It’s the creek!  Says Luna.

We like simple toys here, and it’s not original, but we had a few logs lying around in the back yard after taking out some undesirable trees (so these babies are not made from lovely friendly willow or anything..) and we had had a few rainy days, so I suggested we make some new toys…

Simple is definitely best for kids to really play.  We just cut the logs in short lengths, maybe between 20 -80 mm, Rob cut a few ‘half’ logs.  These are great for making trucks!

Old Austin was not that keen on it all, I pulled out some stones, and the pine cones.

I also enjoyed setting up some imaginary worlds…

I pulled out the felt pieces, which are often land or water for plastic animals…

Good fun!

How could she resist?

A beautiful sunny morning, some of the purplest of purple hydrangeas in the world…

Pretty pretty, and Isobel had to join in too…

Loving it!

The day the sun came out!

Got a few nice snaps of the girls looking at some delicate fungi on our last day in Katikati…

Ramona and Audrey..  ”These are so ephemeral are they not?”

“Why, yes!”

“Wohoo!  Sunshine!”

“Look at these ones, tiny aren’t they?”

From us all, “Good bye Katikati, hello sunny Auckland!”

Plenty of flowers in the garden at the moment.

Luna picked these flowers and set them on the table.

This was the big thing that happened over the weekend.  As soon as I saw this tree, I knew it would make a good tree house!

it just needed to be freed from the jasmine and moth plant that were strangling it and our lovely Carla came and gave it a good prune. Really simple to construct, though it took a few hours, we had a solid wood slice as a platform, loads of lengths of logs in various thicknesses.  Rob cut a few posts from the logs which we settled the platform on, then added the handhold and banister kind of logs around locking them in on each other and nailing them in place.  We made some ladder rungs in places too.

All that needed to be done was bringing the wood (that came from a couple of wooly nightshade trees I chopped down) and some really long nails together.

We all love it!  I whipped up some flags and we strung them up, with a piece of red fabric as a sun shade, and Luna starts singing ‘happy birthday’ sweet.

I love molluscs.  I love really small ones, like the juveniles that wash up in the fine sand on some beaches and then there are the just plain TINY ones that go unseen as we busily get on with the big stuff.  So it was a bonus to discover these little beauties when I brought home a big bunch of Italian parsley from my mums place, I’ve seen them around before and I don’t know what they are – yet!

Such a cold morning, and so, so beautiful, I snuck out to take some photos of the back yard.

So still.

Lichen.

Daisy.

Web.

Rosemary doesn’t mind the chill.

We are looking to find a new flat, with two kiddies more than when we moved in three years ago, and a letter to say the rent is going up in 60 days, the count down has begun.  With such a change a head, I find myself reflecting on the time I have had here.

The other day as I lay breastfeeding Blake to sleep in the afternoon, Luna was beside me in bed reading, or so I thought as I gazed out the open window at the silhouette of the plum tree against the cloudy sky.  I looked over as I was about to extract myself from Blake when I realised she had also been staring out the window.  Seems it’s a good view.  I have spent so many hours in this room, with this view, mostly breastfeeding, singing to, or cuddling either Luna or Blake off to sleep here and if there is some light I enjoy looking out the window.  The view is mostly of the sky behind the old plum tree and the pitasporum.  In winter the skinny bare branches scratch at the sky, and in summer the leaves make a crisp rustling noise, which I think captured Luna’s attention.  At this time of the year I can really feel the change as we move closer to Autumn, and I love it.

I will miss this view, and this has been an eventful home for us, I gave birth to both my babies here, and the profound experience of becoming a mother has been shaped to some extent by this house, making it easier for me to go with my instincts.  For one thing, the ‘second bedroom’ is not so much a ‘bedroom’ as a small room off the garage with manky carpet and a mouldy wall, it was not perfect when we moved in but we figured we could work with it.  We have, after all, lived in some odd places.  Luna taught me that all those ideas about what babies are like, all the ‘what to expect’s are absurd myths that everyone pretends are true.  For instance, the idea that you just put a baby to bed in a bassinet and they lay there and drift off to sleep all happy and content.  Or that babies ‘genrally breastfeed between 2-4 hours’ at first, so then you think, ok I can live with that.  Surely you just feed them, and then they’ll sleep/be happy/not need you long enough so you can shower, clean the house, organise a meal, right?

So we ended up just co-sleeping, having all the babies in with us, it’s lovely and a bit of a squeeze at times, especially when old Austin The Cat moves in on those cold old winter nights, or for afternoon naps.  But we are all ready for a change and some more space to stretch out.  I’m excited about what our next adventure will be and where it will take us, and the new things to learn as our children grow.

Early evening from our bedroom window.

This years garlic harvest was a bumper crop, we had made a few minor changes based  on last year.  We spaced the cloves out a little more – at least 15cms, and we actually did not feed the bed as much as the earlier plantings, and the cloves were already sprouting when we planted them.

Before braiding them this year, I also gave them longer to dry, a little too long as the leaves were quite crisp and brittle while I finished plaiting, but the garlic is just delicious.  We harvested them on the Summer Solstice, and although the heads were complete, they were rather small, I think if we left them a little longer in the ground, maybe another couple of weeks, or a month, they would have been much bigger. 

Just beautiful around here today, they garden is alive  with colour and the ground is warm, can’t wait for the garlic harvest.  Summer solstice is happening on the 21st of December, a day of pulling up the lovely fat bulbs, and of course a delicious lunch.