Hooker's Seaweed Teddy-Bear

Hah! Caught in the act of hauling-out.

This Hooker Sealion, has brought a piece of seaweed to cuddle up to - like a teddy bear. Obviously the old log she (for I suspect it's the same individual that I wrote about on Wednesday)used for comfort before was not good enough.

It was almost a gallop up across the wet sand...

until she got to the first available dry patch.

Then a nice roll around, burying first her nose before ...

oh wait, where did that teddy-bear-seaweed go?

Must be on the other side...

now, she can settle down for a good snooze in the dry sand.

Hooker

Occasionally Hooker's sea lions haul out on our local beach, to get a bit of shut-eye.

This one had hauled herself across the sand to cuddle up to a log. She was well camouflaged.

She must have heard us talking, as she raised her sleepy head up to sniff our scent, before snuggling back down for a deep snooze.

We kept our distance - these shots were taken at the full limit of my camera - about 30feet away I'd guess.

Green Sea

Yeuck! The sea was all green and sickly looking in places, today.

A kind of foamy gungy mess, clearly the result of an algal bloom I would think.

Algal blooms are, of course, natural processes and not all are toxic by any means. Looking at google images for algal bloom, this one is of miniscule proportions. Nevertheless it didn't look very nice. I blame the lovely warm spring weather, and relatively calm seas allowing the algae (presumably some sort of dinoflagellate) to reproduce madly.

Agnosticism

When I reached intellectual maturity and began to ask myself whether I was an atheist, a theist, or a pantheist; a materialist or an idealist; Christian or a freethinker; I found that the more I learned and reflected, the less ready was the answer; until, at last, I came to the conclusion that I had neither art nor part with any of these denominations, except the last. The one thing in which most of these good people were agreed was the one thing in which I differed from them. They were quite sure they had attained a certain "gnosis,"–had, more or less successfully, solved the problem of existence; while I was quite sure I had not, and had a pretty strong conviction that the problem was insoluble.

So I took thought, and invented what I conceived to be the appropriate title of "agnostic." It came into my head as suggestively antithetic to the "gnostic" of Church history, who professed to know so much about the very things of which I was ignorant. To my great satisfaction the term took.

Quotation: Thomas Henry Huxley. Collected Essays. 1899.

Pink Magnolia

Magnolia is an ancient genus and having evolved before bees the flowers are pollinated by beetles.

Apparently over half of the world's species are threatened in their native forests. Only some 15 species are cultivated, from a total of 245 or so. Wild magnolias are a source of timber, food and medicines for local communities.

Apparently it is the state flower for Mississippi.

These ones are growing in the Quad area of the University - between buildings that were planted about 100 years ago. It could well be that the tall magnolia tree was planted at the same time - they do grow very slowly after all.

Unadulterated Cherry Blossom

A beautiful spring morning on campus... and I couldn't resist.

All that lovely pinkness. Please note the ever-so slight touch of sarcasm

I am not overly fond of pink cherry blossom and prefer the semi-wild trees I wrote about a wee while ago. Nevertheless I am forced to admit that for a few short days these overblown hybrids do put on a magnificent display.

So out came the camera and click click click. Enjoy!

Misery

Once upon a time, when he was still an innocent child, he believed that cleverness was the only yardstick that mattered, that as long as he was clever enough he would attain everything he desired. Going to university put him in his place. The university showed him that he was not the cleverest, not by a long chalk. And now he is faces with real life, where there are not even examinations to fall back on. In real life all he can do well, it appears, is be miserable. In misery he can attract he is still top of the class. There seems to be no limit to the misery he can attract to himself and endure. Even as he plods around the cold streets of this alien city, heading nowhere, just walking to tire himself out, so that when he gets back to his room he will as least be able to sleep, he does not sense within himself the slightest disposition to crack under the weight of misery. Misery is his element. He is a t home in misery like a fish in water. If misery were to be abolished, he would not know what to do with himself.

