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Napoleon Hill

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While my brother was here, the boys took him on a four wheel drive trip over Napoleon Hill, which is only a few miles east of us. In the 1860s, there was a thriving town there–apparently until the gold ran out! I believe there was some lumbering there, as well, but the town didn’t last very long. I spent some time one evening researching the town, but couldn’t find much information. This picture is in the front of a book we have titled Westland’s Golden Century 1860-1960; it seems to be the only picture in existence of the small town.

I do not enjoy four wheel driving, but I decided to go along this time, since my entire family, plus Mom and my brother, were going. We took two vehicles: James’s Mitsubishi Pajero, and the Land Rover that Simon had just finished fixing. Some friends went along as well, with their two vehicles–a Land Cruiser and the Nissan Safari that Simon had restored and then sold to his friend. It was quite an adventure! I’ll let the pictures tell the story, for the most part. This first picture shows the house where the people live who maintain the track. They collect a small fee from each vehicle that goes on the track. The waterwheel generates their electricity.

This is a side track that apparently must be attempted each time. James only went downhill, but Simon and his friend both had to go up it, as well. This is Simon going up in the Land Rover.

Going downhill on another side track. The Safari went first, then the Land Rover, and then the Pajero. Simon stood in the track to direct James in driving the Pajero down. I was in that one. These gullies were terrifying enough going down….

When we reached this mudhole, we found the Safari stuck in the mud. Simon pulled him out, and then he went right back in…and got out on his own that time.

After awhile we came out into an open meadow, and climbed to a plateau above it for a lunch break.

Then, we had to go back up the rutted area.

At this point, I climbed out and walked around to the top of that area. I couldn’t handle seeing it, let alone being inside!

This is the Pajero, which I had just vacated.

Somewhere at the top of the hill is the Napoleon cemetery, virtually the only trace left of the town. There is a fence around the area, and a few grave mounds still visible.

We finally made it down to the level of the creek, and drove in the water for a long time.

A waterfall provided a car wash. There was so much mud on the windscreen by that time that a clean was quite welcome!

Shortly before reaching the river, we drove through two tunnels.

After going through the tunnels, the Pajero went home. Mr. Imagination had to do his paper run, and I was finished. The other three vehicles, however, stayed there to go through a number of mud holes. And get stuck. And get pulled out. And get stuck again.

I put together a couple of movies of the trip, using video clips taken by me, Esther, and Gayle.

Nelson Creek and Croquet

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My youngest brother came in early February to spend two weeks with us, returning home with Mom when she went. It was wonderful to get to know him! He is enough younger than me that he was only four years old when I left home, and I never really knew him. We did a lot while he was here! We let him rest on the first day, and the next day took him to Nelson Creek for a picnic lunch. Mom had been wanting to go there ever since she arrived, and we never made it, so it finally happened. We ate lunch and then went across the swing bridge to walk the tracks through the bush.

I found this little garden on a log and thought it was beautiful. These plants are about an inch tall at most.

There were cicadas everywhere! The noise was so loud it was hard to hear each other talk at times. A funny thing I noticed? When I said the sound “s” I couldn’t hear it; the sound of the cicadas drowned it out!

I believe it was that same evening that someone called us to say that the old church in Ngahere was on the move, and would be going past our house after awhile! The building had been bought by someone from Arahura, near Hokitika, and after about three years it was finally being moved there. We wanted to watch it go past, so we went to the park across the road and played croquet while we waited. Such a fun evening! The first person had just gotten around the course and won when the church came into sight.

January 2026 Photos Part 2

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Here are the rest of my pictures from January. The big project in January was to replace the roof of our church, Reefton Baptist. The building is an old A-frame Scout hall. The first picture here was the day they trimmed trees away from the building and took part of a wall off, and started taking the top off the chimney.

The next Saturday, more people went. They took off the old roof and replaced it, and a couple of people spent the whole day jackhammering and sawing the chimney to finish taking it down below the level of the roof. They had the building water-tight by late that night.

Little Miss wanted a picture of my harvest one morning.

One day, Mom and I took the three youngest on a walk to the bridge. We located all three geocaches that are around the bridge–what fun!

Esther was in Timaru for a couple of weeks in January, and one evening she sent me a picture of the sunset. I returned the favor–ours was more brilliant!

The budgies are tamer all the time. Mr. Imagination enjoys them.

