Lambs in sweaters

Last month we took a trip to Kaikoura. On the drive home, we took a detour to check out a beach. On the detour, we passed many sheep. Heaps of sheep, you might say. Some of the sheep had lambs.

As we were driving along, I saw a lamb with a sweater on. This conversation followed:

Me: That lamb had a sweater on - how cute!

Gareth: What?! Lambs don't wear sweaters. They're covered in wool. They have permanent sweaters on.

Me: Well, this lamb had a sweater on.

Gareth: No it didn't.

Me: I know what I saw!!

Gareth continued heckling me all the way to the beach. We saw the beach (it was just okay) and then turned around to head back to the main road.

Me: I hope those lambs with sweaters are still by the road when we go by...

Gareth: Yeah, it'd be a shame if they went back to the barn to change clothes ...

Well, the lambs in sweaters did move on. They weren't there any more. Gareth took this as evidence that I'd imagined the clothed lambs. But I remained firm in my conviction. I saw lambs in sweaters.

Fast forward to this week.

There's been a terrible snow storm in the southern part of the South Island. It's horrible. It's the height of lambing season right now so sheep farmers were hit pretty hard. Reportedly, tens of thousands of lambs perished. They keep showing footage on tv of farmers throwing lamb carcasses on conveyor belts, and dead lambs being dropped on top of big piles of more dead lambs. Totally gruesome. But that's not the point.

Look at this photo, published in the New Zealand Herald online ("Blizzard brings call for disaster recognition"):

Lambs wearing ... well, jackets. Or capes. Close enough!

I win!

Spring flowers

It's spring in Christchurch! Relentless earthquake shakes are getting us down. Let's stop and take a moment to smell the flowers...






These are all in our own yard. But flowers aren't the only things growing - our veggie patches are officially underway!


Beans, tomatoes, corn, courgette (zucchini). Oregano, basil, thyme. Rocket (arugla), spinach, tomatillo. Oh yes, you heard me right: tomatillo.

Wow

From Stuff:

Environment Minister Nick Smith said the earthquake had released energy equivalent to 1000 Hiroshima atomic bombs.

"Engineers measure earthquakes by ground horizontal acceleration levels because it is these which actually cause damage to buildings," he said.

"The Canterbury earthquake recorded accelerations of 1.26 times gravity - it's like tipping up a building like this Parliament on its end and then putting it back again."

Dr Smith said those levels were the highest recorded in New Zealand and only very few of that size had been recorded globally.

Yeah, so that's pretty crazy. You know what else is crazy? There have been 556 aftershocks since last Saturday. You can follow along here or here.

Thankfully, they're slowing down. These graphs show the aftershocks from the last 24 hours (top) and since The Big One (bottom):


(a bigger version of this is here)

Earthquake survival kit

We're all shook up.

Aftershocks at 7:45 this morning left us with this:

The epicenter for this aftershock was practically in our backyard, and quite shallow, so even though this only registered as a 5.1 on the Richter scale, it felt much stronger. And it did as much or more damage than the original quake did - including knocking all these bricks off our house. All our picture frames were on the floor again (we haven't bothered putting them back up this time), the mayo jar tipped over in the fridge again. Our dining table moved a few inches, as did our big heavy desk. It's a small miracle that more things aren't broken. We only lost my Mexican 'circle of friends' candle holder; may it rest in peace.

There have been something like 250 aftershocks measuring 3.0 or more since Saturday morning. 250!!! We feel them all day and they wake us at night. We're getting a little batty.

Thankfully, we have our own version of an earthquake survival kit.

Every night this week, we've treated ourselves to red wine and Whittaker's chocolate. It settles the nerves. Sort of.

By the way, there were 2 more aftershocks in the 10 minutes it took me to write this post.

Earthquake

You may have heard we were a little shaken up here yesterday morning....

