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Wild Weather!

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The weather this week has been wild! On Tuesday, it started raining around midnight -1:00. I lay awake for an hour or so because the rain and wind were so loud. By about 8:00, we had received 96 mm of rain here (about 4 inches). All the ditches were full, and the corner creek in our paddock down the hill was overflowing. The cows were up here, so they were all right, and both pens of chickens happened to be on high enough ground that they were fine. About 10:00, a neighbor from down the hill stopped in to let us know that the paddock was flooding, in case we didn’t know already. He told us that the main creek down there was still rising. Mr. Imagination and I walked down to make sure the chickens were still all right. By then, the sun was shining brightly. This is what we saw. The first picture is our paddock, with water pouring into the corner creek (to the right) from the main creek from two directions: under the road, and beside the milking shed. There are normally two drainage ditches through the paddock, the one curving in the middle of this picture and the one to the left, but on this day, there was water everywhere it could be. The other two pictures show the neighbor’s paddocks across the road, where the floodwater from Orwell Creek was covering everything.

Here’s a video of what we were seeing.

After we returned to the house, Esther took the girls down to the river to see the flood there. There were trees down in the Domain. The second picture shows the Ahaura River, about as full as we’ve ever seen it. Then, they walked the other way, down in the direction of the confluence of the Grey and Ahaura Rivers. Obviously, there was no way to get close! The entire valley was under water.

After that, they walked down to our paddock. The water had dropped a bit, but was still pretty impressive!

The next day, Mr. Imagination took these video clips in the paddock. They’re not very easy to watch, but the footage of him petting an eel is pretty amazing!

Two days later, another storm came through. This one “only” gave us 60 mm (2 1/2 inches), but the wind! It was the worst wind we’ve experienced here. The children were doing school in the kitchen, and looked out just in time to see a huge tree across the road fall down! We were immediately thankful that our cattle were not there. They often graze there, and in fact, they’ll be there tomorrow! They would have been sheltering under the tree, and the entire herd would have been destroyed. It’s a little hard to see here, but the tree is laying on its side behind the electric pole.

This is the size of the rootball!

This is the kind of view we have had out our window many days this month!

July 2025 Photos

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Here are the rest of the pictures I have from before we left home for our visit to the United States.

A new house is being built in front of us. The man for whom James and Joe work was hired to do the job. One day when they ran out of other work, they started building wall frames. It was pouring that morning, so James threw up a roof to shelter the saw.

By evening of the second day, they had all the frames built and stacked up–and then the boss dropped his nail gun down the stack! Joe was the only one small enough to climb down and get it; the other option was to unscrew the frames and dismantle the stack!

I went out and offered to take a picture of them with their pile.

Simon went hunting one night and got a pig. We turned all of it into sausage meat, and while I was mincing it, the girls used it for playdough. (Hands washed before and after!)

I loved seeing so many of my children lined up one evening, so tried taking a picture. Well, did you know what happens when a flash is used with hi-vis clothing? Rather startling!

I spent a lot of time sewing for the girls in preparation for our trip. I found simple patterns for both their sizes, and had a lot of fun. It’s satisfying to create something pretty as well as useful.

The girls got the Jenga blocks out to play with.

More work on the new house. This was assembling the forms to pour the pad. It was a different system than they have ever used before, and they aren’t impressed with the price. James is at the right in orange; Joe is in the middle with yellow rain pants.

The day I went to town to buy a washer, I stopped on the way home to take a picture of the cloud flowing across the Brunner Gorge near Dobson.

The chicken house that burned down is being replaced! By the time I left, there were walls and rafters, but I hadn’t gotten a picture.

Apparently, Joe was trying out a remote to take a picture from my phone, and he and a visiting friend were having fun!

This is a Bowie knife that Mr. Imagination made. I told him it must remain hidden!

June 2025 Photos

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Here are the rest of June’s pictures! We often see beautiful rainbows toward the south, out our living room window.

One day when we were in town, we ate a picnic lunch at the breakwall. This bird was flying up the river, then swiftly riding the wind back out to sea. I thought at first it was an albatross, but a week or two later we went out to the breakwall on the other side of the Grey River mouth and saw the sign below. I’m guessing that it was a Petrel, instead. It certainly had a different way of flying than the seagulls that flocked around!

