Only two Sundays ago at twelve at night we had a big earthquake again in the South Island of New Zealand. It was a 7.8 and our cottage shook and moved and we held onto the door post of the bedroom.
It is a very frightening experience and because we went through the Christchurch earthquakes six years ago a lot of memories flooded back.
In Kaikoura on the East coast of the South Island there is a lot of damage and big slips and rock falls and no way to get in or out of town.
It will take months or longer to get this tourist town back to some normality and I feel for the people living through this disaster, I really knows what it is like.
For months I have been working on my mosaic around our fireplace, it resembles our fishpond and it took so long to finish, because I had many other jobs to do.During the earthquake, the first thing that went through my head " O no, I hope my mosaic won't break, I just got it done".
Isn't it silly, like my mosaic is so important! Maybe that is how the brain works in a threatening event, thinking of something irrelevant as a way to cope.
The next morning in daylight Henk checked the cottage and we only have a few cracks and no damage and when I walked around the garden I felt really blessed to live here.
We have no mansion and our cottage feels sometimes a bit small, but we have so much to be thankful for.
Fish pond |
Our cottage |
The cabin in the front |
Garden beds |
a new vegetable patch |
Ollie and the view over the hopfields |