Blockhouse Bay

It was 9 a.m. The temperature was about 45 degrees and the sky was gray and threatening rain. It was time for me to jump on a train and bus and go somewhere. I decided on Blockhouse Bay. (I saw it listed as one of the stops that bus 68 makes after leaving New Lynn and I liked the name.) 

The name blockhouse refers to a military building that's built to withstand (block) musket balls.  

The sails one sees all over the Blockhouse Bay area are a tribute to the area's maritime history. 

That's a big planter along the street.

This house was built in 1890 and stayed in the Armanasco family until 1987. It was then almost demolished. At the last moment, it was purchased, refurbished and now continues under the care of the Historical Society. 

The Gittos family arrived in New Zealand around 1850 and generations of them expanded and prospered. 

This sign shows the trail system that winds throughout the area named for them. It is deceptive. All those little white lines look so innocent that ageing, slightly overweight gentlemen can easily be lured in to strolling into it's green passageways.  However, if the steep stair sections that hide in, and dominate this domain were shown in red, then the map would show very little white.   

At this point in my walk, I was still blissfully unaware of what I was getting into.

I have just walked down at least 50 steps. I turned around to take this picture and discovered that I can show you only the last batch of steps. The rest of the 'flight' disappears around the corner and goes up and up and out of sight. 

The path flattens out for a short ways and crossed a short bridge. 

Just beyond the bridge I started descended more stairs....
Hmmm.. paraphrasing...What goes down has got to come up? 

Oh no. I thought so.  Look at what is at the end of this new bridge I'm crossing. This stretch of steps led me to another, steeper set that led in turn to an equally steep path. I was seeing stars and my ears were ringing. It's a good thing there were no bugs in the air around me because I could not have avoided inhaling clouds of them as I labored to pay off my oxygen debt. 

I had stumbled along only a small portion of the domain and decided that it appeared to consist of mostly stairs. If the rest of the paths were similar to what I had just endured, I wanted no part of it.  I was fortunately able to exit it from the side and found myself on a street just above the Bay, Blockhouse that is.  

A sign said that at low tide, one could walk around the point seen in the distance and find the start of another trail farther on. Well, it wasn't low tide now, so I wasn't going to follow it. The black thing at the top of the picture is my umbrella. It is raining gently. 

This is the view to the right of the little wharf I was standing on in the last picture. 

I am now walking back up the street away from the bay and am looking at someone's front steps. They too go up and up and disappear around a corner.  You've got to be hearty to live around here. 

(Hmmm. the old questions of nature vs. nurture...Do you have to Be hearty to live here, or are you Made hearty by living here?) 

Well, I made it. I am once again up to the level of the town  and am passing this long planting of lavender. 

'I shall commence to walk hence, past this immense fence of intense incense.' 

(I don't think my blood O2  levels are still back up to normal. I'm probably delirious)

I like that tree against the blue background and the painting.

I had done this trip today as a test. I wondered if Blockhouse Bay and Gittos Domain might be a good place to bring Jeanne when her knee gets a little better. The answer is no. That domain is an obstacle course. We 'mature' explorers need to search out mundane sorts of trails to follow, not the exciting ones.  

Actually, I should have expected this from a 'domain.' The word comes to us from Latin. 

Dominus, master. In French, domaine, power. In middle English, demeine, rule. Yipes, no wonder it was a tough hike.  

I need to take Jeanne to places that are a bit more friendly to the older set. Maybe like the Tui Glen Reserve.  From the Latin reservare, preserve, protect. Yeah, that's what J and I need. Some preserving. I need to do some more research.  

I'll get right on it.                                                                                -djf

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Here is this post's limerick. This was written sometime after Fred spotted a deer with only one ear not far from Four Corners. We had been driving around looking at deer the day before Michigan's Firearms Deer Season opener on Nov. 15th.  

That deer with odd ears is from Nizes,
Where they grow deer with ears of two sizes,
At Nizes' yearly Ear Fest, 
Those deer's ears judged the best,
Win the top Nizes' Odd Deer Ear Prizes.  

If you recite it aloud and maintain the rhythm limericks are supposed to have, it also counts as a tongue twister. 

Red Herring

I first read this book when I checked it out from our Henderson library about a year ago. I found it again the other day, but this time, instead of being in the racks, it was on the library's 'withdrawn cart.' It was for sale for just a dollar.  I now hold it for your inspection as it's proud new owner. 

This book tells the story of a private investigator who is trying to track down a man in Auckland. The dock workers' strike is about to happen there and the whole city is riled up.  

