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Children—March 2019

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I took quite a few pictures of the children in March! Here, we were doing a science experiment about camouflage. I bought some M&Ms, and they crumpled colored papers in three of the colors of the candies. Then, we put equal amounts of each of seven or eight colors of candy in the basket with the paper, and they were to see how many of each they could easily find in a minute. After counting and recording their results, of course, came the best part—eating them!

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Mr. Imagination and Little Miss were playing with the marbles one day and made pictures with them. I let Mr. Imagination take photos of their cats. The first is his, the second is hers, and they made the third together.

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The little boys asked for a box that came in the mail, one day, and they cut it up to make swords and shields. Little Miss wanted her own set, and struck this “fierce” pose when she wanted her picture taken.

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Little Miss badly wants her hair to be braided now. She hardly has enough, but she loves the results when I take the time for it! (She just saw me writing this and said, “That was when I had long hair.” Now she wants me to braid her hair again!)

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Mr. Imagination was picking up leaves to “start a campfire” one day, with Little Miss and Mr. Sweetie watching him.

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Last year, Simon gave Little Miss some cosmos plants for her birthday. This year, Esther bought her some seeds, so I started several plants. I couldn’t believe how huge they grew! She has loved having her own flowers to pick, although she can’t reach very many.

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While I was in the garden with the camera, I grabbed this picture of our marigolds. I haven’t grown many flowers in the past, but have decided it’s fun to have a few scattered among the vegetables.

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Odds and Ends From February 2019

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One evening, I took the camera down the hill to where I milk. We are deeply grateful to a local man for allowing us the use of this large paddock, and Poppy appreciates all the grass in it! Pansy has her own fenced-off corner to keep her from direct contact with her mother (for obvious reasons), but they can be fairly close. Notice the mountains across the river? I enjoy seeing them in all their different moods.

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To get into the paddock, we cut across the fence near the top of the hill, using this stile that my boys built (on the suggestions of the property owner). Then, we scramble carefully down a very steep hill.

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I wanted to make lasagna one day, so Mr. Imagination helped me make the noodles. Yum!

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This was one of our first big pickings of tomatoes. Last week’s, about a month after this photo was taken, we got about twice as many as are in this picture! We’re very thankful for such a good harvest from our 104 plants. Today, I’m making the third enormous batch of salsa, since my big boys eat so much. We just happen to have very spicy peppers this year, which makes the flavor they enjoy, so the popular vote this week was to make salsa instead of bottling whole tomatoes and juice. We had about 110 pints from the first two batches; I think we’ll have 60-70 more after today. Hope that’s enough! Hard-working teenage boys eat a lot, and one of them was eating it by the cupful when I asked for taste-testers this morning. Notice the pink and black tomatoes? We had a bumper crop from our heirloom plants this year. We’re loving eating those super-tasty ones!

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Little Miss is watching me write this. She wanted me to write down her story, too: The man was picking apples. Then he saw the big, bad wolf, and then he made a brick house quickly and then he went in it and the big, bad wolf said, “Let me come in, let me come in.” Then the guy said, “No,” and then the big, bad wolf said, “Well, then, I will huff and I will puff and I will blow your house in.” Then he huffed and he puffed and he couldn’t blow the man’s house in. He said, “There’s a farmer’s tree down the road. Will you get up at 6:00 in the morning and come with me to the farmer’s?” The end.

Boys and Their Projects

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My boys have been coming up with some good projects lately, like usual. Mr. Intellectual has built this chair. It hasn’t been used yet, because he wants to treat it for wood borer before he finishes it.

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Mr. Diligence was being a clown one day. His little sister had been given a sticker book for Christmas, and when she finished taking the stickers out, he took all the extra and made a hat for himself.

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Simon made these hatchet handles while I was gone. The red one is rimu, the white one is willow, and the dark one is blue gum. He said that wood was so hard that it took twice as long to shape and sand as the others did. The rimu is a pretty hard wood, but brittle; it splintered when he was throwing the hatchets. In its defense, it was 80 years old; we tore it off the inside of the walls of Esther’s room last year. The blue gum is the strongest, and he likes it the best. He made the handle for the knife in the second photo from some redwood, when we lived at the last house.

