Sherwood Lodge

Canterbury Anniversary Weekend

Friday's known locally as "Cup Day" - which just goes to show how important horse racing is in this part of the world. Not only is Friday the last day of a week long horse racing programme in Christchurch, it's the Canterbury Province Anniversary Day, so a public holiday for the region, and is also the start of the Canterbury A&P Show.

Not really being that much into the races, we stayed home and pottered around the place.

A lovely warm day on Friday was a great start to Kate's horse trekking season, with her guiding a group of riders down from Mt Lyford to stay at our huts overnight.

The huts from the Lottery River

Wood burning BBQ in front of the dormitory and kitchen blocks

Outdoor bath and shower enclosure

Mary and I walked the dogs up the Lottery River to test out our tramping boots in water crossings, and mucked around checking out the red volcanic rocks and searching for fossils in the river bed. We found some beauties up the side of a bank, and plenty more in the gravel of the river itself.

Red volcanic rocks on Lottery River

Fossils from Lottery River

On Saturday, Mary, Kath and I walked the dogs along the river and up the steep hill behind the huts. Mary, Craig and I are walking the Hump Ridge Track in Fiordland in January, so Mary and I are on a 'get fit' regime so we don't die en route, especially with the first day of the 3 day track being entirely up hill. Side benefits of the 'get fit' regime are that we go places on our back doorsteps that we don't usually go and the dogs get a really good workout as well as us.

On our walk, I was reminded of two things: 1) I need to get a new coat to take tramping and 2) we have some amazingly interesting plants in NZ.

Along part of our walk is a large stand of prostrate (or dwarf) kowhai, Sophora prostrata. It's pretty much found only on the east of the Southern Alps, in lowlane to montane areas from southern Marlborough to South Canterbury, and there's this big patch of it lining the track in our back yard. Even better, it's in flower at the moment! It's similar but quite different from the other species of kowhai that we have growing on the property, with a much denser growth, all entwined and zigzagging, tiny leaves and flowers, and a completely different flowering period. The large kowhai on the way down to the river flower in August/early September, while the prostrate kowhai flower in October/November. So, two completely different variants of a native plant within 1km of each other - one relatively common, the other significantly less so.

Sophora tetraptera (southern kowhai) and native wood pigeons

Sophora prostrata (prostrate kowhai) bush

Sophora prostrata (prostrate kowhai) flowers

Onto more prosaic things. On Sunday we went on the Rotherham Garden Tour (a fundraising tour for the Rotherham school) of 8 gardens around the district. Garden tours are not my natural habitat but it turned out to be very interesting, especially towards the end of the day when we encountered a massive thunder and lightening storm! We went to private gardens you'd never get to see normally to gardens which are extensions of commercial nursaries.