I liked this book not only because it was a good read, but because all the action took place in Auckland. Many of the places and buildings that figured in the story are still part of the city today. Yeah, I know it's fiction, but still, I love that.  

Today's post is giong to show you some of the places the gumshoe went in the story.  

Johnny Molloy is his name. The year is 1951 and he's on the trail of a guy who pulled off an insurance scam in San Francisco and high-tailed it to Auckland. Now he's workin' the docks here but shhh, Johnny don't know that, not yet anyway... 

Johnny's rate is a pound a day, minimum five days, plus expenses and he's worth every penny. (And he earns it.) 

The story starts with him lounging across Queen Street under that verandah. I can almost see him over there (if I squint a little) on the corner of Vulcan Lane.  Let's go follow him as he searches the city he knows so well...  

 Johnny meets with the insurance rep who hires him. He's a Yank.

This is the Seafarers' Center. Looks like it's been modernized since Johnny's day.

The entrance

He stops down at the wharf to meet a friend who's a watchman at the gate. Nothin' much happening right now on Queens Wharf.

Next stop is back on Vulcan Lane...

The Occidental Hotel

...and its public tap-room.  Johnny bought a jug here and met with his pal O'Driscoll.

The famous Northern Club

The distinguished front entrance to the club. 

A black 1938 Chrysler Plymouth stopped in front of this door and a guy with a face like a Belfast bricklayer got out. 

The Bank of New South Wales

The Grafton Bridge 

The Symonds Street Cemetary

A boarding house that Johnny had staked out one evening, watching for a guy to show up.  (He saw a woman in a parked car that might have been watching the house too.)  

Another view toward the back of the house. The guy never did show up.  

Maloney's Barber Shop looks like it has been renovated since 1951. 

The Premire Building, (?) corner of Wyndham and Queen. Johnny's office was on the 4th floor. (Don't know which window)   

Johnny replaced his suit that got torn up in a scuffle at this store. 

Johnny got his man of course and all ended well. He was tired out though. It was a hard job. His last stop in the book was at the Municipal Baths were he took a long, hot shower.  Then he had a bite to eat and went home. 

In his Acknowledgements, at the end of the book, the author, Jonothon Cullinane, states that his novel is "pure bunkum from end to end." He says that he played quite a bit with history and changed things around to suit his story. (However, the Waterfront Dispute of 1951 actually happened)  And, it was published in 2016, so he also looked around the modern city for his locations as he wrote it. Are they completely accurate historically? I don't know. I'm sure he did a pile of research, but the term 'poetic license' was invented for a reason. I think that his locations are probably mostly accurate.  

Regardless of how perfectly it matches hisorically, I enjoyed the book and I enjoyed traveling around Auckland to find the photos I took.                                 -djf

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As I said in my last post, I enjoy limericks. I thought I might add one to the end of a few posts. Here is another one of mine.

Four more lines are all that I need,
For my limerick to finally succeed.
Just two more to go,
And what do you know, 
I'm a poet! I'm sure you've agreed. 

The bodacious, rosaceous, loquacious loquat.

I haven't read a Reader's Digest in a very long time, but I think it was in that magazine that I remember seeing the feature called, It Pays to Increase Your Word Power. 

I inform you of that fact because I know that the title of this post is a bit extreme. It was that magazine that really caused me to get carried away. 

My title for today's post was first written as, The Loquat. Simple and unadorned. It's really quite a modest little fruit after all.  Then, I must have suffered a flashback to my Reader's Digest days, and thought that loquacious would be the perfect 'adjective', a word naming an attribute of a noun, for loquat.  It even kind of looks like it, right? The fact that 'loquacious' means one who is excessively talkative stopped me for a moment, but then I considered. Look at how excessively fruited that tree is. People are loquacious when they talk too much and that loquat tree, not given to talking at all of course, in my opinion can be considered loquacious when it demonstrates unrestrained fruiting. You have to admit it.  Look down there at the first two pictures. That tree just kept going on, and on, and on, once it started fruiting. You couldn't turn the darn thing off.  

A fine looking tree.

I'd call that 'prolific,' producing much fruit or foliage, wouldn't you?  

Then 'bodaceous', meaning excellent, admirable, attractive, came to mind for the title because it rhymes and does describe the tree, and 'rosaceous' popped up because the locquat is scientifically classed as a member of the family Rosaceae. I couldn't possibly not use such an obvious choice. And it rhymes besides! How often does such a good word come along? 

So, now you understand why an over-the-top title for a really simple topic assaulted you when you clicked on this blog today. That's just the way it happened, and you'll just have to try to put it behind you as I tell you about how I 'discovered' this 'new' fruit.  

