Blenheim Blues

Downtown Blenheim

Flowered buds

Pip enjoying a mussel

Sap

Sap hat!

Christina took over the last post and wrote a paragraph about wrapping.  Don't miss it!

There are worst places than Blenheim to spend a birthday.  The salt mines come to mind.  But really it was wonderful to receive all the cards and birthday wishes from so far away.  Thanks to you all for making it special.

If this blog has quieted down over the last few months it is because our lives have as well.  We continue to work every day and save as best we can, in a city with all the charm of a gas station.  In darker times Blenheim has forced me to wonder what on earth we are doing here.  But this passes quickly enough, or it is relieved by planning for the future, looking at pictures from better days on the trip, or Marlborough boxed wine.

We have thankfully moved on from our vineyard work.  We now work on a pine tree seed orchard, which is easier work, and is at times a lot of fun.  The pine trees flower during the sunny Blenheim winter, and Christina and I walk up and down rows of tree clones looking for buds that are about to, but have not yet, opened up.  We place sterilized medical tool bags over the buds and wrap a tie around the bottom.  This prevents the buds from being pollinated by nearby trees.  Workers later come round and spray a particular pollen into the bags with a small needle gun.  This allows the business to control the genes and quality of the pine cones/ seeds that they later sell.

There are two seed orchards: Wairau, which is only three years old and so the trees are quite small, and Seddon, which features much woollier and wilder trees.  Because the trees are so much larger at Seddon, the trees take more time to examine, and so the crew is greater.  Christina and I primarily work at Wairau, but one thing about Seddon is that is I am... 96% sure I work with two New Zealand skinheads there.  Upon putting this together, the high school punk rocker in me wanted to you know break a television over their heads or something.  But is it wiser to tolerate them and continue to treat them as human beings, or to stand up for what I believe in?  Can you do both?

Anyhow, here are two older animal videos I took from earlier on the trip.  First is a seal pup nodding off to sleep.  And then there is the blue penguin we helped release back into the wild.  I cut off that recording too soon, so here is the rest of the story: He was very scared of returning to the ocean and tried to climb back into his bucket and hop back to captivity.  Eventually, someone clapped loudly to frighten him away from the beach, and with great urgency he remembered how to be a penguin and ran full speed into the ocean.