Weekly Photo Challenge: Street Life

Good morning from a warm and sunny Hastings again.

It is nice to be home.  It took a lot longer than I expected to get my parents back home together.  I spent 10 days on my own house sitting.  I thought it would be a great time to get some knitting and crocheting done without children or husband.  But in fact I ended up breaking my arm in the elbow so it ended up just watching TV.  The hardest part was not being able to use the camera.  I did try to place the camera onto anything I could find but in the beginning I just had to sit and stare at it.  That was really, really frustrating.  Then my mother came up to look after me or so she thought but it was the other way around.  My father stayed in Wellington another 10 days before coming up to the hospital here.  Then that was another 10 days before he came home.  Now they have a lot of care in place so that I could come home to my family.  They missed me a lot which was nice to know.

I did have internet access but with a very restricted data cap so doing too much surfing was out of the question.  I have so missed what everyone has been up to.  I was able to come home every few days just to empty out my inbox so I did manage to see some of your amazing work.  I just didn’t have time to sit down and comment or like them.

It has been great to see what everyone has come up with for this challenge by The Daily Post.  For this I have gone back to our Blossom Parade that is held every September in the CBD.  Hastings is or was known as the Fruit Bowl of New Zealand.  This is because it is a relatively small city surrounded by orchards.  We have a major cannery that provides a lot of jobs here – Watties.  Unfortunately the wine industries have taken over a lot of the orchards.  Hopefully, eventually the orchards will take over again.  This means we have amazing fruits when in season.  The blossom parade dates back to the 1950’s and celebrates the arrival of spring.

Everyone dresses up and decorates cars and other vehicles with paper blossoms following a theme.  In 2011 we had the Rugby World Cup here in New Zealand and we had the French and Canadian teams involved in the parade as well.  The is a competition for the best float in different categories.  My husband loves to take part in it with his children from the early childhood centre he works in.  The atmosphere is just brilliant – great for families.

Here are a couple of other great blogs to check out for this challenge:

http://dailypost.wordpress.com/2014/03/28/street-life/

http://joeinfocus.wordpress.com/2014/03/29/weekly-photo-challenge-street-life/

http://nowathome.wordpress.com/2014/03/29/weekly-photo-challenge-street-life/

Weekly Photo Challenge: Street Life

http://nadiamerrillphotography.wordpress.com/2014/03/29/weekly-photo-challenge-street-life/