So do the girls!

When I went to the greenhouse one day to work, I found two cats enjoying the dry warmth in there!

A friend of ours bought a berry farm last year. He allowed us to come in and pick crops that would be going to waste. These were blueberry bushes in among tayberries. We came home with enough blueberries to last us most of the year!

Picking peas and beans is very enjoyable–see all the colors!

January 2026 Photos Part 1

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I’m not going to attempt to organize these pictures into categories. I’ve had enough trouble getting anything posted that I’ll just put them up in a few posts.

We finally threw this old foam mattress out, after it hadn’t been used in many years and was just taking up valuable space. The girls had fun with it for a couple of days, and then Mr. Imagination cut it into pieces for archery targets.

Some friends from Australia came to visit one evening, and the girls appropriated the man’s hat and sunglasses for a little while!

The cat got dressed up, too. Think she liked it?

One of Mr. Imagination’s knives.

One Sunday we had lunch with and spent the afternoon with some friends at Maruia. They have an outdoor aviary with a number of budgies, and the girls enjoyed seeing them.

This is the view from their deck, as one storm after another rolled through the mountains.

We did a lot of puzzles with Mom. That was a great way to spend relaxed time together! This first one was Miss Joy’s; the others were a group effort.

We had another hatch of chicks in January. After I took them out, while the unhatched eggs were still in the incubator, Princess took a nap with them. As soon as I started picking them up, to take them outside and open them to see what went wrong, she was wide awake. She knows that they will be her snack!

Birds and Slime Mold

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Usually, we see many birds on the flax blossoms in December, but this year they didn’t really show up until January. Then, we enjoyed many different species. It was fairly easy to get decent pictures of the tuis.

The bellbird was a different story! These are not only shy, they move fast. Most of the pictures turned out blurry.

These birds are frequently photographed, too.

This bird is Little Miss’s pet. The girls had great fun one day when they let her out in the garden.

I walked into the greenhouse one morning to turn off the water and saw something very strange on top of the mulch. When I looked closer, I decided it was probably a slime mold, so when Mom got into the house I told her about it. We went and had a look, and she agreed with me. It had already started to disintegrate, just an hour after I first saw it! The first picture was taken about 8:00 in the morning.

This was about 2:00 in the afternoon.

3:00 in the afternoon.

Two days later.

This was a fruiting body, where many slime molds join together to reproduce. Look up slime molds–they are fascinating! They are not animal, or plant, or even fungi, but in a classification of their own. They move, and have intelligence–without a brain. Amazing creation of God!

December 2026 Photos

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Here are the rest of December’s photos! For some reason, we end up with a lot of pictures of Princess. One would think she’s a popular pet?

My animal-lover was delighted to find this hedgehog in the garden one afternoon. We told her she had to put it back out there, so the little girls found it a lot of slugs and watched delightedly as it slurped them down.

Jenga blocks rarely get used for the game….

We enjoyed watching the birds on the flax blossoms, as usual in the spring.

Our summer holiday project this year was to replace the lower part of the garage wall in the carport. It was pretty rotten. They ripped off the old weatherboards and dug out a trench for a footer, after propping up the roof. When they were digging, they broke into a cave we didn’t know about, which, at some time in the past, had been formed under the floor of the garage! We don’t know for sure what the purpose was, but based on some paraphernalia found in the attic of the garage when we moved here we have some suspicions. It is filled in now.

The carport was quite a mess for awhile. It was a good thing we didn’t have much rain for that time! I hang laundry in there when it rains.

The flower garden before it turned into a jungle!

This was one of our favorite visitors to the flax–a tui!

Another hatch of chicks. We’ve had very good percentages with the last two hatches–so fun!

One evening, we went to the Domain for a cookout with Elijah’s LandSAR group. One woman brought these balls on strings, and taught Maria how to swing them rhythmically. It’s a Maori game.

We’ve done a number of puzzles with Grandma; this was the first.

The girls created this one afternoon on their bedroom floor with thumbtacks!

We end up with a lot of photos of the birds, too. They are also popular pets.

Half-grown chicks–I think this was the batch in the incubator in the earlier picture.

One Saturday just before Christmas, the boys went on an overnight kayak trip on the Ahaura River. They started in the Haupiri, which flows into the Ahaura, and ended at Jim’s Hut. James met them there with their food and camping gear (he couldn’t go on the water because of a badly-cut hand), and they all spent the night. They had planned to kayak the rest of the way to Ahaura on Sunday morning, but decided instead to load up and come out for church, which decision I was quite happy with. Mr. Imagination found this beetle at the hut.

