Luffa!

I couldn't let the summer completely disappear without a quick post about our luffa plant. I haven't treated it very kindly, I do have to say - it is a vine plant, and I'm paranoid about letting it grow 'wild' in the landlady's garden or greenhouse. So it has been pot bound, and has sulked at me all summer (flowering but not really fruiting; fruits growing but withering before they got to any size). But then one fruit did start to grow, and, although it never got very fat, it did get to be almost the length of my arm. It then seemed apparent that it was not going to get any bigger, and the luffa itself was trying to flower, but the effort of flowering and fruiting at the same time was definitely too much for it.

So - I found a nice website which told me how to prepare a luffa, to turn it from this:

into a loofah to take into the shower with me.

It was far simpler than I imagined - I peeled it:

- a little bit harder than it should have been, but I think that the size of the luffa meant that it didn't have a solid 'core' for me to press against when I peeled, and so I missed little bits.

Next, I squeezed out the middle jelly like insides, and attempted to get most of the seeds out (I've saved them for next year, but I'm not sure whether they were mature enough). Then I left it on the windowsill to dry:


And that is it - I now have my very own loofah:

It may not be long enough to clean my back thoroughly, but for a first try, I'm very proud of it. And it works perfectly well in the shower :-)

The luffa plant was so pleased to have the burden of the fruit taken off that it has started flowering again already. I'll move it into the greenhouse when autumn really starts setting in and see if I can keep it growing through the winter.

Filling the Basin for Christchurch...

I certainly didn't intend it to be nearly a month between blog postings - sorry!

Things have been very busy here - initially, I was helping out at work with our earthquake response, which has led to late evenings and a Sunday shift; and then the hockey season restarted (I hadn't realised I was quite unfit), and the publicity communications for our orchestra concert needed to be sent out, and there may have been a few games of online Scrabble in there, too...

But, last weekend, John and I ended up in the Basin, where we watched a charity Twenty 20 cricket match between the Wellington Legends and the Christchurch Invitation XI to fund raise for the Christchurch Appeal. Cricketing stars, both national and international (such as Shane Warne) took part, as did a whole host of others, such as Tana Umaga, an ex All Black captain, who certainly proved his sporting talents, with one wicket being taken off of his bowling, catching another whilst fielding, and then getting two boundaries (I can't remember now whether they were sixes or fours), Russell Crowe, who coached the Christchurch side.

The day was absolutely gorgeous, and they allowed families onto the pitch to play before the main event:


The TV cameras were, of course, out in force - this was being broadcast live.


I tried to find where they were selling the T-Shirts, but the stand was hidden by the crowds.


A lot of the action happened at the other end of the pitch to us - but we did get to see a lot of people's backs!


And we were close enough to the TV screens and scoreboard to not be missing out on any of the action


Wellington were in black, Christchurch in red, and the umpires were in yellow:




I'm quite proud of this action shot...


We got a treat just before the end of the first innings when the game was interrupted by the Stig walking onto the field, with the full "Some say..." build up (which I can't now remember!)

and revealed himself to be New Zealand fast bowler Andy McKay...


The poor batsman who was facing him decided that he would be safer wearing the Stig's helmet


but didn't last long, as that meant he couldn't actually see what was coming at him!


There is an online video of the over here

During the break, our Prime Minister, John Key, got to face Shane Warne, with $100,000 at stake - if John got a boundary, then Fujitsu would donate that amount to the Christchurch appeal. There was a predictable amount of 'sledging' beforehand, and it was played for the crowds; he did however, get three boundaries off of the over, which started with an underarm bowl and Shane claiming he'd got confused after going 10 pin bowling the day before... Ian McKellan was umpiring, in a deck chair, and one of the fours did very narrowly miss him - I expect that Peter Jackson had a few conniptions at that!
There's a video of the over here


I did take a few shots through our video camera, but I am having a few issues with editing it all together, so that may take a while to come through...

The Wellington batting then started



with Martin Freeman (who will be playing Bilbo Baggins in the upcoming Hobbit film) as one of the umpires. He is on the left here - you can see why he might have been chosen for the part of the Hobbit!


