Auckland botanic garden

Auckland is getting greener by the day as the sun stays out longer and the vegetation starts growing in earnest. Our neighborhood streets have been lines with flowering trees for the last few weeks, so I went to the Auckland botanic garden last weekend to see what was blooming there. The cherry orchard and the magnolia and camellia gardens were amazing! The proteas in the South African garden were also spectacular. With so many flowers in blooms, the tuis were everywhere! They are one of my favorite NZ birds, mostly because of all the crazy sounds they make. 

As a scientist, one of the things I appreciate most about the garden is there commitment to education and research. I met the curator of the gardens at a work event after I visited the garden and learned about their current projects. They range from studying the effectiveness of different stormwater systems, figuring out which native NZ plants work for green roofs, trialling different mowing frequencies to increase meadow biodiversity, and demonstrating how landscaping can reduce urban runoff. I'm looking forward to going back to the gardens to see all of these projects!

Protea

a ginormous Protea the size of my head

the native pigeon (kereru) eating seeds from the puriri tree

grass seed head

entrance to the magnolia & camellia garden

magnolia bud

a beautiful tui in the magnolia garden

this was a very cooperative tui, letting me see
him/her from every angle (one of the few song birds
where males and females are the same size and color)

daffodils in the orchard

the orchard in full bloom

tui getting its fill of nectar in the orchard

a bit hard to see, but there is an eel in the creek!
this was my first tuna (maori name for eel) sighting!
this one was about 3 feet long and 2 inches in diameter.

solo Melissa adventures

Pete has been focused on a woodworking project for the last couple of weeks so I have been doing a bit of solo adventuring around Auckland. Last weekend I decided to explore the city a bit more with my camera in hand. Urban photography is not something I've spent a lot of time doing, so I figured I should take advantage of our surroundings while we are living in Auckland. 

Karangahape Road, or K Road for short, is known for its fringe culture and artist community. It is also home to numerous murals, many of which are ephemeral, lasting two to three years. I've seen some of the murals on our way to and from work, but wanted to see what others I could find in the alleys and side streets. The style, size, and character of the murals is highly varied, making each one a surprise. It was a fun afternoon of wandering in a city where I typically rush from one place to another. 

1910 tram stop on Symonds Street

mural in the background by Tom Tom and Misery;
foreground by Haunt.

This one of a Maori woman is one of my all time favorites by an
artist named Owen Dippie. This mural is huge and can be seen
from the motorway. My heart still flutters whenever I see it. 

By Mica Still, an artist from Oregon...which explains
the bears and wolves (don't exist in NZ) and the
Pacific Northwest tribal influence.

fantail and tui by Flox

collage in St. Kevin's Arcade

saddleback by Janine and Charles Williams

This made me laugh. The dodo and the
cassette tape have met the same, sad fate.

Another great one - Madonna in the City - by Owen Dippie

whimsey on Beresford Square

perhaps the strangest of the day by Andrew Steel

this collection of 25 or so nuclear free murals feels
more relevant today than I would have thought...

There are a few murals sprinkled through the neighborhoods of Kingsland and Morningside too...some official, others not.  

paradise shell ducks (putangitangi) by Janine & Charles Williams

"unofficial" owl in Morningside

the divide by Andrew Steel

Wandering through the city also gave me a chance to look at it in a different way...to find interesting patterns and angles that I love photographing in nature in a space filled with people. Pete will be sad when a walk through town takes as long as a walk in the woods because my camera is at hand...

mosaic in Western Park

Ponsonby Road

Three months!

It is hard to believe, but we are coming up on our three month anniversary in NZ. We feel quite settled at home but are still figuring out what our exact roles are at work. There are a lot of projects going on, so I suspect our roles will evolve over time. Pete's broad skill set and wealth of knowledge has not gone unnoticed, so he has been going out in the field a lot the last few weeks. I've been getting out about once a week and spend much of the rest of my week analyzing data and figuring out how our work is connected to the rest of Auckland Council. There are about 9,000 people working for AC so understanding the connections is no small job! We are getting more and more tasks handed to us and are starting to feel like there are not enough hours in the week to get everything crossed off the to-do list. I think our honeymoon period is over... 

We have still been trying to get out every weekend to explore a different part of the Auckland area. There are 35 regional parks in the region and all of them are free. Some are more extensive than others, but they have all been great thus far. We have had visitors the last two weeks to help spur us onto our adventures. It is crazy to us that we have already seen three friends from the U.S. in the three months we have been here. I guess NZ is a more popular place to travel to than we anticipated! None of our visitors have come to NZ explicitly to see us, but we are grateful they have made time for us. 

A few weeks ago we drove a short distance south of our house to check out Ambury Regional Park on the shore of Manukau Harbour (a natural harbour). This is one of the two major harbours that frame Auckland and is a significant habitat for shore birds. It is also home to a working farm that you can explore and get up close and personal with the animals. It was father's day (NZ celebrated mother's day on the same day as the U.S., but father's day is celebrated on the first Sunday of September) so we thought this would be a fairly quiet park to explore. There were quite a few kiddos around the farm animals, but we had the coastal walk mostly to ourselves. 

The barnyard:

this country has a lot of sheep...which means
tonnes of cute lambs in the spring!

pukeko (swamp hen)

Pete standing on a lovely basalt lava flow
(Mangere volcano, one of Auckland's 53, is behind us)

mangroves are about the only
things growing on the lava flows...

...and lichens

Two weeks ago I was invited to participate in a United Nations workshop on biodiversity and ecosystem services. It was an exhausting five days, but I learned a lot, met good people, and got to spend time with my friend Spencer. One really neat thing about the workshop was the artists that listened to our discussions throughout the week and then synthesized our ideas into graphic art. They were amazing!! 

 by the amazing artists at reflectiongraphics.com
and emphasise.nz

After our workshop, we headed down to Nelson to spend the weekend with Spencer and friends from my research days down here. We got to see Robyn's property, pet the ponies, and meet Stacie's youngest kiddo. We also entered our first rogain event, a sort of orienteering adventure race. We got a map with a whole bunch of locations marked on it and had three hours to navigate to as many of them as we could. No phones allowed...only a compass and the map. And it is handy if your compass is from the southern hemisphere. Robyn is a pro at these things and her team won the combo event (six hours of walking/running and mountain biking). We were not in a hurry at all and finished last. But we managed to get to seven locations and the pie shop. We felt accomplished for the day! 

Spencer, Robyn, and Brownie

Pete and Huntsman
(Brownie, Huntsman, and Robyn were in the 2nd
Lord of the Rings movie as Riders of Rohan)

looking for fossils

view from the top of our fossil hike

the members of our rogain team

location finder, extraordinaire!

pies were a requirement of the day for Spencer and Pete

Last weekend we had friends from Minnesota staying with us so we headed to the west coast for a bit of ocean time...definitely something they can't see in Minnesota. We hiked to Kitekite falls, had a sand-infused lunch on the beach, and a lovely drive through native forest.

cabbage trees!

Kitekite Falls through a tree fern

Kitekite Falls

the tracks here are amazingly well built

stream crossing

south Piha Beach

north Piha Beach from Lion Rock

Lion Rock on Piha Beach

Te Henga (Bethell's) Beach

black sand beaches are lovely!

cool sand formations along the river channel

our visitors!