This was the view across the river mouth on the second day.

The cows spent a day in the empty section in front of us just before work began on a new house there, and Miss Joy enjoyed watching and photographing them. This won’t happen again; the new owners have moved a caravan in and are living on the section.

Miss Joy

Mr. Imagination has been making a lot of knives; lately, he’s been working on learning how to harden the saw blade steel he uses. He is doing it in the fire in our lounge, and then quenching the blade in oil. The only problem with that? People often kick the oil accidentally.

March 2025 Photos

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I feel like I’m getting very behind with posting photos of our life. Let’s see what I can do today! Gayle took several of the children to the sea one Sunday evening to go fishing with a friend who has a long-line. This was the only fish they caught. Several of the rest of us stayed home and watched The King’s Speech, which is a movie with a wonderful story, but too much profanity for a family movie.

People around here often think of Grandma when they see interesting things in nature. Not sure if you like pictures of big spiders, but here’s one!

Mr. Imagination found this moth at Elijah’s house. I’ve never seen a green moth!

Our chicken coop burned down one early morning. That is a terrible way to be awakened, in case you didn’t know. We lost most of the chicks that were in it (a heat lamp fell down on the bedding), but a few lived. We took the little ones into the house to keep them warm, and the children enjoyed playing with them for a few days.

Gayle took the girls down to the river one day and they had fun there.

This part of the garden was beautiful all summer! I’ve started planting flowers in this bed, beside the driveway. It quickly turns into an overgrown riot of color.

We also had humor in the garden. I have so much trouble getting carrots to germinate that last year, in desperation, I started some in punnets and then set them out. They grew extremely twisted. Esther refuses to use them if she can help it, but they are rather funny!

One of the boys bought himself a set of tools, and they all loved investigating them.

Miss Joy and Little Miss must have taken pictures of each other goofing around in Elijah’s room while they were moving their things from that room back to their own.

The girls showed me this picture, and I thought these were large-scale weapons. Then, they showed me the real thing–they were about 3 inches long, made of dried grass and twigs!

James went to the first auction of his life and got some good deals. He bought these enormous steel beams for only $20! Then, he had to figure out how to get them home. He enlisted several brothers, a sister and a friend, and they spent an hour or so man-handling them onto the trailer. He brought them home overnight, and then got help to unload them at Simon’s house. He mentioned them to some dairy-farmer friends, and they needed beams to build a bridge, so he sold them for many times what he paid, and passed the money along to those who helped him.

We were eating dinner one evening when a pilot vehicle came past slowly. Then another… and then we saw this house pull up and stop at the end of our street! It stayed there for over half an hour while the truck unhooked and went to the trucking yard across from us to refuel.

I went with the boys to work at Elijah’s house one day, and they found an advertisement from Pizza Hut in the letter box. That made Simon hungry for pizza, so they bought enough for the family for dinner.

Renovations

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We saw a lot of renovations happening this summer! Of course, there was the work on Eijah’s new house. Elijah also worked on his bedroom. He started that project last winter, in July or August, and finally got to move back in in March, after the painting was done. I took a few pictures of him laying the carpet. First, the girls had to get their things out! See the walls? He chose to whitewash the plywood he used for the upper part of the walls. The lower part is the original boards that were there, which were covered with a thick coat of yellow paint. He carefully pried them off the wall, then ran them through a machine that James’s boss has which sanded both sides at once, and then oiled them after putting them back on the wall.

Next, he put down tack strips, laid out the underlay, rolled out the carpet on top, and then stretched it in. I enjoyed watching him do what he does every day at work.

Esther got her room painted this summer. A couple of years ago, she touched up some places where the paint got messed up. She used the bucket of paint that was originally used for the room–but didn’t know that a creative brother had mixed some other paint in to it, so she ended up with white squares on a cream wall. She didn’t have time to repaint that summer or the next, so this summer she decided she must get it done. The three girls moved out to our guest cabin for a few weeks, and she painted all the trim, patched and sanded several places where there were holes in the wall (thanks to other renovation projects that punched through), and painted the walls. The motivation to get this done came from finding a set of new curtains at an op shop–she wanted to get them hung, but not until the room was painted!

Miss Joy was delighted to be back in her own room, even though the cabin is very cozy!