Midway through the innings, the announcer mentioned that Ian McKellan was one of the team going round with a bucket, and he was then picked up on the big screen. I thought to myself, "I recognise that pagoda", and turned round...


I didn't go up and bother him - he was surrounded by people for well over half an hour, and genuinely taking his time to talk to everyone who came up to him.


Overall the event raised over $500,000, and was the best cricket match I have seen (just pipping England beating Australia with the last ball about six years ago!) - the weather was perfect, the atmosphere electric and just great fun to be a part of.

Earthquake

I have been writing this post in my head ever since Tuesday afternoon, when I felt my first earthquake, which devastated the lives of so many New Zealanders. It's not any easier when I try to actually get the words onto the computer.

Wellington is just under 200 miles away from Christchurch, but the top of our 12 storey office block swayed gently as though we were on a calm sea. Barely noticeable unless you were aware it was happening (several colleagues on the floor missed it), yet a couple of minutes later, a colleague said "The last time I felt the ground move like that was when Christchurch got hit in September." Then the news started rolling through - Twitter and Twitpics first, then the mainstream media. The realisation struck us all at about the same time; it was lunchtime, at the height of summer - the central business district would have been packed with office workers enjoying their lunches and tourists checking out the sights. We had been incredibly lucky with the timing of the September quake; this one was going to be far worse. (And then, looking at the later pictures of people's houses, collapsed, or with boulders and earth through them where the hillsides had disintegrated, and considering what could have happened if the quake had happened at night, and whole families sleeping in those rooms, makes the heart stop.)

The afternoon was difficult - I have colleagues with family in Christchurch, and we all have friends down there, as well as an office of colleagues. The phone lines were down, though some texts were getting through, and it was a tense time as we gradually found out that those we knew were alive and well. There are so many stories of escapes, as well as far too many of those who didn't get out.

The numbers are unimaginable for those of us who aren't there; as of today, 146 confirmed dead, an estimated 62,500 people without water, 100,000 have no sewerage services, and 30,000 homes are without power (Source - Stuff website). I don't know how many homes and buildings are destroyed; a Christchurch based friend has said that 25% will have to be pulled down.

It is just heartbreaking.

Extermiknit!

I realised that it is nearly March, and I haven't yet shown off about my Christmas / January project :-)

A friend from the Phoenix Sci-Fi group pointed me towards the Extermiknit website, and it looked like a really fun toy to make. My knitting isn't, on the whole, hugely successful; to my name, I had one hat (which I do wear fairly solidly during the winter), a pair of gauntlet gloves which I knitted on the wrong size needles, and therefore have yet to be joined up (I have buttons to do so, just haven't yet got round to it), a cardigan which is the back and about half of one of the sides complete, and a shawl which needs a lot of tidying up before it is wearable. Plus four or five patterns which I haven't yet started!

And now, this:


It took me about 30 hours, all told, mainly in front of the TV (of course, watching Dr Who, but also rewatching my Planet Earth DVDs, which I adore) or listening to the radio and comedy CDs, and a chunk of that was learning how to make the bobbles (once I'd memorised the pattern for those, it got a lot faster). In fact, I learnt a lot of new techniques on this, including knitting on double pointed needles (I had attempted to do so on one hat, which didn't get past about three rounds, but that was because the wool I bought was completely unsuitable and kept on snapping), making the bobbles and making an I-Cord. My Stich 'n' Bitch and Knitters' Bible came out very frequently!

He is very cuddly (given that this is NZ, I managed to get some cheap washed wool for stuffing it with - no factory-made stuffing here!) and rather enjoys his lordly position on top of the book case. He's not perfect - I made a couple of interesting errors on the way round (including managing to twist the knitting at one point - but in the end that helped as I needed to add some extra stuffing after I'd closed him up - the twist made the ideal opening!), but I'm very proud of him. And, not counting the time, he cost me $2 for the wool (I bought a bulk lot for pretty much $1 each ball, including postage) and about $3.50 for the stuffing (again, that includes postage).

