Ages ago in the land of mer, I spent a couple of nights in Cass (a place not a person) doing pine wielding to remove all those damned weeds you call pines (shakes fist at North America for evolving the worst), while it wasn't much of the holiday since its just down the road abit I promised Ibis holiday photos anyway. Lets see if I can match the commentary to the right photos...

This is a view from the hut where we started removing the pines (a short way up from the hut we stayed at), since we were young fit lazy students we were sent through miles of horrible spikey bushs called matagori (sp?) which can grow over 2 metres high, whats worse they are native so we couldn't kill them; to find a very limited amount of pine trees which had been missed by contracters.

This was the view out of one of the windows at the hut we stayed at, the hut was free because it is one of the many field stations my university owns (I think I was told my university owns more field stations than any other in the world, or atleast certainly in the top 5) combined with the fact that we were doing restoration fact so the usual student fee didn't apply. If I've got my bearings right, one of the mountains is Mt Misery and another is Mt Horrible.

hills=background, highcountry farm=midground, native(ish) tussock=foreground

Pretty much the same shot but with a lake, I'm fairly sure I've been rafting on that lake but I might be a different one nearby.

More hills (how exciting), a rainbow and the back of an tourist who pointed out the rainbow.

A bunch of rocks, it was at a tourist stop with an underground stream passing through underneath, which I happened to have climbed through once. The rocks don't seem particularily interesting to me but tourists were taking pictures of it so I thought I'd pretend I was a tourist.

Conversly this is one of the things which would be pretty to a local but not to a tourist, native shrub btw.

A very blurred picture of beech trees (also native), they have a black trunks and are very pretty when there not blurred. They also have drops of honey drew on the tips of hairs sticking out of the trunk which makes for a sugary treat, honey drew is the waste sugar excreted from an insect which lives inside the tree, of course I don't usually tell foreigners that until after they've tried it.

Another one of the things which can only be appreciated by a local.

Sorry I didn't get any good pictures but I'm still learning to be a camera mother of mine so whenever there is something good to take a picture of, the last thing I think of is taking a picture, so I only got boring pictures of things which are still there when I remember I should be taking photos (like hills and rocks).

Oh thank you Pisces for such tremendously beautiful photos! It is stupendously beautiful where you live. I see my sister wasn't just taken to choice locations in New Zealand to take her pictures when she was there ... the beauty must truely be everywhere.

You were taking pine trees away ... but what kind of trees were you planting? I thought I might get to see some of your "show trees" near the path.

Very nice Pisces, New Zealand does in fact look wonderful. but what trees were you planting?

Well we were just killing trees up in Cass, I was tree planting the day after, back in city. The trees planted were natives of course (otherwise it would defeat the purpose), can't remember any of the names, you probably wouldn't know them anyway but there was a variety of flaxes, small trees and shrubs because it was a wetland area. I planted a few trees this Wensday at my uni because they have been trying to restore the streams running through it for a while and are having mixed success, but I planted a fern which is a NZ icon. I should get pics but I don't carry around a camera.

Boy it's hard to pick a favorites from all those beautiful pictures ... I love all the ones that have mountains in them, which is like all of them. Looks like living in LOTR scenery!

I think my favo though is the last picture of the stream with the beautiful reeds and grasses. No wonder you are such a crazy wild person Pisces. You are living in a spectacular wilderness land that is settled by somewhat wild people, eh?

Ok, that's it. New Zealand is now officially a place I must visit. Oh, and I wouldn't call those 'hills' I would call them 'mountains'. But that's just me, I live in the Midwest USA which is fairly flat.

I make a good tourism marketer.
If I can walk up them in a few hours without any trouble its a hill.

This is a mountain (largest in NZ infact).

Heres one I actaully took (or someone with me), this is the view from the mountain I go snowboarding at and you can see other mountains in the background. Ibis has seen this picture before in superlarge form (I shrunk it down to 25% on both axis.