Winter in NZ

[vilakins]

I posted these photos to show_me_a_world for this week's topic on the season, and thought I'd put them on my journal too as people may be interested.

It's winter here, ho hum. It's often dark, grey, wet, and unrelieved by any bright spots unlike northern winters. It's not helped by all our native trees being evergreen, but at least there are some flowers out in our garden.

I took all of these over three days (wet, misty, and sunny respectively) in our garden or from a window.


Wet lower deck.


Ferns reflected on wet railing


Rainy view from bedroom window


Misty morning, which turned into quite a sunny day


White camellias. These always bloom in June, and seeing them come out a week ago reminded me of my cat Claudia who died on the 18th last year, a beautiful sunny winter's day on which I saw the first camellia.


The tree beside that one has deep pink camellias which bloom later, and the buds are starting to show colour.


Vireya (tropical rhododendron). This is on the deck in a pot and badly needs repotting or planting in the garden. I am not a good gardener.


European tree and neighbour's house. My sister is lucky enough to have all European trees around her house in the country, so she gets lots of light in winter.

Comments

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

Yeah, everything's at the wrong time of year. It all happens in summer when people are just coming out of the stress of exams and planning holidays. All the agricultural-type festivals in the major religions are wrong too. We don't actually harvest in spring.

There is a Maori festival called Matariki (the stars called that are in my icon, but with European trees so it's not too puzzling for a northerner) but that's hard to adapt because it lasts for weeks and different ones at that for different tribes. We basically need a reason to have fun at the gloomiest time of the year (and a national holiday too that's more than a day off work and actually gives us a reason to be happy). Some people hold midwinter dinners, but it's not the same as everyone having a party with a big build-up.