I'm a Classy Bird

(Read the title like David Mitchell in "Upstart Crow".)

Ben's soda on the left, mine on the right. Not always, but I just felt like Italian mineral water this week. 

Future Plan

 

Vanilla Custard Slice this week. Summer Berry Brownie or Hazelnut, Cacao & Ginger Bar next week? Tahunanui Breakfast Club. 

August Is a Difficult Month

Sometimes July is super cold, then come August it's suddenly spring. This year we've had three cold spells after a relatively mild winter. We are running out of firewood!! (Please excuse the later winter mess.)    

Familiar

"Rubbish" at the back of Neel Leeming on Bridge Street looked familiar. Our house came with the mid-1980s model and it worked well until 2013. One of the reasons we had to give it up was the knobs kept slipping out of place, and our sparky told us he couldn't find any more of them. Since then, I quit removing the knobs and soaking on our new stove; I only wipe the best I can. 

No Such Place

Yo, there is no such place as Tokyo Town 東京町. I tried to read the blub at the bottom but that, too, looked like AI-gibberish, not even young-people-speak.

No More Red

Red Gallery is closing due to lease-non-renewal, possibly due in part to the over-long Bridge Street road work. I've hardly been there since ownership changed in 2014, but still, it's sad to see an established art gallery closing. 

Change of Scenery

Tawera Gallery, former Refinery ArtSpace, opened mid-August at Miller's Acres, the former home of  Visitor Information Centre.  

A few days before the opening.

Arts Council was renamed Hiwa, with a much bigger mission, and continues to share the space with the gallery.  

No More Refinery Art Space

The original Refinery ArtSpace gallery was a cavernous venue on Halifax Street, a real former refinery. It was my favourite space in Nelson, and I participated in a few exhibition as a weaver and drawing student. Due to earthquake safety risks, it moved temporarily to Hardy Street for perhaps a decade; recently this Hardy Street gallery closed, too. 

The gallery and Nelson Bays Arts Council moved to a shinier building. I haven't looked up what's going to happen to the old venue. 

Purple Wallflower

The day after I saw these on sale at the Mitre 10 garden centre, I saw these blooming at a cute house Rutherford Street, tall and fragrant and rather lovely. Do I have any room for this?  
 

Radiology Waiting Room

Nelson Hospital's radiology department waiting room is usually chock full, but on this day, for maybe 15 minutes, I was the only one. 

I like these decorations in different areas of the hospital, and I find this one very cheerful.   

Except... these aren't painted; they're stickers. 

Upstanding Osteospermum

 

Osteospermum usually doesn't stand upright but drapes over the side; ours covers a concrete retaining wall on the side of the driveway. I saw two or three of these uprights at the hospital the other week. This one was around 1m tall, planted inside a tallish (40cm? 50cm?) concrete pot. I wanted to have a closer look, but access was from a ward behind closed doors, and areas reserved for folks in need of a quiet place to sit and contemplate or converse, so I didn't try. 

A week later, I saw this at a high-end lighting shop Storey Collection on Collingwood Street. This pots was maybe 30cm high and the plant further 30cm. Staff said it had just been pruned by the manager/gardener who wasn't working that day. I may go back and enquire.  

Roman Viaduct??

A view from Nelson Hospital's outside walkway on Level 2. I always liked the structure that reminds me of a Roman Viaduct and imagined all sorts of weird reasons why Nelson might have one. Last month curiosity got the better of me and enlarged the photo; it turned out to be a... well, sometimes it's better not to find out.  

Leafy Greens

I am supposed to be on anti-inflammatory diet for arthritis. Leafy greens are in, nightshade vegetables are out. Well, not all out but maybe mindfully-consumed. 

Project #5

Winter project #5 of 6; the area looks HUGE but it's not that big, just much steeper. A few years ago in June we planted a whole bunch of rose Elena sticks, (tall with pale yellow flowers,) along the boundary fence, but only four survived. This year, with the towering bay reduced drastically, we're going to put in a ridiculous number of Elena sticks in obscenely short intervals in the hopes some will survive, preferably in regular intervals. I know, life doesn't work like that.