Capture: Ans Westra - Ngā Tau ki Muri (Our Future)
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Ian Dalziel, in reply to
from the other side of the pond .
I'm guessing from close to the spot where the Owen Wilkes memorial bench is...
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Ian Dalziel, in reply to
Butterfly Gap (on Madras Street?)
Corner of Worcester and Barbadoes streets...
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Leigh Russell, in reply to
Oh, Barbadoes, of course - thank you Ian! :-)
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Compare and contrast…
January 2013, looking south from a bridge just north of the Peking University East Gate. I think I posted this already, but…
Same view, 19 June 2013. Amazing what a bit of rain and a breeze will do.
#onemorereasontogetthefamilybacktoAotearoaas soonastheImmigratioServiceallows
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The big fella is still there, looking much happier in the shade of a tree and non-corrosive air.
Looking slightly north of due East down Chengfu Lu towards the PKU East Gate, the Western Hills as visible as they're supposed to be every day (hint: They frequently aren't, even from that close. Certainly weren't visible back in January).
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Leigh Russell, in reply to
Owen Wilkes memorial bench
Hi Ian, thanks for mentioning this. I had a vague sense of who he was but no particular knowledge. A brave life with a tragic end. I shall look for the bench when I next visit and have a quiet sit there - a fittingly tranquil spot. The photo above shows one of the park benches there, probably not Owen's one. (If I had had the placement of it I would have put it on the side I took the photo from.)
Oh, and I realise that earlier I said that Beckenham Park was in St Martins, which is incorrect. It is of course in Beckenham!
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Leigh Russell, in reply to
Wooow, that is impressive smog! Nice place when skies are clear by the look of it. Who is the chubby fellow?
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Chris Waugh, in reply to
Who is the chubby fellow?
No idea. He's just standing there outside the PKU School of Government with no explanation.
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Leigh Russell, in reply to
Hm, he certainly takes the eye! :-)
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Striving for a better world can involve resisting what I consider to be the boardroom bullying of big companies that should know better. In this case 2 Degrees advertises itself as being ‘fair’ on the part of customers. Really? I’ve written about a planned cell phone tower here: "2 Degrees tower to go ahead despite local opposition" Yesterday's protest meeting at the site was well attended despite rain, wind and very low temperatures!
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2 Degrees responded that "other sites were not compatible with the ''design needs of our network''." Pathetic!
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One way smart and easy way to reduce world-wide consumption of fossil fuels is to use a push mower rather than a petrol powered one! The latter have their place but few of us have lawns that really need them. Okay, a push mower takes more time and effort, so? It's good exercise, I say. Furthermore, one never has difficulty starting them and, other than occasional maintenance, they cost nothing to run.
Like so many conservation efforts this may not seem as if it would make much of an impact on the whole, but it is something individuals can do, and "little drops of water, many grains of sand, make the mighty ocean and the pleasant land".
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In fact, why have lawns? Well, I really like to have some of this nice smooth greenery, but this frontage really challenges my preference – I absolutely love it! I’ve shown the ones I took of the boundary next to the footpath first so that what’s beyond it makes sense. And gosh, no fence needed here… and what a wonderful habitat for insects and other little creatures! It’s in Woolston, Christchurch, by the way.
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Ian Dalziel, in reply to
a bonanza for the lawn green...
use a push mower
I always wondered why there wasn't a pull mower?
Though you might need a weight on it to keep it regular.
Pulling always seemed easier than pushing -
getting that correct angle to balance forward and down...
- I can see there might be problems with edges and borders,
perhaps a dog (or cat) drawn mower even, has a certain appeal... -
Nora Leggs, in reply to
I always wondered why there wasn’t a pull mower?
Though you might need a weight on it to keep it regular.
Pulling always seemed easier than pushing -Well, of course you get both with your push-mower, cos once you've pushed it, you really have to pull it back again.... I enjoy the puzzled looks from teenagers when I'm pushing the push mower.
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Leigh Russell, in reply to
Hello Ian and Nora, I have just recollected that the (old?) common term for these is 'hand' mower - which is even more ambiguous! :-)
Edges are a time-consuming matter, but think of all that lovely fresh air - and this is real hands-on contact with the earth and no argument about it!
