When you need water for irrigation, and you know that two of your neighbors have found water at 6-10 feet below the surface, and you have lots of boys with lots of energy, what do you do? You get them interested in the challenge of digging a well by hand, that’s what! The four oldest boys have been spending every spare minute for the past week or more, digging. The soil is solid clay, under the top 6-8 inches of topsoil, and with the drought that is now well into its second year, that clay is bone dry and not quite but almost rock-hard. They are chipping it away, a 6-inch level at a time, with their spade, and using it to fill in holes in the paddock. Mr. Inventor and Mr. Diligent built a crane to lift the buckets of clay out. I thought it was pretty ingenious! It only lasted a few hours, long enough for me to get these pictures, and then a screw came out of the hinge. They are now pulling the buckets of clay up with a rope. As of last evening, the well was 5.5 feet deep. Hopefully in another week I can report success! 
Canterbury
Gore Bay on Waitangi Day
Waitangi Day (the anniversary of the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi between the Maori and the English in 1840) fell on a Saturday this year, so Monday this week was a holiday. As always, we enjoyed having Gayle home for the day. He and the boys spent the morning in the garden, ripping out the pea vines and working the ground to replant the fall garden, while Esther and I worked on cabbage in the house. Then, we took a picnic lunch out to Gore Bay. It was a gorgeous day, just right to sit on the beach! I thought it was a bit cool for swimming, but all the boys except Mr. Imagination went in for awhile.
Esther read for awhile.
Mr. Diligence found several rocks and experimented with what color they made when he wrote with them on another rock.
Mr. Imagination picked a handful of nasturtiums, which grow wild along the sea.
On our way home, we drove through the Domain, and came across a family we know. We invited them to our house for dinner that evening, and had a nice visit—a perfect ending to a good day!
January 2016 Pictures
One morning when Mr. Intellectual was making his breakfast, he cracked an egg into a cup and found three yolks! He was tickled at his good fortune, and took a picture of it. Then, he cracked two more eggs and they were both double yolkers! So, from three eggs, he had seven yolks, as shown in the second picture, which he took to document his good morning.
Mr. Inventor brought one of his goslings in to show me how big it is now. Compare that to when it was newly-hatched, in October!
The boys spent a rainy day playing with Lincoln logs. Mr. Sweetie was impressed with this house-inside-a-house that he built.
The big boys made towers!
We watched a movie one week, Sheffey, the story of a circuit-riding preacher in, I believe, Tennessee in the 1800s. Gayle was holding the two little boys, and Little Miss got jealous, so announced that she wanted to be on his lap, too—right in the middle! I say we watched it one week, because it took four or five evenings to get through it.
On our way home from church one Sunday afternoon, we stopped for a few minutes at Saint Anne’s Lagoon to look around just a bit.
Mr. Inventor’s ducks enjoyed the pool they had for a week or two after a recent rain!
When we went to Christchurch for a day recently, we ate lunch in a small park, and then used the playground for awhile. Little Miss loved the swing ride she got with her big brother!
Summer Afternoon
A few weeks ago, I wrote a post one afternoon while I was outside watching my three little ones play. Here are a few more pictures I took that afternoon.
Little Miss took a long nap on my lap. That got rather uncomfortable, but she liked it! I got five books reviewed.
After playing in the water in the old bathtub for awhile, the little boys warmed up in the sun with the inner tubes.
Mr. Inventor’s geese checked us out.
After she woke up, Little Miss went exploring again.
That was such a lovely afternoon!
The Two Littlest
Mr. Imagination woke up early one morning, but by 7:00 he was asleep again on my chair!
She did it! Little Miss figured out how to get a cloth over her head. She worked on that trick for a long time.
One morning after a rain, Little Miss found a puddle just her size and had fun stepping in it.
She also thought it was fun washing her hands and feet in the milk in the cat dish. Mom was not impressed (and neither was the cat!).
Little Miss is a Daddy’s girl! She wants to be with Daddy whenever she can be. Just before I took this picture, I saw her standing there with her hand on his back, watching intently.
Mr. Sweetie took this one.
Everyone likes to play with Little Miss. One evening, she was “throwing” a ball and chasing it, to the great delight of everyone. Another time, Mr. Handyman brought her into the house in a bucket. She frequently gets bucket rides. This picture with a ball was taken on her birthday.
Mr. Imagination didn’t finish his breakfast, a pancake with applesauce, cut up into bite-sized pieces. Little Miss found it and ate about half, then scattered the rest across the floor.
Mr. Imagination found this dress in the closet one day and badly wanted Little Miss to wear it. The boys love seeing her dressed in really girly clothes.
While I was shelling peas one day, Mr. Sweetie got the camera and took some pictures of the two little ones. This is what I was enjoying watching while I shelled the peas.
That turkey is as big as she is! Mr. Inventor thought it was pretty cute to see her investigating the turkeys. He said she walked right up to them.