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Mr. Diligence built me this cupboard from some of those rimu boards. He spent several months on it, off and on, until he finally got the last coat of teak oil on it and the boys brought it into the house a few weeks ago. There are five shelves in it, and it is a perfect pantry for me. Now, the linen closet is much better organized, and the shelves are no longer in danger of collapsing from the weight of the cans stacked on them!

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Mr. Diligence also got started on building the window seat we have been talking about ever since we bought this house. (Can you tell that he has to have a project to work on?) He built a bin into it for Little Miss’s toys. We’re planning to cover it with a cushion as soon as we get hold of a foam mattress to cut down to size. We bought the upholstery fabric for it—but our piece of leftover foam rubber wasn’t big enough. So, the seat is rather hard right now.

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The little boys and Little Miss like to play in the sandbox. One day, they built this elaborate castle.

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Simon occasionally spends some time working on his Austin. One day I found him polishing the chrome.

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Another day he took it on a short test drive. Little Miss was getting ready to cry because I told her she couldn’t go along, so I asked if she wanted to take a picture. This is what she got as he was going out the street. Simon was excited that the car ran, but found out that he has to replace the gas lines. Also, he couldn’t get it started again after he got home.

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January 2019 Photos

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Whew…I’ve been getting a bit behind. I really don’t recommend taking a three-week trip overseas in the middle of summer, then trying to jump right back into school and preserving the harvest when you get home, if you want to stay on top of things. And then, of course, pregnancy to add to the mix…and a three-day trip to the other side of the island last weekend…well, anyway, here are the last few photos from January. Sometime this week I hope to look through memory cards again so I can start catching up on everything that’s been happening since the middle of February!

The canoe got its last strips inserted, and Mr. Intellectual finished sanding the outside, before we left. They got the fibreglass they need to cover it, but haven’t started that process yet.

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When we see an escort vehicle go past with an “Oversize Vehicle” sign on it, we usually watch to see what is coming. Usually, we see a large digger (excavator), but sometimes it’s something more exciting, like this bulldozer from a gold mine near Reefton. This machine is HUGE!

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Here is a more common sight. I think a little boy was experimenting with my camera to see how he could best get pictures of vehicles going past.

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This was one of our first harvests of zucchini. Isn’t it pretty? We’ve had many times more than this with subsequent harvests; I’m very happy with a number of the crops from the garden.

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Here is a bellbird, as the flax blossoms were coming to an end.

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One day, the boys picked a bunch of peas from a neighbor’s field, after he offered us what we wanted. The boys spent the morning building a pea sheller. It worked well—for a few minutes. Then, something stripped out and they finished the job by hand!

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We sure enjoyed the kittens before they went to new homes!

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And on the Home Front…

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My sons who stayed home from America had quite a surprise for us when we came home. I thought they were joking when they talked about building the bunkbeds in their room which I had suggested some time ago—but they actually did it! I was very impressed.

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On the other side of the room, they built a closet to store their clothes and other belongings. This takes the place of some shelves that used to hang above a bed, which I always thought was a bit dangerous, and a couple of dressers. There are a lot of shelves inside this closet. The room feels much larger now, and the boys have room to have a table at which they can play games or build models. So nice! They were very excited to show it to us when we arrived home; I had to look in the window at it before I even came into the house! They also installed a light in the kitchen that I’d been wanting, to replace a fixture I hated.

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They also had time for some fun. A few days before we came home, they went fishing with a friend two evenings. He has a Kon Tiki, or longline, for fishing in the ocean. A small motor pulls the line out, and then another reels it in. They didn’t have a camera, but Gayle took a few pictures of their catch with his phone. These are mostly sharks, which are fairly good eating.

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The Austin

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Simon’s boss was given a 1953 Austin a month or so ago, and he didn’t want yet another old car to restore, so he gave it to Simon. Such a car must be stored under cover in this climate, so Simon went to town and bought supplies to build a carport for it. He and his brothers have been busily building.

