Barring our trip to Karamea, detailed in the last several posts, I haven’t taken many pictures this year! I’ve been living life, not documenting it. Here are the ones I have from the last couple of months, though.
The last time I went to the States, four years ago, Mom gave me a quilt top that my sister had pieced, from blocks I cut out of a lot of fabric scraps before we moved to New Zealand, over 13 years ago. I put the quilt top in a closet and basically forgot about it because I didn’t know what I was doing with it. After she got through all the other sewing projects we had on hand, Mom still wanted something to do, so we figured out what to do with this quilt top. We found an old sheet for the back and a couple of flannel sheets for the middle, and she tied it together for a comforter. The next problem was to find a place to do the work. Our house is too small to lay it out on a floor, so she took it outside! The ground was dry, so it worked. It was amusing, though, to see a quilt laid out on the grass.
We found a playground in Karamea, and Miss Joy and Little Miss played on it for a little while one afternoon. This little girl is infatuated with playgrounds!
We arrived home from Karamea on a Friday, and spent the entire next day working through the ripe produce that had accumulated in the garden while we were away. This was over 250 pounds of tomatoes, and the green pile in the living room was cucumbers. As you can see, we ran out of room on the table for the washed tomatoes and had to make piles in the living room, too! We are very thankful to have a lot of jars of tomatoes to use over the winter.
The little girls love to dress up. I love how Little Miss sometimes reads to Miss Joy, who obviously loves that, too.
James is helping to build a house behind us, on the edge of the hill on which our village is situated. We took a field trip one morning to watch them pour the pad for it. How do you like the view? The mountains you can see are the Paparoa Range, between us and the Tasman Sea.
Just before Mom left, the children decided they needed to make Chocolate Cream Doughnuts, after we read a book in which the main character built up a business making them. I had the stove covered with pots that day, as I was canning, so they used a camp stove on the table to do the deep frying.
The children liked helping us peel tomatoes when we canned them this summer. What a mess they made of themselves, but we appreciated their help!
On the way home from taking Mom to the airport, we bought a budgie. Kea now lives with Jo-Jo in his cage, and they are very happy together. We started out with them in separate cages, but the birds soon let us know they wanted to be together. The funny thing is that Jo-Jo has put on so much weight since he has company that he can hardly fly now! We’re trying to force him to fly every day, hoping to slim him down a little. Kea flies very well. We can hold Jo-Jo, but Kea won’t let us touch her. She readily goes back into the cage after a fly, though.
Simon was feeling enough better by March that he looked for things to do outside. Obviously, the children benefited from this!
One Saturday morning, we started seeing vintage cars cruising around the village. Mr. Imagination took my camera and went out to take pictures of a lot of them. It was a rally that went around the various villages in the Grey Valley.
