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Around the Garden in Early Spring

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Mr. Sweetie took my camera outside one morning in September to take pictures of the snow-topped mountains to the west of us across the Grey River. While he was out there, he took a lot of pictures around the garden and the house. I picked out my favorites to share here. Goofball likes attention, although she doesn’t demand it like her sister does. The chickens are Little Miss’s pets.

The chook house, where we brood babies, is in the middle of the garden. This was the first batch we hatched this year, at about three weeks old.

A fly on the new raspberry leaves!

Our back yard.

Miss Joy

The frame for a go-kart that Mr. Imagination is trying to build.

Snowy Mountains

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We were privileged to see a lot of snow on mountains late this winter. I took these first five pictures as Gayle and I drove to Christchurch one Saturday morning for an appointment. The drive over Arthurs Pass and through the mountains was spectacular!

Mr. Sweetie took these pictures one morning when the Paparoa Range, to the west of us, had a lot of snow on it.

And, to wrap this up, here are a few other pictures I took of mountains as we traveled home from North Canterbury in early September. This is heading toward Lewis Pass.

I was intrigued by this cloud formation and the rain coming down ahead of us.

This was a scene we enjoyed as we neared home that day.

Siblings Day!

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One weekend in September, Gayle and I had to go to Christchurch for an appointment on a Saturday morning. We stayed that night with friends, went to church over there, and came home Sunday afternoon. All eight of our children were at home that weekend, and they went to Hokitika for church on Sunday morning, then spent the rest of the day doing things together. Esther took a lot of pictures, but said she wouldn’t be posting them on her blog, so I decided to share their day here. They started out by walking along the beach for a little way. The “boat” is just poured concrete, a picnic area. (There have been a lot of shipwrecks there; in the early days there was a wreck about every 10 days, many of which were just groundings on the bar at the mouth of the river.)

Then, they went out to eat at an Indian restaurant.

The final activity was to visit the National Kiwi Centre. We were there once before, years ago, but the younger ones either didn’t remember it or weren’t born yet.

There is a large tank of eels, some of which are about 6 feet long and 6 inches in diameter, and around 100 years old.

At feeding time, visitors are allowed to help feed them. Eels grow up in fresh-water creeks and rivers, and when they are ready to mate and lay eggs, they swim out to sea and to tropical islands near the equator. There, they lay eggs, then die. The eggs hatch and make their way back to New Zealand, where they grow to maturity–often a hundred years! The people who run the aquarium know their eels are ready to make their way to the sea when they come in in the morning and find an eel on the floor; at that point they release them into the river to swim to the sea.

The highlight of the day was catching crayfish. There is a clip on the end of a string tied to a pole. To catch a crayfish, they picked up a piece of meat with the clip and dangled it in the water; when a crayfish grabbed it, they would lift it up then catch it in a net. Apparently, our crew spent 45 minutes catching and releasing crayfish! A week later, the older boys took the younger children to catch crayfish in a river near here because they had so much fun at the aquarium.

August 2024 Photos

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Here are the rest of the pictures I found from August. I finally had time to look at memory cards and phones again!

This is a normal sight at 9:30 each evening. Just before I go to bed, I feed the cats so that this one goes outside for the night. She won’t let me forget to feed them! She is friendlier at that time of day than any other time.

This was one of the t-shirt dresses I made for Miss Joy this winter.

Little Miss took this picture of her flower garden to send to Esther while she was in America.

One day, I noticed that the bag of kindling had a lot of pieces of wood that were nice for building blocks. I suggested that Miss Joy do something with them. She spent a couple of hours playing with those blocks, pretending various things with them. The piece leaning against the couch at an angle is a scanner for credit cards. Watch the video to see what else she was pretending!

Little Miss used some of the blocks, too, as well as all of the Jenga blocks, to make a line of “dominoes.”

Simon bought a hut that someone wanted to get moved off a local farm. We went one day to watch it be picked up and moved to his property.

The little girls like to make huts in the living room!

Elijah finished his apprenticeship! He is very happy to have that behind him and to be a fully-qualified carpet- and vinyl-layer.

Little chicks, a day or two after hatching.

