Eye Candy Day 56

Beautiful New Zealand.

I belong to a facebook group whose members daily post images of New Zealand. Most members are not professional photographers, and the images are often from their home areas.

Over the last couple of weeks I have stolen a whole lot to share with you, my readers. They were almost all taken in the last two months as we transition through spring.

The first one is of my local area looking very nice and fresh-green like.

The cherry trees one I took just yesterday in my local village.

The Aurora one was this winter, from the lower South Island. It's been a marvellous year for the southern lights.

The last one wasn't, needless to say, taken by regular means. It's my wee country, from space.

I have forgotten where a lot of the rest of them are, so let's just call it a kiwi medley.

One of yours? 

If you took one of these and want to either be attributed or have it removed, please leave a comment (I will not publish your comment unless you desire it) and I will obey your wishes promptly.

TeaTeaser Post

Fascinating day yesterday! I will write a longer post when I have time, but what an interesting tour, fascinating tea-tasting, and heavenly indulgent 'Tiffin'!

Bay of Plenty Sunset

Only a week until the wedding! It's getting busy around here! Tomorrow is the official Groom's Parents Meet the Bride's Parents to Arrange the Wedding. Of course this is already arranged. We are having instead a colonial-sounding High Tea and a tour of the Zealong Tea Estate instead. It should be rather diverting darhlings. 

I will take a photo or two for you.

In the meantime, here's a sunset from a place near here, up the coast a bit. 

What a Waspy Coincidence

Last night I decided to use up some leftover wool and began to knit a wee waspy-striped singlet in a cream and gold (No, nothing on the horizon in the way of small kiwis to fill it yet. As far as I am aware).

This morning during breakfast there was a Queen wasp bumping on the kitchen light fitting, and when I went out into the day, a young paper wasp queen was sunning herself on the verandah.

They obviously have been hibernating, but were drawn out by the clear invitation of my cosy warm knitting.  I shall card them, scour their fibres and incorporate them into the garment.

Patches of Sunshine Shimmering

One time when I was at Miranda, I spent hours watching these moths sipping nectar from the bottlebrush.  I had seen bees, and wax-eyes loving the cornucopia of sweetness, but these other day-time visitors had escaped my notice.
The first I haven't yet identified but the other species I think is Thysanoplusia orichalcea, the 'Slender Burnished Brass'.  They are thought to be originally from Indonesia and spread to Australia, New Zealand and even Europe. But this might be incorrect. It's an infrequent visitor to the UK.  My investigations have suggested fewer than 100 have made it so far to those green and pleasant shores. There would have been that number just on the one huge Callistemon tree at Miranda.

I love the way the iridescent patches of gold are actually transparent when viewed at a certain angle, and then almost totally golden mirror-like at another.
Interestingly, the constant movement of the brass, combined with the extreme brightness of the flashes of gold which played Bob's-a-dying* with my camera's light meter, meant that out of hundreds of shots I got very few worth keeping.

I hope you enjoy the late summer crickets in my video clip too.
And then, if you have nothing better to do, I challenge you to say the title of this post ten times.

Unknown moth.  Poss. one of the Chrysodeixis spp?

Thysanoplusia orichalcea in the groove

Thysanoplusia orichalcea

Thysanoplusia orichalcea

* the original form of bobsy-die

What do Kiwifruit grow into?

Baby Kiwis! *

* New Zealanders call themselves 'Kiwis', in case you are not from downunder and didn't know that.