I do my edges with the clippers pictured. Hand tools I love. I was given those last summer to my great delight - they are just like the pair I used when I was a girl.
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Here is another of my favourite tools - a grubber. For certain jobs nothing equals the value of a well made suitably hefty one of these! I was gifted it by an elderly friend. If you fancy getting one of your own don't be taken in with modern light-weight ones - I've seen some in the shops which are complete rubbish. My one, now: heft it high enough above shoulder height and the sheer weight of it does a great deal of digging! I'll leave you to guess my shoe size. At the time I took that photo I was digging up more lawn to make yet another border.
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Sinking sun yesterday afternoon. Today we're back to what the weather forecast says is "fog and light smog". Well, it certainly is at least partly fog.
Oh dear, seems I went a bit overboard playing with that photo....
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Leigh Russell, in reply to
Hi Chris, here is one of mine on a similar theme.
When this smoke cloud mushroomed over the place here I wondered if a plane had crashed. I found out later that it was a burn-off of scrub on a hillside some miles distant. I was outraged to learn that they had used the equivalent of incendiary bombs. It should not have been permitted. Birds, insects and other tiny creatures have no chance of surviving this level of destruction.
I was also frightened for my own sake: seeing footage of this sort of thing on film is a different matter to seeing it appear unexpectedly in the blue sky over your own home. The speed and size of it was ferocious.
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Chris Waugh, in reply to
Hi Leigh, I've got too many responses to your post. I'll try and distill them.
First of all, at least you can see that cloud. Days like today up here all that is visible beyond a few hundred metres is a uniform grey.
But so much depends on your circumstances, and until last January, no matter how bad it got in Beijing I'd just remind myself I'd seen and survived worse. Now I'm not so sure and I'm really worried about my daughter's lungs. It's really worrying when you walk out into murk like this and you can smell the air - not today, but it happens.
And the rest of your comment has me thinking of the Ziggy Marley song "Dragonfly".
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Sacha, in reply to
I can see there might be problems with edges and borders
and safety.
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Leigh Russell, in reply to
Hi Chris, firstly my apologies for what may have come across as insensitivity to your previous post. I am really sorry that the situation you are in is so bleak.
The parallel in my photo was one of smoke pollution and the sky as seen above the outline of the house, no more.
I’m with Ziggy about the dragonflies, or perhaps I should say, I’m with the dragonflies. The photo is one taken a few centuries ago when I was away camping. What magical creatures they are !
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A while back I wrote an article about air pollution prompted by a major forest fire burning out of control not far distant:
In it I quoted a passage I found in a book which described London's Great Smog of 1952 and its devastating effect which caused thousands of deaths.
I'm posting the excerpt here for those of you who may not be able to access my article:
..."Crossing the Common I could see only two yards ahead, and it was strange to move in such a shrunken world... Everything one touched was filmed with grime and I had an impressive Hitler moustache from breathing in all the choky stuff... The fog had closed in again thicker than ever. It seemed to press upon one and was quite difficult to breathe. Street lamps threw only a feeble glimmer in their own immediate neighbourhood and between them was quite a stretch of inky darkness, I had to keep one hand on the wall or I would have lost my way... [In the office at work] I do the dusting and Hoovering every morning... Even though I'd cleaned all outside surfaces my fingers were black by lunchtime and so were everyone else's. The grime had got into every drawer and cupboard."
These abbreviated excerpts appear in the fascinating book "Can any mother help me?" (pages 113-117)
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Leigh Russell, in reply to
Chris, this is a special photo-pack of good clean beach air with 'clouds that have shape' - for your enjoyment.
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Chris Waugh, in reply to
No need to apologise, Leigh, I certainly wasn't meaning to get competitive about the air pollution, and we're working on moving somewhere cleaner than here.
Cripes, London 1952 sounds a lot worse than Beijing 2013! As bad as it may get here, I guess we've still got more efficient machines and better filters, scrubbers, catalytic converters and whatnot. I've certainly never seen visibility drop to a couple of yards! Still get the fingers turning black after touching stuff, though.
Beautiful beach. Hopefully it won't be too long before I can take my wee one there.
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