While we were eating outside where it was cooler one evening, she stuck her foot in Daddy’s plate. That wasn’t what she wanted to do!
One day, she spent half an hour or more sitting on this box, playing with her empty pill bottle and one or two other things.
After I emptied a jar of yogurt, she took it and the spoon and cleaned out more!
January Garden
The garden is doing splendidly! My boys have been a great help again this year. We’ve picked cabbage twice; this is the first harvest—30 heads! We made 110 pounds of sourkraut that day, more than we need for the year. It took only about 4 hours from picking the cabbage to finishing the cleanup.
Another day I picked a bushel and a half of peas. It was a lovely day to sit under a tree to shell them.
Little Miss loves to eat peas!
Mr. Intellectual has his own beautiful garden at the edge of the big garden. Here is Mr. Imagination showing the size of his brother’s sunflowers and corn.
This is our corn and pumpkins, with cabbage just beyond, and potatoes on the other side of that.
Little Miss likes zucchini, too!
Mr. Intellectual has been harvesting dandelion roots as well, and making them into “coffee”. He looked up directions and figured out how to roast them. Yum!
Videos of Little Miss
Little Miss has some brothers that love her. She is also becoming quite a chatterbox. It’s really hard to record her talking, because when she sees the camera she quits. I did manage to get this clip from behind. Looks like Mr. Imagination wanted in on the video, as well! In the second one, we had leftover whipped cream from a special treat one evening (waffles served with cherry pie filling and whipped cream), so Mr. Diligence fed some of it to her while he cleaned out the cup.
This Afternoon and Last Night
It’s pretty hot today, so I’m letting my little people cool off with water. They would love to go to a swimming pool, but the big boys are all at work so I’m giving them the next best: cold water in a bathtub, with a plastic tub for Little Miss. This is when I really like having a laptop, so I can watch them while still getting something done! This is what I see as I write this:
When I went outside last evening to take a few pictures for the post I did featuring the garden, I got to enjoy a brilliant double rainbow. It was much more beautiful than these pictures show.
This is one of this year’s experiments. Right after we planted the tomatoes, I had broccoli and cauliflower that also needed planted, but didn’t have any space for them. I put some between rows of tomatoes. A chicken ate most of them while they were tiny, but some of the broccoli survived. It’s getting taken over by tomatoes by now, but I noticed that some are starting to form heads!
The sunset was gorgeous, and I always enjoy seeing the Indian Runner ducks running in single file across the paddock. The geese were pretty active, too, but the turkeys were going to bed. It was dark enough that my camera flashed, and in this picture, the second one I took, they were getting nervous.
Tonight’s Shopping Trip, and Frost Recovery
I had great fun cooking dinner tonight. My first step was to make a shopping trip. I walked through the garden collecting ingredients to put with some cooked lamb I had in the fridge, to make a delicious stew. This was what Mr. Diligent and I picked in a few minutes:
I love this time of year! We eat so well.
Our late frost was five weeks ago already. The zucchinis are completely recovered; within three weeks they were the size they had been before that frost. The tomatoes, on the other hand, while they are the same size again, have really been knocked back. They are finally blooming again now, but I’m afraid we won’t get much of a crop. Here are pictures of the same zucchini plant and the same tomato plant, the day of the frost, three weeks later, and tonight.
One Year Old!
Little Miss turned one yesterday. She didn’t seem to care one way or the other, but we are having a hard time believing we’ve already had her that long. We don’t do much of anything for a first birthday, but some of her brothers wanted to give her gifts. Mr. Imagination was sadly wanting to know what he could give her, so I suggested he pick a few peas in the garden and shell them for her. He happily did so, and they shared a bowl of raw peas! Here are the pictures we’ve taken of our precious little girl over the past month.
One evening when everyone else was away, she checked out the lawn mower, then went to investigate the ducks.
This was when she had just learned to walk and was thrilled to be able to transport things. She must have decided I needed the nearly-empty jug of molasses for the cow in the house, so she threw it in the door.
Here she was absolutely thrilled to have figured out how to climb the stepstool. Don’t ask how many times she’s fallen off by now when we forgot to turn it over!
One rainy day, her daddy and brothers rigged up a swing in the living room for her. She loved that!
Thrilled again to find a way to the top of the stool!
A family with seven children spent a day with us right after Christmas. The two babies started playing together late in the afternoon. We loved watching them “working” together with this toy computer!
She spent a couple of weeks playing with towels and washcloths and Mr. Imagination’s neon-green shirt, trying to get them onto her head. It takes a lot of work and concentration to accomplish that goal! Once she figured out how, she quit doing it!
It rained! She found a puddle just her size.
Another puddle! She likes to “wash” her feet and hands in the cat dish. I have to push it way back under the grill if the cat is to get any milk.
The faces she makes!
