Reasons to Be Cheerful - Avenues of Trees

I've lived in many places in the world that have a garden moniker. I went to university in the Garden of England (Kent). I spent a year and a half living in New Jersey, the garden state. Now I'm living in Lyttelton, which is a part of the city of Christchurch, which calls itself a garden city. Part of the reason for this is the wonderful Hagley Park in the centre of town. It has paths that are flanked by trees which look wonderful at this time of year.

What would be great is if Christchurch would plant more trees in avenues of roads. Trees do an amazing job of soaking up pollution and controlling temperatures. When I lived in Melbourne in Australia I was in a suburb that had lots of plane trees. The temperature in Elwood was about 5° cooler than the neighbouring suburb suburb of St Kilda, due to those trees. Trees are amazing.

Reasons to Be Cheerful - You Can Take a Bike on the Bus With Metro Christchurch

We took our car to Turners to be auctioned this Thursday. Hopefully it will sell and I’ll be using my bike and the bus a lot more.

New Zealand Diary - A Culture Trip to Dunedin For the Weekend

Dunedin is a small city (population 127,000), but it punches above its weight culturally, making it a fun place to visit for the weekend. There are plenty of galleries, including the Dunedin Public Art Gallery. The Settlers Museum has impressive displays that take you through the development of both Māori and Pākehā culture through the history of Otago.

Everywhere you walk in the city you are likely to come across some fantastic and often enormous street art.

And if you get tired of walking around the city and the cultural sights, you can always stop for a drink.

Reasons to Be Cheerful - Al Fresco Dining

It’s a relief when the sun comes out. November has been the wettest month I can remember for a while and the garden has been suffering.

New Zealand Diary and a Reason to Be Cheerful: Drinking in Dunedin

Last month we spent a weekend in Dunedin. The weather was terrible and maybe it is because of the often terrible weather that Dunedin has a lot of excellent places to drink . We ducked in and out of some great cafes and bars (Morning Magpie, Mazagran, The Standard Kitchen, Good Good, Starfish, Pequeño, Albar and we would have liked to go to the Inch bar). There's even a guy (Brendan Seal) who is making wine in the city itself at a place called Urbn Vino.

There are several breweries in town. There is the long-established Speights brewery and you can take a tour if you like. We drink plenty of the stuff in Lyttelton, but didn’t want to spend the time on a tour. I thought the best thing was the springwater that was available on tap outside (for a voluntary donation). We also visited the New New New brewery (it's quite new) and the Emersons brewery.

If you like to drink coffee, wine, beer, or something stronger, you can guarantee you'll find your kind of place in Dunedin. Just don’t expect the weather to be any good.

New Zealand Diary: Summer, Camping and Caravans

Summer starts today, 1st December, in New Zealand. We are hoping to do a lot of camping this summer (last summer I got away twice, for 2 nights in total, as there was so much to do with the house and garden).

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I love camping in New Zealand, though the weather can never be relied on (see my post on Things That Will Kill You in New Zealand). At least usually there aren’t too many people, unless it is the first two weeks after Christmas Day, when campgrounds go a little nuts.

New Zealand Diary: Why Do Kiwis Make So Many Things Out of Corrugated Iron?

When we were in Oamaru recently, I noticed some nice old buildings near Friendly Bay that were mainly made from corrugated iron.

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Corrugated “iron” (usually steel) is used a lot more in New Zealand than in England. In England you tend to see it used for agricultural buildings, but here the use extends way beyond that. Our house has a roof made of it and so do many houses, even newbuilds. In fact you often see corrugated metal being used for cladding on building walls. Sometimes it is even used just to make things like this sheep in Tirau, New Zealand’s corrugated capital.

Te Ara states:

Corrugated iron has been one of the characteristic building materials in New Zealand for over 150 years. It is technically light steel sheet that has been galvanised (treated with a coating of zinc on both sides) to prevent rusting, then rolled into corrugations at either 3 or 5 inches (76 or 127 millimetres). First produced in English steel mills in the 1830s, it was regarded as suitable only for temporary buildings.

But it is still all over the shop, probably because construction is very expensive in NZ and Kiwis are used to building things with it.