Pohutukawa

Pohutukawa trees are New Zealand’s Christmas trees. They are largely a coastal tree and they flower from late November until the New Year. When I arrived in Auckland most had finished flowering, but occasionally you find one that is a late flowerer and today, on my way back to Waikato from Auckland, I passed this tree, still partly in flower, shading the front of a small country church. An interesting thing about NZ’s wooden churches is that they’ve survived the aftermath of the Christchurch earthquake in 2011. Many churches built in the last century were constructed in brick and most were on foundations that did not receive the approval of the inspectors who’ve visited all brick buildings in the years since February 2011. The Presbyterian church in Te Awamutu, my local town, was built in bricks only about fifty years ago and at that time it replaced an old wooden structure. Last year the brick church was demolished because it would have been too expensive to have modified the foundations to render them earthquake proof. Such a shame the elders thought that they needed to replace their wooden church 50 years ago.
Kate