Happiness, he tells himself, teaches one nothing. Misery on the other hand, steels one for the future. Misery is a school for the soul. From the waters of misery one emerges on the far bank purified, strong, ready to take up again the challenges of a life of art.

Yet misery does not feel like a purifying bath. On the contrary, it feels like a pool of dirty water. From each new bout of misery he emerges not brighter and stronger but duller and flabbier. How does it actually work, the cleansing action that misery is reputed to have? Has he not swum deep enough? Will he have to swim beyond mere misery into melancholia and madness?

Quotation: Youth by J.M. Coetzee

Bumblebees

We are having a great early spring. At the very limits of my small handy-cam I took these pictures of a bumble-bee busy in our garden on pulmonaria flowers. I'm not sure of the species, my guess is Bombus terrestris.

Four species of bumble-bee were imported to pollinate red clover in 1885 and again in 1905. Honey bees had been imported for honey production in 1839, but they didn't pollinate the clover.

In a nice twist of fate, the introduced short-haired bumble-bee (Bombus subterraneus), although not common here, has been re-imported to a reserve in Kent. The hope is that the bees will become re-established, as they had become extinct in the UK; the last one having been seen in 1988. Read the story here.

Faces

She thought of his face as it had been when they met; and watched it now. She thought of all they had discovered together and meant to each other, and of how many small lies had gone into the making of their one, particular truth: this love, which bound them to one another. She had said No, many times, to many things, when she knew she might have said Yes, because of Richard; believed many things, because of Richard, which she was not sure she really believed. He had been absolutely necessary to her - or so she had believed; it came to the same thing – and so she had attached herself to him and her life had taken shape around him. She did not regret this for herself. I want him, something in her had said, years ago. And she had bound him to her; he had been her salvation; and there he was. She did not regret it for herself and yet she began to wonder if there were not something in it to be regretted, something she had done to Richard which Richard did not see.

He leaned up a little and watched her face. Her face would now be, for ever, more mysterious and impenetrable than the face of any stranger. Strangers’ faces hold no secrets because the imagination does not invest them with any. But the face of a lover is an unknown precisely because it is invested with so much of oneself. It is a mystery, containing, like all mysteries, the possibility of torment.

Another Country by James Baldwin,
Penguin Books.2001

City Centre Kowhai

Here's another native tree - the kowhai. Photographed right in the City Centre in the grounds of St Paul's Cathedral and with the Town Hall Clock Tower in the background I wonder how many people have noticed these two trees.

Kowhai is Maori for yellow.

Generally two species of Sophora sp. are recognised tetraptera and microphylla, though in fact they readily hybridise. It seems as though each tree has its own particular features. Mostly they flower in early spring, but some flower earlier, some later, and some not every year. Related species are found in Chile and Hawaii.

I have seen a variety of birds in the kowhai growing just outside our kitchen window, (it's not yet in flower, but is generally a late flowerer) feeding from the nectaries at the base of the florets, bellbirds, silvereyes, fantails, dunnocks, and tuis.

First Church & Nikau

This is the first time I have seen a nikau palm growing this far south. I knew that this native species grew as far south as the Banks Peninsula. But as I was walking back down the hill after a swim, imagine my surprise to see this one growing at the end of a driveway to an old house, the grounds to which had been subdivided long since and a crop of flats had sprouted so that the driveway was somewhat hidden from the road. I shall have to keep my eye on it to catch it in flower, apparently they can flower at any time of the year. They are very slow growers, and I wouldn't mind betting it was planted when the house was built, I'm guessing about quite a few years ago!

The Department of Conservation have a brochure in which they say "Nïkau palms have always had importance in Mäori life. The leaves were used to thatch houses, to wrap food before cooking, and to weave into hats, mats, baskets, and leggings for travelling through rough undergrowth. The growing spikes can be taken from the tree about every eight months without killing it. The immature flower is edible and can be cooked and eaten like cauliflower. The heart of the developing leaves (called rito) can also be eaten raw, but taking the shoots kills the whole tree."

The spire in the background across the city belongs to First Church, which was designed by architect R.A. Lawson (1833-1902), and was completed in 1872.