End of Term 1

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The school holidays begin today and we have woken to a lovely sunny crisp morning. Rich and I find with the school year being cut into 4 terms that it goes by extremely fast!

We have had quite a bit of rain lately so the clear day a nice change, although we do need more rain. The fire has been set a couple of times to take the chill off things, it heats things up fast and we have had to open the door eventually to let things cool off but the ambience is always nice…

The fronds from the Cabbage tree up by the fire pit area are full of tannin, when they fall off I make them into bundles and use them as kindling for the fire, works a treat and saves them from just being thrown away and also means no need for kindling to be cut.

Easter long weekend was lovely, lots of hot cross bun and treats were had….

I made the most of the time and got the last fruit off the trees. The “ugly” apples I made into apple sauce, the kids all love to eat it as a snack, great for school lunches. You can get a surprising amount of food out of apples that normally would get thrown away in the commercial orchards as supermarkets don’t want them, such a waste!

The last of the peaches I made into a pie…

We now have a fully planted orchard with 20 trees, each year our production should get better form now on.

The kids had fun running around the village and in our bush playing war games, their faces painted up 🙂

They have a lot of fun together these three 🙂 You can see the fronds on the cabbage tree to the left of the photo, they all fall off eventually and keep doing so, it is a never ending source…

Making the most of the sunny warm weather I got Luca to wash and scrub the carpet squares Rich got for his tree house. It was pulled out a building somewhere in town and I wanted to make sure it was clean before Rich puts it down. They have come up well

Speaking of the tree house, it is coming along very nicely, the sides are going up now and look spectacular! The siding another lucky find on Trademe!

The views from the deck are amazing. We climbed up there last Sunday night in the dark to admire the sky which was incredible , with village below all lit up, it was so beautiful.

The garden I did a big overhaul to get ready for winter crops, while the kids raided the strawberries which never seem to end. The tomatoes too seem to just keep coming, but I suspect for not too much longer…

We also fitted in a hike up by the city’s water reservoir, Rich and I had been hiking up there before but Luca had not been with us, he and Pica loved it!

View from the top, looking out over the damn with the city in the background
Fairy door at the base of the tree, so sweet 🙂

It was quite an active few days but there was still time for some relaxing 🙂

We are heading off to Glenorchy next Friday for a few days of hiking, biking and horse riding. Aria is looking after here while we are away. Glenorchy is a remote little village about a hour from Queenstown, a lot of the Lord of the Rings was filmed there, the scenery is spectacular. I have booked Luca and I into a horse trek around some of the filming sites. This is a taste of where we will be. The village is in the foreground set on the lake, and we will be heading into those mountains, we are pretty excited!!!!