Back Home from ChristChurch

I had a lovely week with my sister visiting the Garden City, in time for the Ellerslie Flower Show. Every year we try and catch up, usually near my birthday in March. We live approx. 8 hours apart, so its lovely to have this time together.
 

It was awful to see the amount of damage still to be cleared in Christchurch. Some of the streets in places were like driving on a rollercoaster. Up and down, but still drivable. It bought tears to my eyes to see the wonderful old Cathedral in ruins.

 

Every one of these chairs represents one person who died in the February 2011 earthquake. They are placed in a vacant lot near the CTV bldg that came down, killing 115 people. 

 
(Click on the above photos to enlarge)




We spent 5 days touring around and two days shopping, and managed to see so much, including the ChristChurch Botanic Gardens. Some of the trees are well over 100 years old, and have the most beautiful trunks.












The Herbaceous Border at the Botanic Gardens was developed in the 1920’s and is said to be the longest HB in the Southern Hemisphere




To make this post a bit quilty I took all these pieces of fabrics with me to make up into hexies.



 

In other words I hardly did anything. I didn’t cut up a single strip!
These hexies were already cut, and I just glued them!
Ah well, I had a great time, and that’s all that matters.
Thanks for dropping by

Back at Last

I have been fairly busy trying to finish off an old WIP  which I won’t show yet, as it looks a bit of a jumble. In the mean time DH and I have had our 22nd Wedding Anniversary. For the first time ever I was asked if I would like to go somewhere for a couple of days. I jumped at the offer, but when we chatted about where to go, and couldn’t agree, I suggested I organise it, and make it a mystery for my DH. He was quite happy about that ( very unusual as DH likes to be the organiser) I had to tell him we were flying, but it was still in NZ which made him a bit nervous. Flying, unless its to Australia doesn’t do much for his nerves. The planes are too small. Any way we took off very early Friday morning to Nelson, and had a wonderful 2 1/2 days there. We arrived home Sunday evening. The mountains with the snow greeted us when we arrived. They are at the top end of the Southern Alps. The weather could not have been more perfect for the 3 days.
A couple of hours after we arrived, we were picked up and taken on a wine tour. A couple of minutes before this photo was taken on a look out, I literally fell out of the Tour van. My heel caught on the step, and I had two men just standing there watching at me fall. I am so surprised I never really hurt myself ( only my pride) as I was holding my camera, and not wanting to break it, rolled onto my side when I fell. The Tour operator said “nice roll and you haven’t even had a drink yet.” We went to 4 wineries and bought 3 cases of wine, which will be delivered home.. Saturday we went to the markets and spent a lovely 3 or 4 hours wandering. This is so different for us, as usually if we go anywhere its for a reason, and we are on a timetable. I managed to go into a fabulous shoe shop and bought 2 pairs shoes.



I had booked a rental car, but then cancelled it, as we were staying so close to the town we were able to walk everywhere.  We wandered around the water front to have drinks and dinner Saturday night.
Sunday we wandered into town again and had breakfast after which we went by cab to the airport. We checked in, then walked about a kilometre and a half to the WOW museum where they used to hold the Wearable Art Show. We saw some of the wearable art from previous years, and they were fabulous, but NO photos allowed. On one side of the Museum they had a display of Classic Cars which was amazing to see.

All in all, an excellent weekend,  the only problem was I couldn’t blog on my tablet. I have been going around in circles trying to sort it, but after one phone call ( to the Phillipines) it turned out to be my browser. All sorted now.
Thanks for dropping by