My Cat Sleeps in Boxes

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We have a cute picture book about cats. It describes cats around the world who are very talented… they might dance, or sing, or many other things… but every second page says, “But MY cat likes to hide in boxes.” Well, we have a cat who loves to sleep in boxes, any boxes. Grizzly was overjoyed when we were emptying boxes of jars during canning season, and putting the empties outside to be taken back to the garage. Perfect places to sleep! We’ve also found her sleeping in a child’s wheelbarrow, carefully braced so she didn’t slide out, or in the trailer (very big box!). One day, when Elijah’s bedroom door was laying on sawhorses in the carport while he was prepping it for painting, she found that someone had put a newspaper (another favorite bed) in one of the inset panels on the door. So, she had not only a box with tiny sides, but also a newspaper! Perfect!

She generally wakes up when we come to take a picture, but this time Esther found her sound asleep, laying on her back in the box!

I took this picture one day when it was drizzling. Gayle had driven the ute somewhere, so of course the engine was warm. Apparently, the heat trumped the wet. Grizzly was curled up tightly, with her paw over her nose. I said something to her as I walked past. She uncurled enough to half open one eye and sleepily say hello (she’s a very talkative cat), and immediately curled up again, fast asleep.

Goofball likes boxes, too. She’s much more dignified than her sister, though.

Tiger Moth

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Sometime in early March I was in Greymouth with the children and we noticed three small planes flying over in a triangle formation. They circled around in front of us and came toward us, in a straight line. We happened to be driving past the “airport” at that moment, and realized they were planning to land, so we pulled over to watch, since we had noticed by then that all three were biplanes. After they landed, we drove around to where we could get a better look at them, and several more that were already pulled up to the hanger. In the next day’s paper, we learned that they were Tiger Moths, and the owners were making a tour around the island. How fun to see them!

Four Wheel Drive Trip–Napoleon Hill

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A few weeks ago, a group of local friends decided to go on a four wheel drive trip over Napoleon Hill, close to our home. James decided to do something he has been thinking about for a long time–take his tractor on the trip! It added some excitement; I’ll let Joe tell about it in a story he wrote. (The solar panel mounted on the back is to keep the battery charged, since the alternator doesn’t work anymore.)

One young lady gave my two little girls and another little girl a ride on the quad bike.

This is the Safari that Simon spent a couple of years restoring, and then sold to a friend. It’s getting quite a workout; after this particular episode, water poured out of all the doors!

Things went well, until….

They drained the water out of the engine, and it started right up again! Yay for 1960s vehicles with no electronics. James did take it to the garage for a complete oil change after they got out of this track.

And, here is the story:

THE FOUR WHEEL DRIVE TRIP

            A couple of weeks ago, we went over Napoleon Hill, with a few of the V’s, the B’s, and some of our family. James, after a lot of thinking, decided to take his Pajero and his tractor. His tractor is a 1960s Fordson Super Dexta, two wheel drive, six speed manual. It’s about medium size and can attain speeds up to about 50 km an hour downhill. Since it is as old as it is, the alternator doesn’t work, so to charge it James has mounted a solar panel that keeps the battery charged, so now it is updated to the 21st century.

            We headed off from our house to Napoleon Hill about 9:30 and started along the four wheel drive track. The tractor is very slow, so the vehicle I was riding in, the troop carrier, got ahead of everybody else and so we ended up doing a small side track, which was fun. Going through the first mud hole, the tractor’s bell housing filled up with water, so when he came out water was spraying out of both sides of the tractor, which was fun to see. Napoleon Hill is a very fun four wheel drive track, which if you nail it only takes about an hour, but at the rate we went it took us over half the day.

            As always, we stopped at the cemetery and had a look around there, and then headed down the mountain. When we got down into the river gorge we stopped and waited for everyone else to catch up. A few minutes after everybody got there and we headed off again we got to the caves. There are three of them. The first one is just big enough that a quad can squeeze through. You can drive through the other two. It is really fun, because the last one is really long and more than twice as high as the vehicles.

            After we got through the caves and got out to the bigger creek we stopped for lunch. During lunch, L wanted to have a turn on the tractor, so James took him for a drive. They were going up the creek and James wasn’t really paying attention to where they were going till the tractor started bogging down in the soft sand. He told L to hop off and then started going backwards and forwards to try to get out. He thought maybe he should get someone to pull him out because he didn’t know how deep the creek was to his left, but shrugged the thought away. Then, he tried pulling forward again and slid off an underwater shelf into an over-chest-deep part of the creek. The tractor nearly disappeared and almost instantly died.

