Never boring, although a bit repetitive - the weather keeps changing. Really wet days help to keep things green, although these flower plumes of toetoe (Austroderia sp), a tall native New Zealand grass, are sodden and darkened with the rain and no longer their usual fluffy cream-coloured selves. Normally they have an elegant droop, but when this wet they are clumped and heavy. The streaks of rain are just visible against the backdrop of shrubs and treeferns at the edge of the stream where the toetoe grow.
It stops raining and starts blowing - drat, says the gardener - the wind hampers growth as plants hunker down, closing their leaf stomata to protect against the drying out that wind causes - reducing photosynthesis and thus growth as well. So much for the benefits of that rain. But the wind is quite something. Really windy days stir up the water along the rocky shore...
Flurries of seaspray, the surface of the water rippled and churned and the mist and whitecaps in the distance obscuring the line between sea and sky - this is turbulence caused by northerly gales. It is very difficult to convey how strong the wind is in photographs! The foreground is the intertidal zone on Wellington's south coast at high tide. Imagine being a little seaweed, churned by the water, then exposed at low tide - not an easy life.