honey bees

Timo has been spotting one or two honey bees about the place and studying how they gather pollen and nectar. He noticed this bee above and noticed the pollen sacks it carries around, the photo illustrates these sacks pretty well. It's great to revive the study of bees, fascinating. We're in the process of contacting an apiarist to keep a hive here.

busy!

Quite a busy busy busy time for us at the moment. Great busy of course as exciting things are happening in the garden and everywhere here. We are putting on a concert here next Sunday afternoon and are inviting around 50 people, we are also making falafel in pita breads for everyone to try out what it's like doing that with a view to it being a form of street food we could potentially do in the local town or with a mobile kitchen to work other places, or just keep making it for ourselves and friends who visit. The concert is featuring the acoustic duo 'Sparrow' who play bluegrass and Frantisek (Frank) who plays many different things but for the concert will be playing traditional Czech guitar music. Kane and Rebecca who form 'Sparrow' and Frank are all staying with us at the moment as wwoofers.
Here are examples of one of the many things the children have been up to in the lovely weather we have been having:

Timo doing a useful job in the garden, and also digging out dock:


Caoimhe carving limestone with Frank:


Lennox painting a chair...


... and leaves in nearby bush as I discovered, what a happy surprise that was.

The Trout Story by Timo Heath

It was sunny and the water was very cold. Me and Dad went fishing in the kayaks. We paddled under the bridge and a bit further, then I cast out my line and slowly started winding it in and then BAM! I had it, slap in the head a beauty brown trout, caught in our very own river! Then I had a couple more casts and saw a flick of silver whizzing through the water followed by a wave - beeeuuunng - it went. Then Dad said it was time to go home. We cooked the trout on the fire with a marinade of butter and parsley. We ate it and it was delicious. It tasted like the whole river itself.

THE END

A packets of seeds turned up in the post for Timo, Caoimhe and Lennox from Kings Seeds for the great NZ gardeners sunflower growing competition. Here they are planting out the seeds.

technology

Caoimhe's digital art



Timo typing his trout story.

yesterday:

Lennox returned from a great trip to the North Island and was happy to be home to play with his sister on the trampoline:


While they were jumping, Jeremy and Timo went fishing off the kayaks in the river and Timo caught a beautiful trout:



Lennox applauding the trout before we ate it:


Before eating:


After:

rainy day pursuits with timo looking decidedly grumpy, he's actually just concentrating.

weaving a new chicken dome:

Sunday morning hoedown with teddies

In preparation for the Beyondsemble concert this afternoon.

foraging for flowers to press

I wasn't sure what they were up to, it was private research apparently that I was not allowed to know about.

They brought their surprise findings to the table.


And turned them into a flower press.

compassion for the clucky chicken

Caoimhe: "I spoke to the chickens and they spoke back to me! I said, 'sorry Aracana for taking your eggs away but we need them to eat. Maybe you can grow some babies next time we feed you' and she spoke back to me and said brrrrrrck"

Fun with bubbles

Fun with big bubble wands. Thank you Aunty JB! It's great to get fun surprises in the mail that positively add to our day.

Their Capacity for Innovation...

...and creating their own fun. Timo made an indoor basketball hoop out of a broken net. The net was broken where it joins the pole, he cut the net and found the perfect spot to suspend it.

Growing Frogs Diary Part 1

A book we often read is 'Growing Frogs' by Vivian French and we discovered we have some friends who have a nearby pond with frogspawn ~ joy ~ so we gathered some today:



Ever so carefully transferring the frogspawn into our bucket to take home:




Creating their new home that we will eagerly watch to see the changes each day:


We managed to find some baby tadpoles, a frogspawn sack with one day old eggs, and another sack with little 'commas' (babies that look like commas), so different stages to watch.

Pepepe

Making pepepe (butterflies)


Singing our song we made up during the time:


G E E G E E D E F G E
"Pepepe Pepepe, flying up so high;
G E E G E E D E F D C
Pepepe Pepepe, flying in the sky"

You can see how our song sounds here where we wrote the music and found a very handy online piano to help compose: (Saving for a real piano)