A busy week and a birthday party

Not much spare time this week to make any new photos, but it's sure been nice to feel the onset of spring.

Wanaka Station Park is one of my favourite places to visit over the next several weeks. There has been an ongoing planting programme of rhododendrons and the likes over the last few years, and although it's nowhere near the equal of the Dunedin Public Gardens, the setting is magical...


This redwood in the center of the Park never fails to elicit a response from myself when I have a camera about...


These little critters will soon be gamboling all about...


Beginning Thurs. and ending 2 am Sat. I did a very demanding Mac server disk rebuild this week [I'm an Apple IT person in my other life] for good friends here who have a large helicopter business. Such jobs on mission critical servers can be hugely stressful, and in this case a bit of an emergency, but near midnight the job was giving signals it'd turn out easier than I imagined in my darker moments [usually any morning I wake briefly at 4 am when the body chemistry must be at a low ebb - any other time I'm blessed with a problem free simple life].

I help these friends in other capacities though: here strop work [apparently I'm good with knots, ropes and angles] to remove a crashed aircraft, and parts, scattered all over a moderate angled slope in the mountains north of here a few years back. Here Simon guides Andy into a safe position for the strop to be placed on the hook, while Graeme hangs out the door giving Andy verbal cues..


On this hook-up [note rope coming towards me to some wing parts] I'd say Andy is watching the tips of his rotors don't connect with the ground!


A slow fly-away of this first load while we observe if the load will behave and not spin, or exhibit flying tendencies of it's own at speed...


Last night I attended the 60th of one of my good friends JT - it was a tough call as I had to forgo a trip to Preservation in Fiordland with another good friend, but at the end of the day the mountains will always be there, and for me people...well we're the more temporary and precious items on the landscape, and besides I'd committed.

JT with Lake Hawea behind...


Preservation Inlet...


Well from thinking I'd not the energy tonight or the material for a good blog, something has been cobbled together dear readers - 2405 visits this year with 3238 page views from you. Thanks, this goes a long ways towards my goal to share how I see my world, and draw attention to the richness of our lives and landscapes. And it all started as a work related experiment to find out just what a blog is about and how it hangs together - now it's a habit I look forward to each week

This week's link to some light hearted truth about so called progress: R. Crumb's "A Short History of America" Thanks Gregor