Our long holiday weekend was off to a good start weatherwise today, one out of the box. We went for a stroll around one of our local parks, had a picnic lunch and then called into the garden centre for a chaotic browse for plants to spruce up our garden for summer. Half of Auckland had the same idea, as I said very chaotic! We ended up with three herbs, a rainbow coloured silverbeet, three bright orange impatiens, 12 strawberry plants and a pop out strawberry container to grow them in!
This is an old b&w picture of the area taken in 1921, many years before it was developed into the beautiful park it is today. I lived nearby when I was growing up and us kids used to go there to catch tadpoles and bring them home in glass jars. I don’t ever recall any of them ever becoming a frog though!
Two Pukeko – Porphyrio porphyrio melanotus – bickering over a piece of bread.
I was fascinated with how they held the bread in their loooong toes to peck at it.
Huge eels in the lake, very fat & overfed!
Enough said!
Very large fish, don’t know what they are but look at that gorgeous gold colour.
Baby black swans, shame about the water being so muddy. Hey, it looks a bit like a painting rather than photo doesn’t it?
The playground was crowded.
Mother Australasian Coot – Fulica atra australis – feeding her baby.
These two swans were characters, they’d swim out together from the shore, then one would peel off to the right and the other to the left, turn around, meet in the middle and then race each other back to the shore as fast as they could! Bored teenagers I bet!
There were lots of people out & about, various nationalities and persuasions, all out walking their children, their dogs, feeding the birds & eels, picnicking and generally taking in the delights of a lovely day.
Hey, what’s a Melbourne tram doing in Auckland?
This young girl sat here the whole time we had our picnic, in quiet contemplation just staring into the water, romance problems perhaps?
Hoping for just such a lovely day tomorrow.
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