The river just below Jim’s Hut.

November 2026 Photos

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I have not been keeping up with posting photos of our life very well! I guess this will just be a photo dump from November. Can you guess who took the first one? Yes, the cat lover–Miss Joy!

I’m guessing one of the girls took this picture, too, of a snail on the lemon tree.

Little Miss climbed the tall tree in our garden one day and took a lot of pictures. Our parking area was almost empty that day! The pink house is ours.

I took this picture one day while we were preparing the garden for planting. It sure looks different now! It’s a jungle today.

We were pulling up self-sown parsnips in this area.

We had visitors one day and I grabbed a picture of the water-gun fight to send to the friend who gave them the water guns.

When the children came inside a little while later they were cold, so Miss Joy got a pan of warm water for herself, and shared it with her three friends!

The greenhouse blew apart in the big storm the end of October, so the boys spent a couple of Saturdays rebuilding it. It is very nice now, except that the end wall still needs covered.

Towards evening, we heard the ice cream truck come through our village. A couple of the boys ran out to buy ice creams for everyone–think they enjoyed their treat?

Elijah saw the Southern Lights on the way home from work one night, and was able to capture them with his phone.

I think these two pictures should actually have been in the October post. We had a big truckload of compost delivered, and it had to be dumped on the edge of the street, so we spent an entire afternoon working hard and fast to move half of it in order to clear off the tarseal. We were glad, a few days later, that we had done that when the ambulance came to pick up the lady who lives in that house beside our garden. (This is the end of the street–it just stops there.)

Another cat-lover’s picture?

Sighting in the slingshot rifle he built. He actually killed a starling with it!

Garden Video–January 2026

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I took a little over ten minutes a couple of weeks ago to made a quick video of the garden. It’s amazing how much it has changed already in that two weeks! We’ve gotten a few tomatoes and the first several cucumbers by now, and the zucchinis are coming out our ears. I was thankful that ladies at church were happy to help us out with that problem today.

Spring Flowers

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One thing that I love about spring is the flowers! Our lemon tree, just outside the main door of the house, was covered in blossoms this spring. They smelled heavenly! I love it when the aroma of citrus blossoms wafts through the house.

Our one lonely peony, which has been moved several times in the last several years, put on its normal one bloom this year.

These columbines bloom every year in the bathtub in which we grow strawberries.

The flax plants have put up a record number of flower stalks, and we are enjoying seeing tuis, like this one, as well as bellbirds and wax eyes, sipping nectar.

I’m not sure how a lavender plant got into the strawberry barrel, but it adds a touch of color there.

One morning, Mom was going to take a walk with the girls, and I decided to drop what I was doing and go along. It was a beautiful morning!

A train came through while we were enjoying the flowers beside the tracks.

A few minutes later, we saw another train going the opposite direction!

We picked raspberries at a friend’s farm, and noticed lots of these flowering shrubs. I had an inkling they were a weed, so asked him. Sure enough, they are Himalayan Honeysuckle, and very invasive. They’re sure pretty, though!

October 2025 Photos

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Here are the rest of the photos from October. Can you tell that Miss Joy loves the cat?

Reepicheep

We had visitors for a couple of days, and the little children spent an hour or so reading the Magic School Bus books.

The girls on a moa in Waikari.

When we went to Dunedin, there had been snow earlier in the week, and this ball was still left on top of the hill.

Base 10 blocks are great for building castles!

Is she protecting the hatching chicks…or dreaming of chicken dinner?

See box? Get in box.

Getting ready to do a science lesson. We have the audio book, and he is supposed to follow along while he listens.

I picked up a book at the Bookarama that a friend recommended, and gave it to Elijah for his birthday. It turned out to be just the type of book he loves!

The little girls made this flax basket for my birthday present! Sadly, it fell apart as it dried. It was sure beautiful when it was new, though.

One day after church, James was sitting on a chair talking to a man. The man decided to sit down, so pulled up a soft chair. Not to be outdone, Simon grabbed a couch and pulled it over, so he could lounge while they talked!

Clouds as we traveled somewhere–I can’t remember where.

Mr. Imagination went through a phase of making bows.