Miss Joy wanted to have a candle-lit meal for her birthday celebration, so we did.

She also wanted candles on her dessert, which was ambrosia, a mixture of yogurt, whipped cream, berries, and chocolate. We don’t normally do candles, but I did get some for her.

July/August 2024 Photos

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Here are the rest of the pictures I have in my computer from these months. It’s time to sort through everyone’s photos again!

This picture should have gone with the post about building the new library shelves. A few days before Elijah built them, the younger boys and I painted them. It was the middle of winter and very cold, so paint dried very slowly–unless it was in the sun. So, we set the boards in the sun at the end of our driveway and got started as soon as it was almost warm enough. That was about 11:00, and there was still frost in the shade. The paint dried fast enough in the sun that we were able to do another coat every hour, until about 3:00 when we lost the sun. At that point, we moved them into the garage and did the last coat in there, then locked the cats out for the night and left the boards to dry overnight. It worked!

Because both Esther and Simon had birthdays while Esther, James and Mr. Sweetie were in America, we celebrated them early on an evening when Simon was here. Esther made him a trifle, and I surprised her with meringues that I made while she was away the morning before. We rarely have dessert, so having two desserts was fun!

Little girls + flowers = beauty!

James has been working on his sleepout when he gets the chance.

Mr. Imagination has been helping me with the incubator this winter. Here are a couple of pictures he took when we candled the eggs for the first batch. The first is an egg that hasn’t started to develop yet; we candle them before they go into the incubator, to check for cracks in the shell. The second is an egg we took out halfway through incubation. It has a blood line across the middle, indicating that the chick started to develop, and then died. He tried to get a picture of a viable embryo, but it came out so dark I couldn’t see anything.

I found this picture when I sorted them–someone was playing!

Esther bought a game to take with her and play en route to America. Her little sisters love to make patterns with the blocks.

The first hatch was very successful–80% of the eggs produced live chicks!

Goofiness in July

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I didn’t realize how far behind I am at posting pictures of our life! This was the third weekend in a row that I have been away from home. Two weeks ago, I went to a homeschool mom’s retreat near Christchurch, and had a migraine virtually the whole time, so by the time I got home late Sunday evening I was exhausted. Last weekend our whole family went to some meetings at a church in North Canterbury…and got home just in time to make dinner. Yesterday, Gayle had a medical appointment in Christchurch, so he and I went over for that, leaving all our children here at home. We stayed at a friend’s house overnight because due to the nature of his appointment the doctor wanted him to stay reasonably close to the hospital for 24 hours. We went to church over there and then came home, beating our children home! They had taken advantage of us being away to go out to eat together, and one of the older ones treated them all to a visit to a fun aquarium. So, here I am with enough time, finally, to do some blogging about our life!

Near the end of July, Esther, James and Mr. Sweetie went to America for a month to visit family. Somehow, I ended up with silly pictures of the boys just before they went. Here is James with his favorite cat.

I’m not sure what the point was supposed to be, but he put the stool over himself!

Meanwhile, Mr. Sweetie was doing this!

Mr. Sweetie and Mr. Imagination spent several days trying to build a motorbike, with a weed whacker motor and a pushbike. It worked for a few seconds.

The girls spent a few days playing on top of this cage in the orchard at the edge of the garden.

The children found a pair of glasses at the dump, and Little Miss enjoyed playing with them.

And this is Goofball, the gentlest cat we have, and the best hunter of the three.

More June 2024 Photos!

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Here are the rest of the pictures I saved from everyone’s cameras and devices in June. Sometime in May, Mr. Sweetie had a dentist appointment, so we spent the day in town. Esther went along, and we went to all the secondhand shops in town. I found a duvet cover that was so pretty I got it to make into dresses, and then put these together for the girls from it. The other side was yellow green stripes on a white background, and I got pajama pants for two boys from that! I was pretty happy with that find.

While Esther was away the first weekend in June, I found this email in my Spam folder. I was so amused that I took a picture of it to show her before deleting it.

Mr. Imagination builds a lot of things out of Lego.

I’m not sure what this was all about!

