A Blooming Good Time of the Year!

Spring time; the season that brings hope, new life, exploding buds, longer warmer days, and of course… thoughts of summer barbies washed down with cold beers. Spring is definitely one of my top four seasons!

Here, in the South Island we have emerged out of, what has been for many, one of the hardest winters in recent years (see the ‘Four Seasons in One Day’ article published in June). For rural communities, in particular farmers, it was certainly a testing time as they struggled to locate and feed their stock in deep, chilling snow. However, city slickers like us only thought about the prospect of a bumper ski season! In fact, I had one last blast just last Wednesday (18th October). I just had to go, as the day before a cold southerly gust brought a fresh dumping of mountain snow. It’s not often that you get fresh powder in mid spring.

Still some good powder

Anyway, Mt Hutt is now closed for the season but some ski fields are still open up in the North Island !

Now that the southern ski fields are closed, I can really begin to enjoy the springtime and not worry about the warm north westerly winds melting the mountain snow! Of course, the longer days and living so close to Hagley Park mean that lazy, ice cream licking walks around the botanic gardens are obligatory. Unfortunately, we missed the Daffodil Banks in their September prime but they were still impressive and worth a couple of photos. So too were the bluebell woods.

Spring also brings the start of the cricket season. It’s always easy to tell when the season is about to start as early warm spring weather always turns bad, no matter which country one is in! True to form, we had a series of fronts bringing rain and colder weather to mark the start of the season. Chantal’s first game was played in what was initially a lovely sunny day but turned into a chilly affair when the biting easterly wind strengthened. Of course, I was there to support her and did my bit with a spot of umpiring.

Notice that there are not any pictures of lambs. That may strike you as strange, considering that we live in a country that has many more sheep than people. However, I really did not want to look like a tourist by pulling the car over and snapping away!