While Wanganui families were enjoying a Christmas lunch outdoors, Loretta Gibson and her nearest and dearest were indoors with two fans on full blast and all the windows closed.
For four weeks over Christmas, the seed-laden kapok from the trees in McGregor/Kowhai Park opposite her Anzac Parade home fills theair and lies like a blanket of snow over everything in her garden and neighbouring properties.
This is Mrs Gibson's third Christmas in the home she loves, and the third time the tree has dispersed its kapok-laden seeds over the Wanganui East neighbourhood: "It's impossible to live with. I just wish it would melt away."
Mrs Gibson said her nose constantly ran. By afternoon, the air was filled with wind-scattered kapok.
"It covers everything if I leave a window open; floors, furniture, my food," she said. "The heat in my home is unbearable and I can't sit on my deck because these white balls of fluff drop into my drink, in my hair and mouth, and my washing gets covered in it."
She couldn't sweep it away because it floated with the movement.
Mrs Gibson loves trees but would like the council to give this variety the chop. She said her neighbours had tried for years to get the council to act, and when she told them she planned to make another approach, their reply was, "Good luck".
The trees were brought to Wanganui by a Mrs McGregor who lived on Willis St, for whom McGregor Park is named.