Cicadas

It is definitely the height of summer here - the scent of barbecues is in the air every evening, the gardens around us are a riot of colour, and the cicadas have hatched. We went all of a sudden from nothing to the almost deafening sound of cicadas in all the trees and bushes around us - they start up just as I'm heading to work, and keep going until the sun has gone down. After not being able to see any last year, this year they seem to have lost their shyness, and are clinging to anything which could be remotely seen as being tree-like. The neighbours' wooden fence was covered in them when they first hatched, and the telegraph poles still have a number clinging to them all the way up. One even came and investigated our washing (though it didn't like us peering at it, and flew away rather rapidly). They really are beautiful



The stick insect (well, I say 'the' - I don't know if it is the same one...) came back to the olive tree as well.


The garden is definitely being successful - I have dug up the onions, and pickled a whole load of them, the chillis are storming away (I have at least three different species growing at the moment), I have been eating tomatoes most days this week, the olives and lemons are growing, and even the fig is getting in on the action - there is one solitary fruit growing, but I'm not going to hold my breath, as I've got to this stage with figs before and they've always fallen off. I'm hoping that the warmer weather here will help it on its way!

Light posting...

I'm afraid that posting is going to be light over the next few weeks - work is getting incredibly busy, and all of the various clubs and societies are now back again after the summer break. So, usual apologies in advance.

We've got our new pieces for the April orchestra concert - we are playing Schubert's 6th Symphony, Ravel's Pavane pour une infante défunte and Mozart's Clarinet concerto. The oboes don't play anything in the Mozart, which is actually a good thing - both the Ravel and the Schubert are full of oboe solos, and the usual first oboe is going to be away for the concert, so I get to do them all by myself... I think I'm going to have to fit some time in for some heavy duty practice into the evening schedule! The pieces are lovely (or will be when we aren't sight-reading), so I'm really looking forward to getting my teeth into them.

I did get to take part in a fine Wellington custom this week - Wellington is known as the Windy city for a very good reason, and this week we had winds of over 100kph for a few days. Due to the way that the buildings are laid out, you can often find that the wind comes at you from multiple directions at once, which can be very interesting, to say the least. However, let someone who is not from the city, such as the Australian supplier who came over for a meeting last week, comment on the wind, and the response is usually along the lines, as both my colleague and myself said, at pretty much the same time, "This? It's just a light breeze..."

Chrysalis update...

I've been keeping an eye on the Monarch chrysalis on our fig plant - it has been hanging there, green and gold all week, blowing in the wind, dripping in the rain rain as well as basking in the few sunny days we have had.

Then, this morning, it had changed colour:

The wings of the Monarch were clearly visible through the 'skin' of the chrysalis.

So - I kept on popping out all day to keep an eye on it, then, in the last hour, this happened:


You would never think that something so large could fit into something so small!

I left it drying its wings, and when I came back out to pick mint for dinner, it had moved round the tree.


It was tentatively testing out its wings, as well as trying to find the best position on the leaf.


Unfortunately, it had a lot to learn about the Wellington winds (something that a caterpillar can safely ignore!), and as it was trying to swing itself up on top of the fig leaf, it fell off and started crawling round my olive plant.


As I know that there is at least one spider round there, I decided that I wasn't going to be the ethical naturalist and just stand by, so I put my arm down and let it climb on.

(apologies for the blurriness of this one - I am very right handed, and even taking a photo with my left hand was difficult!)

It crawled around for a bit, but seemed to show no inclination to take off, and the little barbs on the end of its feet were actually rather sharp, so I let it back onto the fig tree. Even though I put it on the top, it decided very quickly that it wanted to go back underneath (probably more sheltered and less visible to birds)


One curious thing that I noticed - this butterfly had only four legs! I'm not sure whether the final pair was folded behind the wings (I didn't see them when it was exploring my arm) or whether something went wrong when it came out of the chrysalis or even when it was pupating.


I hope it does survive - it is such a pretty butterfly!