Seldom is art so heroically understandable. Planting the seeds of knowledge!

But it’s a changing world. And so more or less across the street it looks like this…

I was intrigued by the idea of a plaque in the sidewalk in front of a vacant car dealership. More San Bruno history (with transcription helpfully provided by text recognition on my phone, first time I’ve used this feature)!

OLD TIN SCHOOL HOUSE

FIRST CITY HALL

IN 1904 FATHERS OF CHILDREN BUILT SAN BRUNO’S FIRST SCHOOL IT WAS CONSTRUCTED Of WOOD AND COVERED WITH TIN.

A LARGER SCHOOL WAS BUILT AND THE BUILDING BECAME CITY HALL IN 1915.

REMODELED AND ENLARGED IN 1931. IT SERVED UNTL 1953 WHEN THE PRESENT CIVIC CENTER WAS BUILT.

This ginormous tiger lily, fresh off the set of Fantasia or possibly Avatar, came from our very own backyard. Lee had to cut it before it took over the whole property.

Since New Years Auckland has enjoyed some pretty crap weather. It’s been windy and rainy. And even on the clearer days it’s been tough to swim because the rain washes a bunch of yuck into the bay.

But we found a brief window on Sunday morning and took full advantage. Out past that island, then swing to the right just past the edge of the picture, and then back in. It was mostly calm, with a few waves breaking out on the reef to make it interesting.

I felt like I earned my blueberry cream cheese muffin…

Obviously I have a bit of work to do to stain the fence, but soon enough that stick you can barely make out in the middle of this bed will be supplying an abundance of delicious babaco fruit.

We got this cutting from Heather, a pétanque friend, who has a gorgeous backyard garden.

And then, just by chance because now we know what they look like, we saw an older one on a path we walk often. I hope ours grows a few more leaves, however.

This giant ficus tree is the dominant feature of a house just up the road from us. It sold last year, and at the time thought to ourselves that the new owners would have plenty of work ahead of them.

We haven’t met them yet, but they seem like the kind of people we want on the street… always decorating for the holidays, painting and fixing, that sort of thing.

And now they’ve totally won us over with this fairy house door… perfectly placed!

We saw this sci-fi movie style corridor behind one of those normally closed doors on the outside of the supermarket. It was even more tall and narrow in person.

We spent New Years Eve with our friends Malcolm and Di, and amazingly made it to midnight still awake. We walked down to the end of their road to see the Sky Tower fireworks show.

We’re hoping that even more people get to have a great 2023 (except for the seditionists, the invaders, the deforesters, the propagandists, etc).

At the start of yesterday’s swim we saw a photographer all set up to take sunrise pictures. It turned out I know her husband through work… another example of what a pleasantly small town Auckland can be.

She took this shot of us wading into the water and sent it along later in the day… beautiful! It’s created using a technique called Intentional Camera Movement (ICM) where you jiggle the camera using a slow shutter to create these blurry images.

Thanks Anna for the picture, a great way to remember my last swim of 2022.

Until recently, this house and yard were obscured by piles of stuff, old broken cars, etc. An old man would sit on the porch and watch the world go by.

One day, Lee saw it all organized into big piles on the lawn, and now there’s temporary fencing across the front. With all the stuff gone, we can see the house sagging and rotting more clearly.

It will likely be torn down and replaced by half a dozen townhouses. Densification certainly makes sense in the big picture, but it’s a little disconcerting every time we see this happen. Hopefully the man who lived there has been able to move somewhere with a little more social support… if he owned this property outright he just got a check that should cover his life’s expenses quite comfortably.