I had put the baby back to sleep after a feed and had just fallen back asleep myself. Suddenly, everything was loud and moving. I'm not really sure what we did. I think I said, "earthquake!" and ran to Quinn's room. Gareth looked out the windows. We obviously need some civil emergency training.

It was 4:35 in the morning and still dark. Gareth said he could see strange lights on the hills behind us, like the aurora australis or something. Probably electrical transformers blowing out?

After about 3 hours (okay, 40 seconds) the shaking stopped. My heart pounded out of my chest. I leaned my forehead against the door frame, panting. Quinn still slept.

Gareth called out from the dining room that the house was trashed. But it really wasn't that bad at all. Pictures had been thrown askew, some jumped off the wall. Stuff fell off the bookcases. The jar of mayo was on its side in the fridge...

We had no power so as soon as the sun came up, we bundled up and went out for a walk. No sense sitting in a cold dark house. We saw lots of people outside talking with their neighbors on the driveway. We saw people out running and biking or walking their dog. We saw almost no earthquake damage. One fallen chimney, one toppled fence. That was about it.

The power came back on around midday and we turned the tv on. This was when we realised that something huge had happened. We saw scenes of total destruction.

Now we're feeling a huge sense of disconnect as we watch the images of our city on tv and the internet. Our neighborhood looks completely normal. Yet all around us there's rubble and liquefaction.

Out there:

Here:

Out there:

In here:

We were so, so lucky.

The aftershocks keep coming. Just felt one as I was typing this. After 30 hours of them, they've gone from terrifying, to worrying, to just annoying. Stop moving, earth. Just stop it now.

My work is in the middle of the city. Judging from what we see on tv, that area was hit pretty hard. I don't know yet if my building is ok, but I suspect it will be as it's sort of newish, at least, new enough to be prepared for earthquakes. I just got a text telling me that we're closing for the week, and "You will be paid."

The prime minister was on tv last night to assure the people of Christchurch that the damage will be covered. We learned there is an Earthquake Commission in New Zealand. Everyone who has house or contents insurance will have their claims paid by the Commission. Mr Key told us that the Commission will cover the first $100,000 of each claim, and our insurance company will pay any claims over and above that amount. (We have nowhere near $100,000 in damage). So that sounds pretty good to us.

So our family is safe, the minor damage to our house will be taken care of, and I get a one-week paid holiday. All's well.

Diamond Harbour

I worked a short week this week and started the weekend early. Four day weekends: nothing wrong with that.

It was a nice day so we decided to take a little trip across Lyttelton Harbour to the town of Diamond Harbour. Here's a bird's eye view of the town, from its website. It's just a short ferry ride away.

I really like going to Lyttelton (we may have mentioned in the past how much we like Lyttelton). It's a working port, so you can see giant ships hauling stuff around. Coal, containers, logs. Lots of logs. I said, "I wonder where all the logs came from?" Gareth, ever so smart, replied: "Trees."



We weren't really sure where to go when we got off the ferry. We followed a lady who seemed to be walking with a purpose. She led us to a parking lot, where she got in her car and drove away. We had not done any research before going and really weren't sure where we were going or what we would do. We walked uphill and eventually came to what we suppose was the town centre. It had a "country store", a cafe, and a real estate office, and the smallest post office I'd ever seen (Gareth says he's seen smaller).

There was also this place, Godley House, which seems to be the main attraction.

It's a big house with a nice garden out back. It's a B&B, and it appears they also hold functions like weddings there. There's a cafe too, so we got some coffees and sat for a bit. My drink of choice right now: a trim cappuccino. Gareth's: a flat white. They're almost the same thing - I think the flat white just has less milk and no froth.

We then left Godley House and started wandering around. We found a nice trail that followed the edge of the harbour.

The trail led us right back to the ferry landing, and just as the ferry was approaching. What luck! A nice afternoon trip was had by all, although Quinn missed most of it as he was sleeping. He sleeps through all the good stuff it seems...

A walk on the beach

If there was some better way to spend my last day as a stay-at-home mum, I don't know what it could have been.