Our turkey flock. We have since butchered most of them. We have been spending way too much on feed for them, and not getting much in the way of returns, since hawks destroy most of the nests. And now, since a strip along one side of this paddock was sold, they don’t have anywhere safe to make nests. So, now I won’t have to put up with the mess they made in the milking shed! And, we’re enjoying eating turkey.

Miss Joy loves the attention her brothers give her! Mr. Imagination was underneath the coat.

One frosty morning, we were surprised to see this digger show up in front of our window! A house will eventually be built there. The fence that is visible, partially built, in the background, is finished now, and we can’t see our calf in the paddock across the road anymore.

A day or two after the digger worked in front of our house, it was used across the road to cut down trees around the trucking yards. Now, I can see this mountain from my kitchen window! I love that change. The tallest mountain is apparently the one across the river from the farm Simon went to first after leaving the mechanic shop, and the long ridge is behind the farm he is currently on–so he is between them.

The little girls built this tower one day. They were happy to use every block.

Elijah went to a weekend camp a month or two ago, in Canterbury. One day, a group walked to this bridge, in the Rakaia Gorge. I thought his pictures were so gorgeous I had to share them!

I don’t know where this is, but isn’t it beautiful? Elijah took it, likely on his way to work on morning, judging by the timestamp.

Esther took the girls on a walk around the block one afternoon. Miss Joy loves to ride her “bike.”

I love the way her ponytails stream out behind!

After going on a 4WD trip, Simon needed to wash his vehicle!

Leaf Fun

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When the leaves fell off the peach trees in May, the three youngest had great fun raking them up and playing in them. I remember loving maple trees when I was young, because of the wonderful leaf piles! This isn’t as good, but as close as our children are likely to get to that. While they were playing with the leaves, they got the idea of making a movie about it. I’m not sure what the plot was supposed to be, if any, but I put together the clips they got. You might want to turn it off when it starts getting crazy–when all three are tumbling together in the pile.

April 2024 Photos

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Here are the rest of April’s photos! A few days after Easter, our new cow, Maple, finally calved–three weeks after we thought she would, based on what the previous owner told us. I had started to wonder if something was wrong! No, just a late calf. Elijah took this picture when he went down to take care of the chickens and discovered a new calf, which another boy had overlooked when he went down an hour or so earlier. The calf is a bull, a Jersey/Dexter cross. These first two pictures are from the first evening; the third picture was a week or two later, after we started bottle-feeding him and he decided that people were all right. His name is Clifford, as in Clifford the Big Red…Calf!

Remember how much fun we had earlier this year hatching chicks? Well, we ended up with a lot of them. The roosters from the first two batches have moved into the freezer by now, and we sold the pullets. These are some of the pictures we took to advertise them.

We went to Reefton for church one Sunday, and before coming home, drove around to check out the project that has been ongoing for several years: rebuilding the hydroelectric plant. Reefton was the first town in the Southern Hemisphere to be lit with electric lights, but the electric plant fell into disrepair a long time ago. They got a grant recently to rebuild it as a museum. This is the water race, looking toward the building that will house the turbine.

What happens when a four-year-old hurts her foot? She gets to sit on the couch with her blankie, a big stack of books, and the recordings that Grandma made of those books! She spent a couple of hours listening to those stories after cutting her foot badly.

I don’t normally take my phone with me when I go down to milk the cows in the morning, but one day I did. On the way up the hill, I looked up the valley to the east, and saw this breathtaking sight.

Here were our record-breaking vegetables in April–a potato and a tomato. The weights are in grams.

I was surprised one day when the children showed up with a pukeko chick. I had them take it right back down the hill and try to give it back to the parents–hope it survived!

Ahaura River/Lake Ahaura

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One Sunday afternoon in April, our boys organized a kayak trip with friends from church down the Ahaura River. I got roped into driving the vehicle back after they unloaded the boats, which meant that I got to enjoy a scenic part of the river that I don’t normally get to see.

Another Sunday afternoon, they decided to go on a four wheel drive trip. They ended up at Lake Ahaura, up near the farm on which Simon lives. Elijah shared these pictures with me; the one of the mushroom was taken especially to share with his grandma. There were actually at least a dozen people on each of these trips, but because a lot of them are not our family, I didn’t want to post their pictures.