Hard News: Merry Christmas, Blossoms
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The smallish Pohutakawa I planted out the front of our new house at the start of the year just started flowering about 3 or 4 days ago and should have most of it's flowers out by Christmas Day. The botanic gardens have a pretty awesome row of them down the path through the main building. A special breed that flowers profusely.
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Oh and Merry Christmas everyone. Hope you fooled santa once again ;)
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Here I am stuck (with my family) in North America for a month - it's cold(ish), gets dark early, there are xmas lights everywhere, a definite buzz, feels just a bit like xmas ....
I offer the following xmas tidbits: walking directions from the Shire to Mordor
And Tim Michin's banned performance of Woody Allen's Jesus:
Not being religious we celebrate Xmas - the capitalist holiday of buying stuff for people - may you extract some wealth from the 1% - Merry Xmas everyone -
Merry Christmas to you, you dear man. I would just like, once again, to tell you in particular, and this community at large, how very important you have all become to me. It's become a habit in my house, when I am going out (and I have a notoriously stay-at-home spouse) to tell him which social group I am convening with that particular day/evening, and which category the friends I am seeing fit in to. He doesn't remember who everyone is, but he understands the social groupings. Since the advent of the internet in our house, specifically, about 16 years ago, we've had various groups that I've belonged to. The most enduring ones are my Fat Ladies, the Big King Queens, and in the last 5 years, the PAS people. To wit, this was the conversation last night: "I'm going to the pub" "Who are you going with?" "Sacha and Jackson and Sofie" "Remind me?" "Public Address friends" "Ah, yes" and so it goes. My social life has always been a reasonably full one, and I once thought that after a certain age, I would never make new friends. How wrong I was. How delightfully wrong I was. So thank you, Russell. Thank you to everyone I've met in this wonderful community. You have enriched my life, and I look forward to a New Year, when those friendships continue to deepen. I also look forward to meeting more of you, in the not too distant future.
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I've never been one for saying, as people seem to now, "happy holidays".
It doesn't really work in a country where "holiday" is just a synonym for "vacation". Merry Christmas! Put the Ēostre back in Easter!
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I'm spending Christmas Day in hospital with my present: the newest member of our family, born yesterday. I await the Auckland hospital version of Xmas dinner with some trepidation!
Happy Chrimble, as the Beatles used to say on their seasonal fan club records.
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Martin Lindberg, in reply to
I await the Auckland hospital version of Xmas dinner with some trepidation!
Congratulations on the addition to your family! And commiserations on the food. I have experienced it myself (not the Xmas dinner, though).
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Nat, in reply to
I'm spending Christmas Day in hospital with my present: the newest member of our family, born yesterday. I await the Auckland hospital version of Xmas dinner with some trepidation!
Congratulations! My daughter was my Christmas present four years ago today. I hope your family can bring you in some yummy treats.
And I love the Auckland Pohutukawa. They make me want to compose haiku!
Merry Christmas everyone.
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I've never been one for saying, as people seem to now, "happy holidays".
Jack Donaghy's Christmas Card:
Outer: Happy Holidays....
Inner: ... is what terrorists sayI'll just run with "thanks a bunch"...
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Russell Brown, in reply to
To wit, this was the conversation last night: "I'm going to the pub" "Who are you going with?" "Sacha and Jackson and Sofie" "Remind me?" "Public Address friends" "Ah, yes" and so it goes.
I meant to get there, I really did. But Wednesday night had been ... large.
I very much look forward to riding over to convene with you all throughout summer.
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Russell Brown, in reply to
I'm spending Christmas Day in hospital with my present: the newest member of our family, born yesterday. I await the Auckland hospital version of Xmas dinner with some trepidation!
I expect a detailed report on that.
And like I said yesterday, congratulations. So glad you're well and happy and have a new boy to cherish.
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Jackie Clark, in reply to
It's okay, love. You've had a very busy few weeks, what with one thing and t'other. Roll on January.
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JacksonP, in reply to
Merry Chrimble Danielle, and congrats again.
So thank you, Russell. Thank you to everyone I've met in this wonderful community.
+1
It has been a journey I never really expected to take, but am so glad I did.
I very much look forward to riding over to convene with you all throughout summer.
