Flowers

Spring Flowers

January 11, 2026 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

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!

Poppies!

November 25, 2018 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

A couple of weeks ago, most of the children stayed with me over in Canterbury for a couple of extra days so that we could spend a day with our homeschool group. On one of those days, we visited a family who have been dear friends for a long time. While there, we walked down the road from their house to a dry river bed. There were poppies growing everywhere we looked in this river bed—such a beautiful sight! Little Miss got to pick flowers to her heart’s content, and then we gave her bouquet to the next friend we visited. A couple of my boys dug up some plants to bring home; they are taking root in an old wheelbarrow full of dirt that we have. We greatly enjoyed that lovely day!

This was the view from our friends’ house.

One of her favorite activities is picking flowers! We’ve had to forbid her to pick any without asking first, because she’ll pick any and every flower she sees, otherwise.

Spring!

September 1, 2018 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

One of the fun things about moving to a new house is seeing what blooms in the spring. We have a lot of flowers coming out right now. Since Esther is away, I have the perfect excuse to post pictures of them! She’s missing out.

Two weeks ago, one of the boys brought this in. It came from a tree in the paddock; we’d been wondering what the tree was ever since we bought this place. I had no idea, but a friend asked if it might be a magnolia. I did a quick Google search and sure enough, that’s what it looks like!

The magnolia tree a week ago, with a rain storm approaching behind it. Notice the sheep to the right; she’s apparently a hair sheep! All three were orphan lambs that we raised last year, and we had no idea what breed they were.

Our new cow, Poppy. She will, hopefully, be calving within the next three weeks. She looks very young, and is quite tiny compared to our last cow, but she’s three years old and this will be her second calf.

This ugly, scraggly bush in front of the house turns out to be a forsythia! I’ve always wanted one.

I have no idea what these are, but they’re blooming on the shady side of the house.

Daffodils, of course!

I noticed a couple of days ago that the kowai tree was blooming.

This is the magnolia a few days ago.

Yesterday I went out for another photo of the magnolia, and Little Miss wanted me to take a picture of her ladybug.

Mr. Intellectual is spending his breaks from school digging a garden for me. I am grateful! As soon as the sheep are out of the way, I can start planting.

The forsythia yesterday. Right in front of it are my broad beans and garlic.

Daffodils—and a Winter Storm!

September 16, 2016 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

Last Sunday afternoon on our way home from church we took a few minutes to drive through the Domain, the public land, to see the daffodils. They were sure gorgeous!

Then, Wednesday, a storm arrived from the south. As the weather forecast I saw put it, the wind was coming “straight off the Antarctic ice shelf”. It sure felt like it! All day Thursday, we had alternating rain, hail, and sunshine. I took these pictures less than a minute after one squall started—the hail turned the ground white that fast!

After dark, when another hail storm went through, Mr. Diligence went out and scraped ice off Mr. Inventor’s trailer. He brought it in the house and built this sculpture. Mr. Sweetie called it the Tower of Babel.

I wanted to clarify something from the post about hitting water in the well. Mr. Inventor did not find the design he used for a “drill” anywhere; he thought it up himself. He did watch YouTube and got several other ideas, but hasn’t tried any of them yet.

This Has Been an Interesting Week!

November 19, 2011 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

This week has been very full, and I haven’t had any great inspirations for a good post, so here’s a quick look through some pictures Esther took throughout the week.

Sunday morning was a beautiful morning to drive to church–but apparently eggs are not a good choice for Sunday morning breakfast. I’ve been watching what we eat and how the children react in terms of carsickness (quite an issue when you go through the Hundalees and along the coast!), and the two weeks lately that we’ve had eggs we’ve had a lot of complaints about upset tummies. The week in between, when we had granola, no one complained. Anyway, this time the youngest got sick, for the first time, and got you-know-what all over his shirt, pants, and car seat. We pulled off immediately and cleaned up while the children enjoyed the ocean. What we didn’t get a picture of was Daddy down at the water, rinsing out the shirt and pants when an extra-large wave drenched him!

Sunday evening after we got home, one boy asked to look up how to make a slingshot, on YouTube. A magpie has been terrorizing the boys, and drew blood on one the day before–he came in with his hand pressed against his head, and blood streaming down his forehead. It seems to be a juvenile magpie, just having fun. (The juvenile delinquent of the bird world?) So, my boys are out to protect their family from this terrorist and a slingshot seemed to be a halfway decent idea. This was what he came up with, and we had the materials on hand (milk bottle top and balloon; he added duct tape to secure the balloon later):

Monday was a gorgeous day, and my photographer got some beautiful shots of the animals and the views from around the house. This is our landlord’s paddock of wheat and corners of some of our raised beds.

The cow–happy because she can be near one of the calves, even though he isn’t hers.

The hills west of us in the evening; wheat in the foreground.

Tuesday we went to Christchurch for Dead Boring (homeschool writing group). The younger children were playing at making a garden in the afternoon. All five of my boys are in this group–can you pick them out?

The family who hosted DB this time live across the street from the Avon River–still beautiful in most places even if sewage gets in it now! The water level seems a lot higher than before the February earthquake; if I understand right, the bed of the river was pushed up.

The house next door to our friends is unoccupied; the people moved out after the September quake over a year ago. This crack goes through their yard.

We drove through a section of town that I hadn’t been in since a week before the February quake. Although a lot has been cleaned up, the destruction is still incredible. It seems like all the older, beautiful buildings are gone or going, and only the newer, less pretty ones are left. So sad.

This picture doesn’t show it very well, but the whole house was sort of “wracked”–almost twisted. This entire area is going to be demolished and not rebuilt.

The Grand Chancellor Hotel–tallest building in Christchurch. It’s been leaning since February 22, and now it’s being demolished.Churches, built out of brick or stone, suffered the most.

…And we were glad to get back home again to our peaceful spot in the country, far away from the quakes and the city!

The roses are blooming! With 40 bushes around the house, and most of them different varieties, we enjoy quite the array of colors.

While I was in town on Tuesday, I bought 30 kilograms of carrots. I wanted to bottle 20 kg of them for quick additions to soups, so Wednesday I had the boys peel and chop while I read to them. They did about half that day. The next day, they got started on the remaining carrots before I even suggested it, and before I knew what was happening they were finished–with no story to listen to! They were racing to see who could peel and chop five the quickest. My boys are growing up.

Friday we went back to Christchurch because Gayle had a series of appointments with medical professionals to get a paper saying that he does not have tuberculosis. Hopefully now our permanent residency visa will go through.

So there you have it–the partial story of our week! I am very thankful that I don’t have to go to town very often, let alone twice in a week! Glad to have it over with, but I’m also glad we were able to go and attend Dead Boring, get the medical work done, and we even got to have a date while we were there (a dear friend kept the children for a few hours!). It was also good to be able to stock up on groceries and get fresh produce that we can’t afford up here (I spent nearly $200 on produce this week–but hadn’t bought much of any for six weeks.)