We’re pretty lucky here, we live just 5 minutes drive from a beach, it’s a city harbour beach, and it’s one of our favourite places to go after dinner to see the sun go down.  We had some heavy cloudy days last week, with thunder and showers.  It all makes for a moody looking harbour.

Besides watching the gulls, Luna set-to and immediately began collecting wood to build a fire.  She had a good plan, the wood was accompanied by some green sea weed, there had been a bit of a wash up of wood and weed after the storms.

And a couple of spare crab nippers.

I’m so very grateful to live so close to a beach, and that we have the time and space in our lives to go there and just wander it.  Or build fires and huge sandcastles.  This kind of play opens up converstaions too, we are all learning the names of more shells, about ecology, and have talked about collecting wood for our fire before winter comes, what you need to build a fire…

This is one of my favourite times of the day, I love the beach, and there’s something healing about watching the sunset.

I have been reading here and there about the benefits of keeping toys to a minimum, choosing toys that are simple, and keeping play fairly unstructured.  I’ve never really liked single use toys, or educational toys (that sing the alphabet, count to ten or whatever..) so things have kind of just worked that way with us, though we have been gifted so many toys, I try and limit the plastic, and gendered toys (Disney Princesses and the like) we have made some of our own toys, and picked up some good old second hand blocks and so on over time.  Though, I do still feel there is too much, and I think there probably will always be.

And the books… don’t even start!  But that is another story, and don’t mention my toys…

When you have a small person that occassionlly rises before six am, you get to see some beautiful sunrises.

Today was no exception, though I was outside Auckland and could take in a sea view of sun up.

With coffee.

I know it’s obvious, but sea stars are some of my favourite animals.

So while Luna was after as many green lipped mussels she could cram into her hat, I was oooh-ing and aaaah-ing about some stunning sea stars.

Look how many they are?  They were just amazing, lots of little (and *cough* big) getting up close with these babies.  Each was unique, their colours so varied.  They felt like jeweled reptiles to touch, and I remembered what a deadly predator they are, exuding their stomachs onto their victim, then slowly digesting them…  I’m glad I’m not a mollusc.

This one was mauve!

So many, oozing and squeezing into the rocks.

Really, there is so much to explore and see at the beach.  A good day at Piha is completely exhausting for us all, clean water and life in and around the rocks.

A bit too wild for swimming in the sea for the little ones, though we found a perfect tidal pool, complete with tiny fish.

Luna is really keen on green lipped mussels just now, and she was bagging any she could find.  After a converstation about only taking empties with us, and remembering that there was an animal inside the shells, we reduced the risk of finding smelly shells in the back yard.

And limpets!  Luna found these ones.

Beautiful day.

Watching the waves.

Sand and space.

Happy new year!

You might have been following what has been called our worst maritime disaster, the container ship MV Rena ran aground in October, resutling in oil slicks, damage to marine life debris washing up on beaches..

A couple of days ago the ship broke apart, and there were reports of containers washing up on Waihi Beach.  We were staying not far off so it was something to see.  See that pile up there ^ bits of wood, a sack of milk powder and sachets of instant rice, gross!  The sack of milk powder is covered in oil, on such a pristine beach, brought me to tears.  The scale of pollution was overwhelming.

The next day we were heading home so stopped off to see how things were going..  I was very impressed to see the clean up was thorough.  The thing is, I wanted to help, with two littlees in tow, it was not practical, nor did I have any gloves, or somewhere to put the stuff!  It went from this:

to this

and this

to this

Hard to believe it was so long ago now, and we are seeing wash up and pollution as far north as Waihi Beach, and dissapointing to hear that the ship is still leaking oil.

Winter days on the west coast a lovely, we had a crisp clear day, after an icy start!

Spirula shell with tiny goose barnacles.

Looking up towards the dunes reminded me of some vast (yet miniature) archaeological site.

Watch out!

Beautiful.

Luna’s really into organising sticks.

I had an art teacher talk to me about the limitless greys you can see in the clouds.  This was during a still life painting we worked with a purely black and white palette.

Yesterday, I recalled this conversation after I came upon this dead gull on the beach.  I was quite dried and preserved and the feathers were an amazing variety of silvers and greys.

Grey is probably one of those tricky hues to capture with a camera, but I had to try!

Reptilian claws…

There were many dead birds on the beach this day, and many more alive in the skies and on the water.

A stunning winter day at Muriwai today, the girls had a great time, it almost felt like summer.

Come and sit down!

Beautiful!  Isobel and Audrey love it.

Seaweed and sea shells.  Still pretty chilly in the shade.

For a day that started out like this

It was a great day for a winter beach wander.  One of the best things about Waterview is being minutes from Pt Chev, and the BEACH.  Not my pick for a swim, but plenty of shells and sand to get into and on you.

How lovely is this?  I left the washing in the machine and we took off, grabbed some sushi and got in the sand.

The water was so still.

Luna is into shells and wanted to make a sand castle, sand was collected from along the beach until we found the spot for the sand castle, then it was a long slow walk back collecting scallop shells…

Cool thing is she remembers many more shell names, and we’re able to do more with these finds, washing and learning about the animals.

I’m looking forward to spending more time investigating with her, we got out one of my shell books, and found pictures of what we found today.  Mostly scallops!

Such a fun excursion.

Black sand on the west coast is perfect for making sand sculptures.. I used to spend hours at the beach and have made my share of Sand Dragons, now I just try and get one made before Blake dances on it’s tail!

This lady is a bit rough!

I see the occasional Common Janthina shells washed up, but blue?  Plastic.  Don’t see so much on this coast.

Very striking.

Byssus threads on a mussel shell.

Autumn, again at Te Henga, so beautiful and fresh.  There these jellyfish that were like jewels in the sun.

Such a beautiful day!  Yesterday we found ourselves out on the East Coast before a wedding, we had a few hours to kill, so we headed out to the beach, Omana Regional Park this time…

In the carpark trying to get a little shade…

Oh and we had the best pizza I’ve had in years..  there’s a pizza place a few minutes drive up the road and they do a $5 pizza with one topping plus cheese, and oh will we be back!  Will do a beach mission followed by a couple of pizzas and maybe a glass of wine?  So, so good, go there!