NZ honey. The third unique honey I've come across is thyme honey. (Thyme is Amiri's favorite honey for taste.) 

The chart below summarizes my opinions about three NZ honeys. 

For taste                                               For Overall uniqueness

Waitemata Pohutukawa                          Honeydew 

Thyme                                                   Waitemata Pohutukawa

Honeydew                                             Thyme

Pictures at an exhibition

With today's post, I thought that I'd show you some of the art work that graces the outdoor corridors of Summerland School. To accompany the art, it's only fitting that you listen to a bit of this, Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition  www.youtube.com/watch?v=8VeiELD3RIA&t=1s

Before we get to the art I should reintroduce you to the school with a picture of its new sign. And, since the sign, when I snapped the picture, was announcing the EOTC that's going on, I'll have to include yet another picture to explain what that stands for. 

EOTC means Education Outside the Classroom. Amiri is in year 6 (5th grade in the U.S.) so he's been taking part in all the activities.

The most challenging event was probably the climbing wall.

Look at the height of that tower! It even overhangs a bit at the top. Amiri made it 3/4 of the way before losing his grip. The winds that day were about 30 mph. 

Good on you, Amiri. 

But, let's take a look at some of the art around Summerland. All student produced of course. 

In this shot, we are looking at a corner of the 'court' where Arram plays soccer most days after school with whoever else is around. Amiri prefers to spend his time after school on the rings, overhead bars and flying fox of the playground.

Jeanne and Dianne are standing at the end of this covered walkway watching Arram.

Here are a few more pictures. These are on one area of wall surrounding the turf, seen below.

Finally, here are a few planters and a sculpture that lists Summerland's Values. 

That's it for today....           -djf

We get a call to conserve water; okay, but because there's too much of it?

A couple of days ago it began to rain, and hard. Amiri noticed and jumped to his feet from the couch, raced into the kitchen, selected two clear, straight-sided water glasses and disappeared out on to the deck. He was planning to measure the rainfall we got. (two glasses allowed him to duplicate his measurement at slightly different spots for accuracy's sake, and also to collect twice as much rainwater.) Because of his schedule and other interests, he was not able to monitor his experiment quite as efficiently as the National Weather Service did, but he did collect somewhere in excess of 5 inches of rain between then and this morning. 

According to the weather service we have received 7.55 inches of rain since last Wednesday with 3.35 of that happening just last night.

Today, Saturday morning, Jeanne and I walked down to the Opanuku Stream to see how high it was and were impressed. Not only is it higher than we've seen before, it is browner than we've seen if before. We had umbrellas with us but we stayed dry during our 1 hour hike. 

Here is the Opanuku on a sunny day some time ago, in the course of a normally dry summer. You can see through the water to the algae, etc. The stream here measures about 2 meters wide at most .

This picture was taken from about the same spot on the bridge. Less zoom. The water now stretches 12 meters from bank to bank. 

A pretty good sized branch comes down. 

The dusk to dawn lights are still on at 11:15 a.m.

We have been getting daily requests in the newspapers and the on-line news to conserve water. At first, that seemed crazy since we clearly have too much of the stuff right now. But then they explained. 

You saw the condition of the water in the Opanuku. Well, that sort of sediment-laden water has been flooding into the reservoirs and putting extra stress on the water-treatment plants that produce about 450 million liters of water a day for Auckland. They want the usage to drop to 400 million liters because of the extra work they must put into cleaning up the water to normal standards. If we don't decrease usage, and demand overrides the systems capabilities, they'll have to do the best they can but issue a boil alert. What a hassle that would be. The next thing we'd have would be brown-outs as 1.4 million people put pots of water on the stove. 

The rain, fortunately, seems to be slowing down. We had only two downpours today totalling about half an hour. Tomorrow is supposed to ease up a little more and by Tuesday, we might see some sun again. 

I read that several hundred homes have had some flooding.. New Lynn had a sink hole open up. Our area is so hilly and well-drained that we have had no issues whatsoever with flooding.  -djf

Update: I'm actually posting this several days after these photos were taken. The sun has returned. I read that usage has been reduced to about 409 million liters per day, but the treatment problem persists and so do the calls to conserve. We're doing our part.

"Few of them were to be trusted within reach of a trowel and a pile of bricks." P. G. Wodehouse

This post continues, as I promised, the subject of the bricks of New Lynn.

Today's quote comes from a writer who has given me many hours of pleasurable reading. More about him, and how he fits into my posts about bricks, at the end. 

 I'm sorry that the writing on this plaque doesn't show. It says that this is the actual gatepost of a brick works that sported a 45 meter chimney. 



I've been talking mainly about bricks in these posts, but mentioned that pipes were also made when I showed a picture of the memorial in the previous post. Obviously though, if you have clay available in an area, fine pottery must also develop as a product. This Crown Lynn museum is right next to the Ambrico Kiln and shows many examples of what was produced. 

