These are photos I took today while visiting the Buddhist monastery on Marshlands road with my photo club. The monastery has some lovely gardens and quiet peaceful spots, and had it not started raining on us, no doubt it would have been quite a restful place to be for the morning.

Cantabrians were certainly in need of some respite today after the very unpleasant 5.3 after shock we had last night. I was at home not far from the epicentre (yet again) and it was quite violent – and this time I was actually aware of things falling down and breaking. Geologists had been expecting a 5.0 but I think the general public were trying very hard to forget about earthquakes for a while (I’ve developed the ability to block out the damaged sites as I drive around Christchurch). Last week I even put some photos back on the wall and bought an ornament for my office, thumbing my nose at mother nature I guess. Well, she thumbed her nose right back at me. By lunchtime, we were sick of discovering broken items, so took off for the mall, but I couldn’t seem to muster any enthusiasm for replacing our broken crockery. We certainly didn’t want to spend much money on them either – why do that when they just end up on the floor!