We might set up the Scalectrix for our next coffee open day too. Just to keep things interesting.
Capture you later...
<ouch>
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Jackie Clark, in reply to
Yay! I was so worried about you all day yesterday and I expressed that to Jackson. I wanted to hurry home to see if there was news, but lo and behold, the iphone was whipped out, and miracle of miracles, you had already twittered. I loved technology at that point, I really did. Biggest of loves to you, and your lovely family. I am hoping that Teddy will get a little outing sometime in, say, January.
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Robyn Gallagher, in reply to
I'm spending Christmas Day in hospital with my present: the newest member of our family, born yesterday.
Excellent news! And rather a good day to be born on, if I do say so myself.
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Lucy Stewart, in reply to
Here I am stuck (with my family) in North America for a month - it's cold(ish), gets dark early, there are xmas lights everywhere, a definite buzz, feels just a bit like xmas ....
This is my second North American Christmas, and if it doesn't turn up snowing in the next forty-eight hours, the North American Jetstream and I are going to have words. If I have to be cold and twelve thousand miles from home it should at least be a white Christmas. (Likely it won't be - it's been uncannily, unseasonably warm for the last two months - but I'm hoping threats will work where pleading hasn't. To inanimate weather systems. Oh well.)
I'm spending Christmas Day in hospital with my present: the newest member of our family, born yesterday. I await the Auckland hospital version of Xmas dinner with some trepidation!
I don't think I actually congratulated you and Teddy on Twitter, so let me do it here. I hope everything goes well until you make the transition home, and I await the report on your hospital Christmas dinner with some interest.
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Christopher Dempsey, in reply to
The smallish Pohutakawa I planted out the front of our new house at the start of the year
will turn into the largest Pohutukawa you've ever seen and your new house will suffer. That or religiously prune it every year and place a caveat on the title to that effect so each new homeowner has to do the same.
Sorry to be grinch like, but trees grow. Big. Very Big.
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It is a matter of serendipity that the pohutukawa tree throws out a blossom apparently perfectly timed and styled for for a religious and cultural festival that developed on the far side of the globe.
When I was a kid, I always associated pohutukawa with family holidays at the beach, or trips to Auckland. It always seemed a little exotic, this bright, extravagant tree that didn't normally grow in my part of the country.
Won't someone think of the poor South Islanders and inland North Islanders who can't enjoy pohutukawa in full bloom? Or is that what the plastic pohutukawa Christmas decorations are for?
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I'd like to wish all a very merry christmas, but more importantly, happy summer solstice! And if you feel like celebrating with the odd bonfire or two, I won't mind.
Have a lovely and safe time all.
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Merry Christmas folks. I don't know many of you, but yay! for this forum, and its Saintly, Gouty, Gracious Host :)
Hope everyone gets everything they are wishing for, and a few surprises, too. -
nzlemming, in reply to
Congratulations! Sorry about the food, though...
Russell, thanks for PA and PAS (not the same thing at all), for the reboot this year which has enabled lots of goodies, and for running the best excuse for not working that I have found.
Have a good whatever-you-celebrate!
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Sacha, in reply to
it's what the kitsch Ak Council logo is for :)
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Paul Campbell, in reply to
This is my second North American Christmas, and if it doesn't turn up snowing in the next forty-eight hours, the North American Jetstream and I are going to have words. If I have to be cold and twelve thousand miles from home it should at least be a white Christmas. (Likely it won't be - it's been uncannily, unseasonably warm for the last two months - but I'm hoping threats will work where pleading hasn't. To inanimate weather systems. Oh well.)
I don't expect it to actually snow in Berkeley - the kids are off to Tahoe for a couple of days skiing (it's a dry La Niña year - mostly man-made snow here). In California this means potential upcoming droughts - it was raining more in Dunedin before I left a week ago.
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Merry celebration of baby cheeses to you all and here's a thing about crows and traffic.
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Of course if you are red/green colourblind then those amazing Pohutakawa trees all look a deep shade of green when you're driving past them on the motorway :-(. On the plus side I'm off to the beach and the trees and house are standing still which gives the eyes a bit of time to adjust so I can at least partially appreciate them!
Merry Xmas all.
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