Snow time

The Weather Gods gave us our first taste of snow last Tuesday night - cool temperatures and sleety rain during the day gave way to large blobs of the white stuff around 10pm giving this shot of my deck before I went to bed...

First snow 5 June 2012

Wednesday morning was fine and chilly and my driveway mud puddles were covered with a thick sheet of ice. I left home at 8.30am before the sun had made an appearance on my section giving this photo a particularly icy look:

It was hard to see the icy patches on the road so it was a slower walk to work than usual. Emma is teaching me how to conduct field trips for school groups that visit the island and Wednesday was the turn of the Garden Mound Track - a fun walk in the summer and even more so in the snow! Islanders set aside Garden Mound as a conservation area early in the piece so it has never been milled; huge rimu, rātā, miro and kāmahi dominate the forest and I saw an abundance of orchids. It was jolly cold up there but sights like these made up for it...

Snowy fungi

Emma in the snow

Lovely bush with giant trees

Great views from the lookout