It is difficult to find examples of Crown Lynn pottery, but Allie owns a teacup...   A new goal of mine is to keep my eyes open for any new pieces to add to her collection. 

 Some of the styles on display at the museum.

...And other products as well. 

 Ambrico place is very different today than it must have been generations ago, during the heyday of the brick-making industries. Then, coal-fired kilns ruled the landscape and coal-dust, brick-dust, dirty men, horses, waggons and road apples must have filled the landscape. 

Today, Ambrico Place is filled with Art Deco style apartment buildings, cars and clean streets. See for yourselves.

In the center of Ambrico Place is Ambrico Reserve. (Park) 

 The playground here stands next to this brick labyrinth. (the grass needs mowing.)

Across a road from the area of apartments and park I've just shown you, St. Andrews Sunday School Hall stands abandoned.  It is the only structure in an area of about 50 or 60 acres. I learned just recently from the curator of the pottery museum that this undeveloped site is the clay pit that has been feeding the brick works of the area all this time. I don't know St. Andrews fate, but it doesn't appear that restoration is being considered.  

 'Jan. 19, 1929'

'Land donated by NZ Brick and Tile Co.' 

You know, I am lucky that I can remember many moments in my life when I experienced a "first." I remember my first anchovy pizza. (good story, that) I remember my first shot of scotch. And I remember the day I was in the Escanaba Public Library and browsing, saw a book entitled, No Nudes is Good Nudes. It was written by P. G. Wodehouse. What a great first-read from that author. His name has been significant to me ever since.

So, what does he have to do with bricks?  

Well, when I did my first post about New Lynn, I said that I could think of four songs off the top of my head that had something to do with bricks. What I didn't say then, was that I could also think of an author who talked a lot about bricks, or portions thereof, in many of his works. P. G. Wodehouse was that English author.  

What better way (in my opinion) to conclude this post, than to acquaint you with someone who clearly considered the brick to be indispensable as a tool for social and interpersonal comment.   

Here are a few quotes from his books...  (font changes reflect the source from which I copied)

In Summer Moonshine; "Whatever may be said in favour of the Victorians, it is pretty generally admitted that few of them were to be trusted within reach of a trowel and a pile of bricks."^[11]

(He was apparently commenting derisively here on Victorian Architecture)

In PSmith, Journalist;

 "We want a man of thews and sinews, a man who would rather be hit on the head with a half-brick than not."

In The Small Bachelor;

If you threw a brick from any of its windows, you would be certain to brain some rising young . . . Vorticist sculptor or a writer of revolutionary vers libre. 's And a very good thing too. (7)

In The Heart of a Goof;

"I would like to bean her with a brick, and bean her good. .."

In Very Good Jeeves;

"...which was that of a cat which has just been struck by a half-brick and is expecting another shortly..."

In Brinkley Manor;
" But honestly, old thing, you could fling bricks by the half-hour in England's most densely populated districts without hitting one girl willing to become Mrs. Fink-Nottle without a general anesthetic."

And one of his favorite insults;
"A dumb brick of the first water."

I know that there are many, many more action scenes in his books involving bricks. He's written more than 90 books after all. Plus short stories and plays. (I'm not aware that any of the characters in his plays ever found themselves, fortunately, at either end of a brick.)

My suggestion is that you find a P. G. Wodehouse book and give it a try. I'm the only one I know who finds his writing palatable. But I think I'm in good company nonetheless. I notice that the section of Wodehouse in the local library is practically always empty. And he has been described, "as arguably the greatest writer of comic prose, ever."  That's high praise. In fact, in my opinion the adverb used above should have been unarguably. 

And the guy knows his bricks. That much is obvious. I don't think he ever set foot in New Lynn during it's best brick-making days, but if he had I'm sure he would have bent over and filled his pockets with a few good chunks, just in case he came across a Vorticist sculptor, a revolutionary, a girl who deserved it*, or a cat*.

I hope the library in New Lynn is full of his stuff. I'll think I'll have a look, take out a book and sit on the 'brick' bench (from the last post) to read it. Fitting, don't you think?      -djf


* I find it interesting that Wodehouse wrote many of his stories, some of which include flinging bricks around, during a time when, in America, the Krazy Kat newspaper cartoon was running. In it, a mouse named Ignatz, who Krazy secretly loves, constantly hurls bricks at Krazy's head. Krazy, true to his name, misinterprets these actions as proof of Ignatz's love. Wodehouse greatly admired America and actually lived there for quite a bit of his later life. I wonder if this cartoon strip might have been his inspiration for adopting the brick as a 'literary device'? A possibility I think, especially since his character who wants to bean the girl with the brick actually loves her and I'm sure was speaking figuratively.