Garden Dreams

Our home in Houghton Bay is fortunate to be sheltered from the worst of Wellington’s southerlies and this afternoon we enjoyed a beautiful afternoon gardening and adventuring.

Tui’s sang in the tree-top of our Norfolk Pine and a fantail flew above our heads, even venturing briefly inside the house (alas too fast for me to capture on film). Visit Kiwi Wildlife Tours NZ for a sound gallery of New Zealand bird calls.

Charlotte loves the outdoors and I hate to see her confined indoors against her will. We made it to Kindi, but on such a lovely day the appeal of ‘mat-time’ just wasn’t going to win her over (and I whole heartedly agreed!). The garden provided plenty of learning opportunities, from choosing herbs for dinner and to scent the room to creating shapes with fallen branches from the Norfolk Pine and drawing numbers with chalk. When darkness approached Charlotte then enjoyed coming indoors, where she ran around the lounge placing ‘name labels’ on all the furniture.

Daddy came home a little early, so I could go our for a jog, and the girls were very ready for a bath when I returned (and so was I!). The girls were peacefully asleep by 7pm and as I returned to the garden, to clean up from the afternoon’s activities, I was greeted by the call of the Morepork (Ruru) and a beautiful starlit sky.