            S pulled him out. They took the injectors out and turned the engine over several times, so the pistons pushed the water out of the cylinders where the injectors usually go. It was fun to see the water spraying everywhere, and nice to hear the tractor start up again as good as new—maybe even better because of the engine wash it had just received.

As we went out, P, in the Safari, took on a heap more of the side tracks and several of them that he took in four wheel drive he went back through in two wheel drive. We had a lot of fun that day and I was glad I got to go along.

January/February 2025 Photos

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I got started writing this post last week. I had the first paragraph halfway written when the notice popped up that I was offline and the post could not be saved. I waited five minutes, because our internet randomly flicks off, and then comes back a little later. Then, we realized that there were only two websites that were not coming up–my blog and Internet Archive, from which Esther was trying to read a book. I restarted both modems, and got the same results. I gave up. Three hours later, both websites were loading again! So, I didn’t give you a post last week. Today, I actually have some time to think!

This summer has been even more jam-packed than usual. Not only do we have the normal garden work and preserving of the harvest to work on, but add in three renovation projects as well, and you can imagine what life has been like here! One project is finished, one is close enough to put it on hold for a little while. Elijah’s house is still a main focus. I have spent most of my Saturdays for the past six or seven weeks there, helping to paint. We can see the end in sight now, though! I should be able to share pictures of a finished project soon.

Meanwhile, here are the pictures I have left from the first two months of the year.

Over the Christmas break, the boys built a garage at Simon’s house. I only went over there once, but a friend sent me a couple of pictures he took of the boys working, and I grabbed a picture near the end of the project. I just realized I don’t have a picture of the finished building!

Mr. Imagination built several live traps. He tested them with the cats, and they worked for that–but no possums have been caught. He gave up on that project. (The cats were quite happy to be trapped, as long as it meant they got extra cat food!)

I was in the garden one day, and Miss Joy wanted me to take a picture of her with her hollyhock dolls.

I’m not sure what this was about–but it’s a shot of Elijah, taken by a friend who sent it to me.

Miss Joy is quite a writer! She frequently dictates stories, and one day she dictated this original poem, and the explanation for it.

Little Miss took a picture of Miss Joy inside these tubs. See her eyes peeking out?

After I harvested the first lot of onions in mid-January, I asked the children to braid them for me. They were happy to do that job, as long as they could listen to an audiobook while they did it!

This was the onions before braiding, when we laid them out to cure for a day or two in the sun.

James got his sleepout finished in early January. He used recycled rimu boards for the walls, and oiled them with linseed oil he was given. The ceiling is white-painted plywood, and Elijah laid secondhand carpet for him. This room is quite a comfortable place for James, Joe, and Simon when he’s here.

Elijah’s room has had a complete face-lift in the past six months. I don’t have any recent pictures, but this was Simon oiling the lower part of the wall in January. Those boards were originally on the walls, in that position. They were painted with a thick coat of yellow paint. Elijah was able to remove them carefully enough that he could line the lower part of the walls with them again after running them through a thicknesser to remove the paint and sand them down, and then they put a couple of coats of linseed oil from James’s drum on it. The upper part of the walls is plywood, and has now been whitewashed. The effect is beautiful!

Some of the random pictures I find on my phone!

A sunset over the mountains.

Mr. Imagination brought this bug in to show me one day. It was tiny!

Our first homeschool group meeting of the year was a picnic at Nelson Creek. It rained right after we got there, but then the sky cleared and it was perfect for swimming. See the boys up the bank, just above the midpoint of the picture? They jumped from there into the water.

We really enjoy these birds. The blue one, Reepicheap, is very active and curious, which makes him very fun.

Simon spray-painting the lounge ceiling in Elijah’s house. He has done a lot of painting there. This was immediately after he started; within minutes he had gotten hold of a respirator to wear for the rest of the job.

Little Miss sometimes helps Miss Joy with her flashcards. They like to make a game of it!

Esther made a pretty cake one day. I think it was a yellow cake; it had strawberries and raspberries on it.