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)

Timo works for about 2 hours on his Soyuz spacecraft.




Blast off!

Lennox does the dishes while Timo and Caoimhe work at the table.
Lennox naturally likes to do everything he sees us do, this is his play. Yesterday after breakfast without anyone saying a word he took his plate with uneaten crusts and quietly emptied them into the chicken bin then placed his plate on the bench to be washed. Good skills Lennox.

Preparing for his hunting and trapping mission in the bush.




Off he goes

Prolific Painting:

Caoimhe:



Timo:

Caoimhe:

Caoimhe:

Timo:

Caoimhe:

Taking turns at exercises and checking each other's answers.

pollination not happening

Sadly, we have no bees around to pollinate our flowers. After talking to the local major beekeeper, varroa has wiped out most hives. We have to find out how to do our own pollinating.
After checking the plants, Caoimhe said, "do you think in another world we could talk to some bees that talk and they have a phone so they could pollinate our flowers to turn into broadbeans?".
Love the idea.