potato patch

This morning we weeded the garden and pulled up the potatoes all 12 kilos of them. That is a LOT of potatoes.

Caterpiller Chyisalis

By J11

This morning I saw a caterpillar on our swan plant starting to make his chrysalis. I thought that he would finish it in the night. But I just thought about it a few moments ago and went to see how much he had done and to my surprise he had finished it. The chrysalis is a lot more light and green than the other one that was done this morning.

Northern Wattle Moth / Pepe Atua

We found a moth on the curtain in the dining room and we wondered what it was. So we checked in Andrew Crowe’s “Which New Zealand Insect?” book. This is what he said:

 Northern Wattle Moth

From Australia. Common as far south as Nelson, February to April. Attracted to lights. The caterpillars eat the leaves of wattle trees. Known to early Maori who found the odd moth blown in from Australia beforethe first wattle trees were planted here, hence the Maori names: pepe kehue, pepe atua, para kori taua, all of which refer to the belief  that these mysterious moths were the returning spirits of ancestors. (A similar belief about noctuid moths is found in Madagascar.) Also known as owl, moon or peacoock moth from the ‘eye’ pattern on the wings, shining like a new moon or like the tail feathers of a peacoock.

Dasypodia species

I tried taking a photo, but they all turned out blurry. Better luck next time!

the wind

grass waves

in the breeze.

 

blustery,

moves the trees.

 

frantic flapping

backwards flying.

 

across the ground

shadows moving.

 

shiver shiver

makes you cold

 

strong strong

blows leaves along

 

trees bend

water ripples

 

pushes pushes

whistles whistles

icky sticky sticks

As we were eating lunch we noticed a speckledy brown thrush tweak a worm from the earth. (He was NOT an early bird, yet he definitely caught a worm). Watching it fly away, we followed its course to the base of a nearby tree where a baby thrush was waiting. At the sight of food, it became very very noisy. A bit like us.
This scene was repeated before we noticed more thrushes up in the branches. They all seemed pretty fat. Maybe that’s what comes from getting the early worm and the midday worm worms.
We climbed the tree after our own lunch in the hope of discovering a nest, but we failed in our endeavour. We did, however, manage to collect lots of “honey” (gum) on the end of sticks. Gum is sticky. Very sticky.

two days, two beaches

Yesterday in the late afternoon Dadda spontaneously decided to take us all to Cornwallis Beach. Only we ended up at Laingholm, because it was closer and it was nearly dinnertime.

The find of the day was crabs. CRABS CRABS CRABS. Big crabs, little crabs and middle-sized crabs. We knocked one rock and half a dozen scuttled away to a safer place. So we overturned a whole lot more rocks and there were crabs EVERYWHERE. None of us had even seen so many. Most of them were dark black and a few had a blue-ish tint.

J11 said, “If only we’d brought the camera, we could have taken a photo for the blog.”

Today we went out to Karekare for a couple of hours. Apart from the usual running around and digging, we made an interesting discovery. The bushes on the dunes are in flower – bright yellow flowers. And they also have seed pods that look just like peas. We didn’t really pay too much attention to the shape of the leaves or the arrangement of the flowers, but we’re going to try to find out what they are.

a picture is worth a thousand words

 

               
            

so we don’t need to write the history of our creation experiences…this is a nice little catch-up….Entomological Society field trips, a bird hide we made, finding creatures, collecting honey, observing butterfly life cycle, star-gazing, rock pool exploring, bush walking, rock collecting, lunar eclipse watching, ghecko catching, planting……

in the beginning

“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.”
Our first ever memory verse.

In the beginning we learnt
“All things bright and beautiful,
All creatures great and small,
All things wise and wonderful,
The Lord God made them all.”
Our first ever hymn.

Beyond the beginning we discovered great and small nature journal
The first ever online nature journal we had seen….and were inspired by….and so now we have our own. For most of our lives we have already been keeping paper creation journals; now we are adding an online journal as well to record the wonders we discover in God’s created world.