Random Photos

Odds and Ends From February 2019

March 30, 2019 by NZ Filbruns 1 Comment

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.

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.

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

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!

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.

January 2019 Photos

March 17, 2019 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

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.

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!

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.

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.

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

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!

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

December 2018 Photos

January 12, 2019 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

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.

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.

I planted zucchinis close to the sunflower house.

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

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

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

This is Mr. Sweetie’s lego airplane.

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

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

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!

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.

More Pictures From October 2018!

November 17, 2018 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

Well, I should have looked at my memory card again before publishing last week’s post of pictures. There were several more good ones.

Mr. Diligence made the lions for the skit they performed at the concert. I found him a picture of a lion online, and Esther enlarged it. He glued them together, cut them out, and painted them. Then, he glued them to cardboard and made them stand up.

Simon learned to ride a backwards bike when someone loaned them one many years ago. He has wished for one ever since, so when he had a couple of days off work on a recent long weekend, he built one. When you turn the handlebars right, the wheel turns left, and when you turn the handlebars left, the wheel turns right. So far, all three of the older boys have learned to ride it.

I looked in the living room recently and saw Mr. Imagination telling Goofball to hold still. He wanted her to pose for him to draw a picture of her, but she wouldn’t cooperate. I suggested he hold her still while I took a picture, and then he could draw from that.

Here is the picture he drew and cut out.

Some of our friends from Dead Boring came to see us a few weeks ago. We met in Moana, and had a picnic together beside Lake Brunner. They had two 9-year-old girls along, and Little Miss, once she warmed up to them, had great fun helping them build a “hut.” It was basically an outline of grass, with flowers arranged artistically in it.

I wished I had taken a picture of this scene earlier. When we first arrived, the lake was calm and the mountains were mirrored in it, but then a wind came up. It was still beautiful!

This coal train came along, and stopped on the side track. Soon, we saw the passenger train come from the other direction and pass it, and then the coal train started moving again.

March 2018 Pictures

April 21, 2018 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

We were amused when we looked out one day and saw this truck, with its two very different trailers, stopped on the highway in front of us.

Mr. Intellectual is still working through the Thinking Like an Engineer course that we got for review in October. He recently built this paper marble roller (this is the first step):

Mr. Diligence had to look at an atlas one day for school. He complained about the assignment, but then I found him and Mr. Sweetie studying it for a few days afterward!

Grandma recorded herself reading some picture books that we have, and Little Miss is loving having Grandma read to her! She quickly caught on to turning the pages at the bell, and is good at following along. Even though Grandma lives 9,000 miles away, we can still hear her voice! Esther helped with the first book, but since then, Little Miss is doing it herself.

I chuckled one day when I saw Goofball watching intently as Mr. Imagination told himself a story while he washed his hands!

My garden in March. It looks pretty bad now, since we had a hard frost.

Mr. Imagination was given a toolchest and tools for his birthday, from his brothers and sister, and his daddy and I gave him the watercolor set.

February 2018 Photos

April 3, 2018 by NZ Filbruns 1 Comment

The day before we moved, this cat knew something was awry. She was very restless, but she did settle down in the rag basket for awhile—I thought it looked like she was trying to shut the world out!

The view from our new living room. This is a frequent sight—rain!

Little Miss has started “feeding” her baby lately.

We enjoyed some gorgeous scenery on our way to Christchurch in late February. There had just been a cyclone, and the tops of some of the mountains had snow on them.

January 2018 Pictures

February 24, 2018 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

Ok, time to catch up with January pictures. These are the last ones from Cheviot, as we prepared to move.

On New Year’s Day, we were able to do a video call with Gayle’s family in America. It was fun to be able to see them! Little Miss was fascinated, and made sure she was right in front of Esther’s phone all the time.

The cats find the most interesting places to sleep!

An aunt in America sent these balloons. Little Miss and Mr. Imagination had a lot of fun with them—until they popped.

I took this picture to send to the person who gave her the dress.

One afternoon I went into Esther’s room to talk to her. Grizzly came along, and caught sight of herself in the mirror. She immediately arched her back and fluffed her tail, staring at that strange cat. She spent 5-10 minutes absolutely terrified, and of course, Esther teased her by moving the mirror closer—which sent Grizzly, hissing and spitting, under the bed!

Two weeks before moving day, we had a Saturday afternoon with not much that had to be done, so we decided to go to the beach. There were too many people at Gore Bay for our liking, so we went to Manuka Bay. See where Gayle is sitting, under the rock? The tide was coming in, and every so often a wave would come right up to him. He managed to push himself up on his hands enough that he didn’t get very wet—but after awhile he gave up and found another shady spot to rest.

Mr. Imagination lined all the teddy bears he could find up on my chair one day.

Mr. Sweetie made this boat for Little Miss for her birthday.

The day we loaded the container, a week before moving, one of the boys discovered a turkey hen with six or seven babies. We normally take the babies away as soon as they hatch, but these were about three weeks old—she had been hiding well! We had quite the chase to catch them; they were already able to fly.

December 2017 Pictures

January 23, 2018 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

Simon helped me harvest the garlic on Christmas Day. We got 89 heads from an area about a meter square.

We’re having a problem with fleas on the kittens. I don’t want to spend $30 each to buy the pour-on stuff from the vet, because the mama cat would just lick it right off and I don’t think that would be good for her, so we’re dusting them with diatomaceous earth every 2-3 days. They hate it!

This cat has always loved to sit in boxes—but I think she found one almost too small for her, this time!

This hen hatched six babies right after Christmas. We were able to sell the mother and all the babies.

The positions we find the kittens in are sometimes pretty funny!

Just for Grandma

January 20, 2018 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

Here are a couple of pictures just for Grandma’s benefit.

This is a Sandy-Tongued Paint Gobbler. We have finally discovered what they look like! (For the benefit of everyone else, we were discussing, when Grandma was here a year ago, why the roads going up to Arthur’s Pass had very little paint on them, and concluded that this creature must come out at night and eat it up. We didn’t know what they looked like, but when we got hold of some craft supplies a month ago, the little boys created models of them!)

Do you remember this pair of pants? I have finally retired them. I believe you made them for one of my brothers, and then passed them on to another family, who then passed them to us. I think most of our boys wore them. Good fabric!

November 2017 Pictures

December 21, 2017 by NZ Filbruns 3 Comments

Here are the rest of November’s pictures.

The kittens were born about the middle of November, and we have really been enjoying them. I allowed Mr. Imagination to choose one to keep, since he so badly wants a pet of his own. He chose this one, and was thrilled when her eyes opened and he could hold her.

For Mr. Diligence’s birthday, some friends came, and the boys went on a 31 kilometer bike ride around the area.

School time!

Esther helped Mr. Imagination make peanut butter balls one day. Little Miss enjoyed helping, too—and they both loved eating them!

The roses are a bit past their peak now, but a few weeks ago Mr. Imagination picked a bunch and made this arrangement!

Mr. Intellectual’s science experiment to show how the diaphragm and lungs work.

He has also been trying to work out how to make a small hot air balloon. So far, none of his designs has been light enough to get off the ground, and now that we’re back into a bad drought, he has to halt his experiments so he won’t cause a fire.

They attached a fishing line to the balloon, in case it would rise.

The geese and 3-week-old goslings.

The kittens at a day old.

Everyone was rather distracted one morning when a trucker came to take away a truck trailer that had been here for years. Mr. Intellectual helped him load some other stuff on his truck as well, to take to the owners of this place. My little people really enjoyed watching the crane in action! Mr. Sweetie took his schoolbook outside so he could work while he watched. He actually got a little done!