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The car came home a day or two later:

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The boys played around with it but couldn’t get it going until a friend who loves vintage cars came over one evening. With his help, they got it to start. The next morning, I got a video of Simon starting it himself. Several days after that, the car had to be moved so firewood could be put in our carport (his wasn’t ready yet). The car is so small it would have been easy to push—but no, of course Simon had to start it and see if it would go! He got it to go forward, but can’t get it in reverse yet without stalling it. He also can’t run it more than a couple of minutes because the radiator isn’t hooked up.

Boats

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Mr. Intellectual continues to work on his strip canoe. He finally got all the strips glued together, and has been working on sanding it. It’s beautiful! Here it is nearly finished, and then with the last strip in place and part of the sanding done.

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Meanwhile, the boys have been enjoying their barrel boat. Here it is after the first use, when they went down the Grey River.

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This was the day they used it next, when we went down to the creek below our town with some friends to spend a Sunday afternoon in the water. They punted up and down the creek a number of times, but then that got boring, so they decided to sink it. The only way they could get it to sink was to take the plug out of the end and let it fill up with water—and even that took a long time!

Then, they used it on Christmas Day on a lake—I’ll publish a post in a few weeks about that. The most recent time they used it, Simon took Esther and one of her friends, and our two little boys, down the Grey River. They sunk it, and now they have to rebuild the motor—or dry it out, or something. It ended up quite dented, as you can see in this photo that Mr. Intellectual took to show someone.

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December 2018 Photos

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As usual, there are a lot of photos that don’t fit in any other post.

Mr. Sweetie was enamoured with this cicada that he found. It’s only an inch long.

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We planted sunflowers in a square for a playhouse for the two youngest. They figured out what is was pretty quickly, and Mr. Imagination built a table for it. He took these next three pictures.

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Little Miss loves helping me in the kitchen. She was actually quite helpful when I made Tomato-Cheese Pinwheels recently.

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The canoe continues to take shape. Mr. Intellectual adds a strip or two every day.

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The kittens are growing! Here they are at a month old.

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This is Mr. Sweetie’s lego airplane.

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Here is another example of the interesting vehicles we see driving past. This is an old Land Rover.

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One afternoon, Little Miss helped Esther and I to make tortillas. She loves helping in the kitchen!

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Another day, I sorted through a box of clothes set aside for her to grow into. She was thrilled to find that she could now wear this pretty dress!

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If you want a free Kindle book today, Chautona Havig’s A Bird Died is free for a few days. This is one I really enjoyed; read my review of it here.

Garlic

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Two friends have asked me in the last few weeks how I braid garlic and onions. I happened to have a pile of garlic that I decided to braid this morning, and after I got started thought it would be a good chance to show how I do it, for those who were curious.

Start by fastening three heads together. I usually use string, but rubberbands were handier this morning, so that’s what I used this time.

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Braid a few times, then start adding in another head with each braid.

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Continue till it’s long enough, and then stop adding more. Braid a little farther without adding any, and then tie it off.

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Here are my finished braids of this year’s skimpy crop (I think it was a combination of poor soil and not enough sunshine where we put it), and I’ll have the boys hang them in the food storage room later.

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The softneck garlic I used to grow in Michigan was easier to braid, but I’ve learned that it’s possible with this hardneck garlic as well. When we want to use some, we’ll just cut or twist off a head.

Flax

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We have a very large New Zealand flax plant outside our window. We have been enjoying watching the birds and bees pollinating it since it started blooming.

First, the flower stalks grew buds.

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Then, the flowers opened.

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Sometimes, this tui comes to call.

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There are always bees around.

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We also see a lot of starlings getting a drink of nectar. They end up with an orange cap on their head! I haven’t gotten a good picture of that, so here’s the best we could do.

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Here’s another starling.

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A bellbird has been coming, too, but it’s shy enough that if it sees the camera it is gone. This is the best I could get of it.

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We are really enjoying the birds as they enjoy the flax flowers!