Recent Road Trips

Amid the chaos and pace of gearing up for Spring with plenty of gardening activities, doing repairs, maintenance and renovations on our house and beginning our homeschool journey with Phoebe, we have managed to grab two small breaks away this month so far.
Our first trip was to Levin and involved a lovely stay at Annandale Manor (a cracker of a charming B+B, where Phoebe asked if we could bring Luke "next time we come") on the way there and a night catching up with Unca Ray and Auntie Raema on the way home in Napier. Very cool - we even managed to collect our (reasonably large - as in the car was completely full!!) order of bare-rooted fruit trees from the Edible Garden Nursery in Palmerston North on the way back home.

Our second journey was this week and we got up through the Waioeka Gorge to Whakatane, via Opotiki - compulsory stop at Rostcards Cafe, of course! I love the powder room - oh, and the coffee's really good - oh, yeah - and service with spark!
We stayed at the Thornton Beach Holiday Park in a cabin and enjoyed walking the windswept beach and just relaxing a little.
Pretty grainy shot - Phoebe LOVES jumping/trampolines/circus-influenced play, etc - so this massive jumping pillow was right up her alley!
After meeting a wonderful couple on a biodynamic and organic farmlet in Whakatane we fitted in a dip at the Awakeri Hot Springs before driving back home.
This cute guy is a beautiful native owl, our Morepork, perched high up in a Mamaku in the fernery area of the farmlet we visited - we were very surprised to see such a rare daytime sight! Again, not the greatest pic - am learning how to drive the camera....

Mad Dog Luke

Not really sure (how could one, ever?!) what Luke was thinking here... one of our zero degrees mornings early last week...I mean, he had a room temperature bowl of filtered rain water right by his dog bed all night and still here he is trying to lick a frozen trough with sediment of goodness knows what, bugs and pine pollen...go figure! Luckily, he did NOT get stuck.

"Arrrrgggh!, Oim a Poirate!"...or..."Phoebe's First Two Baby Teeth Lost"

It happened today - our girl has lost her first TWO baby teeth - the end of an era and the beginning of a whole new period in her development. - the Pirate stage...
She had these 2 wobbly, worn-down stubbs threatening for the past two weeks - with plaintive pleas for this food or that or I can't possibly eat dinner or lunch or whatever - totally did her best to play us!
And today, first the most wobbly peg toppled forwards a final time, coaxed out by the feverish movements of her little impatient tongue. And then in record time, I imagine, the second was ripped out by the child, with a fair amount of the red stuff - "it fell out!" - YEAH, RIGHT!
Anyhow, it seems a big deal to us and marks the passage of time very visually...I wonder what the tooth fairy has up her sleeve for this pair of twin teeth tonight?

Felted play food

wow - this is a record from this blog - it really has been a drippy, wet, inside type of day...and this is another of our activities today...felted play food for Phoebe. I admit, most of these 'foods' were made over the last couple of weeks, here and there. Today we made the beetroot and the giant strawberry...still working on proportion - although, apparently, Phoebe's rabbits don't mind a bit, which is where it all started.Actually, to be honest, it all started in an adult attempt at halting the hundreds of thousands of TINY pieces of paper of all kinds and colours of paper that were cut up to make all manner of foods for her 'guys'. "GUYS" in itself is the definition of play: cats, dogs, rabbits, kids (dolly-type, not goat), pigs, sheep, horses, etc, etc. The week Phoebe spent up on Waiheke Island with her best friend, Lulu, was my opportunity to release some of this paper food. Well, I had NO IDEA just how many stashes of food there was in and around her room and play area. I found old tea and tissue boxes FILLED to the brim with cut up paper, crumpled tissues (new ones, I hoped!), pieces of fleece and fabric, nut shells, glass marbles and gems, tiny pieces of driftwood - a you name it, it was dinner for someone - kind of discovery ( and quite a genuine fire risk, too!). And I was definitely the intrepid explorer-cum-ruthless-destroyer! You may be thinking how come I didn't know there was all this stuff? Well, I don't know what parents of other highly creative children do - I barely keep up with the phenomenal rate of creation that absolutely steams out of this amazing child of ours - she is continually making something - so it is one of our dreaded parts of the day - tidying up or putting order back into her area of creativity and play. "I know a little gnome, who likes a very tidy home....." Hmmmm.

The Sun did Not Shine It was TOO Wet to Play...

"The sun did not shine.
It was too wet to play.
So we sat in the house
All that cold, cold, wet day."
~Dr. Seuss, of course!

So, a bit on the side of wet today...so far 60mms of rain have fallen, which those in more Southern reaches of the Hawkes Bay would be extremely grateful for...here at Possum Bend, well, our cup just runneth over...AGAIN!
This is what gardeners do on days like this when they can't garden - they marvel at how many pairs of gloves they have, dripping themselves fresh and clean on the line...
...and... BLOG!!

Phoebe's Photo Gallery May 2009

This is what Phoebe has chosen from her own photos of venturing around the property with our camera a week or two ago

first frost and a pond update...

Crunching across an icy-crisp lawn on a regular basis is something I'm just not used to, being a more Northern Lass until last year. I am still in the novelty stage with it, enjoying the beauty of the effect. I know this won't last as being a gardener, I'll soon be ruing it's presence as it slowly hamstrings what I can get to grow through the Winter.

It was a mere 3 degrees as we ventured out on our animal-feeding rounds on Friday morning. Phoebe has made sure her pixies are very snug in the basket, complete with coats, blankets and pillows...

...and here is an update on the pond...slowly taking shape. The piles of rocks, driftwood and other wildlife dwelling materials is gradually building up. We have been encouraged by the rare appearances of a bright green frog...and have installed a family of fish, a red spider-lily variety of water lily and plenty of oxygen weed. Around it we've planted red daylillies, some red and some green cabbage trees (tiny at this stage), some red-splashed bromeliads, calendula and chamomile. In the Spring we'll add as many companion-type plants that encourage beneficial insects into our garden - and hopefully control some of the beasties we had finding it way too easy to get a decent meal in our gardens this last Spring and Summer!