For the past seven years, I've been walking past a tree in a yard along Sturges Road. Early on I noticed that it would bear lots of little yellow fruit in early spring. Someone, when I asked them about this tree, said they thought it was poisonous.  That put me off of course, but I couldn't help wish, since the tree produced such an abundant crop, that the fruit was in fact, edible.  

Turns out that it is. I finally picked one of the fruits a few days ago, did a bunch of research on line and discovered that it was almost certainly, a loquat. 

This morning, Oct. 18, 2019, I stopped at the tree's house and asked the guy who answered the door if the tree in his yard was a loquat. He verified that it was. I then asked him, pulling out a $10 bill to prove my worth, if he would allow me to pick some of them. He said, "Come with me."

He showed me how to judge the ripeness of the fruit and pointed out that only a few had begun to show ripeness. We each sampled a few and although I thought even those that were not fully ripe tasted pretty good, he insisted that only ripe ones were acceptable for picking. He told me to come back in a few days and come up to the house. "We'll see how they look," he said.  

Well, he's the boss. He seems to want to control the picking of his tree, which certainly makes sense. The thing is, I've never noticed that he ever harvested his tree in the past. That was one reason why I thought that it may very well be poisonous. I watched the birds gobbling most of the fruit, but that's no indication that humans can do the same.  

I read that loquats are not likely to be found in any store. They 'oxidize,' combine chemically with oxygen, so they turn brown and look less appealing almost as quickly as they're cut. 

The skins are tough, the seeds are large and it has some internal 'membranes' a thin layer of tissue acting as a partition as well, so there's not a lot to eat in each of them. A little bit of pulp. The juice though is plentiful, mildly tart and pleasant. The encyclopedia says it tastes like mangoes. Maybe, a little.   

(I cut the one on the right first and the one of the left immediately afterwards. I then picked up my camera. You can see the brown already well started on the both sections of the one on the right and a hint of brown on the bottom section of the one on the left. That's really fast oxidizing) 


I stopped by his house twice during the next week and was disappointed. He wasn't home. Third time lucky they say though, and it proved to be accurate in my case as well. I stopped by at about 10 a.m. yesterday morning (10/24/19) and he looked like he had just rolled out of bed when he answered the door. He didn't want to come outside this time. He just pointed me toward the tree and said, "help yourself."  He also asked me if I'd like a seedling. I sure would. Today, 10/25, I picked it up after shopping. What a great guy.  

 This is the fruit I picked. The skins look pretty beat up, but that didn't appear to affect the fruit inside. I think it's that oxidation thing going on, even on the skin.  

And it's not too surprising that the juice is brown. 

The juice I made reminds me a little of pear nectar, both in texture and flavor.  I had picked some dead ripe ones and mixed in some less ripe as well so that I'd have a range of tartness.  The juice does not remind me at all of mangoes. I saw various videos on Youtube that suggested adding lemon juice, water, sugar and salt to the loquat juice. I added nothing at all and think it is very drinkable just as it is.  

Loquat seedling. 

Eaten fresh, these are not the most delicious things ever.  And they take some work to make the juice. The seeds, which have toxins in them, must be taken out before processing and that is time consuming. I think that it would be nice to keep the tree I grow on the small side. Prune it heavily so we don't have bushels of these things to deal with. I'd like just a bit of juice each spring... I just read about growing them in containers. That might be the way to go. 

Well, that does it for this post. I hope you enjoyed it. Maybe it got a little long. You might have preferred the 'condensed,' made more concise, version, but you know, it pays to increase your word power. 

My family knows that one of my favourite forms of poetry is the limerick. Here's one about my new fruit, the loquat. 

I just ate a fruit called a loquat, 
Don't think it was poison, sure hope not.
It was little and yellow,
Tasted tart but was mellow,
I liked it yes but, not a whole lot.                                                        -djf

Long Bay Beach, part two

We continue our day at Long Bay Beach...

 Looking north east. 

 This is the north end.

 None came down while I was there.

 This next series of pictures is all about interesting rocks.

 I'm standing on the headland at the north end of Long Bay Beach. I look around the corner and see another short beach and a further headland. I wish I could keep exploring and discovering what is around the next outcropping, and the next.  

 It's time though to head back toward Allie and the boys and Jeanne. This is looking south. 

I'm nearly back to where Allie and the boys are waiting for Jeanne and I. They want milkshakes it turns out....off we go.  

As we drive home we come over the crest of a hill and look what we see.  Rangitoto sits about 2.4 miles off shore in the Pacific. I have to pinch myself sometimes. 

A little closer look. I'm awestruck.       -djf