Welcome to a new decade

 

Well New Year celebrations are over and we have a new year to look forward to. 365 empty days to fill with life and adventures.

 I wonder what the year will bring?

 

We ended the last year looking after Sass for a few days so the family could go away over the New Year break. She and I went walking and played fetch until she tired of it and dropped the ball and then dropped herself to the floor. I thought I would get sick of it first, but no.

 She watched through the window while my GKB mowed the lawns. She also 'guarded' the house while we went out on New Year's eve for dinner with extended family. Out of town family on my GKB's side were visiting with their new baby, so it was a bit of a meet and greet time as well. An early evening though and we were in bed before midnight :)

9am

 On January 1st we awoke to orange skies - smoke from the Australian bush fires. Very surreal. We could smell the smoke in the air the evening before. The photo above was taken at nine in the morning and not long after we had to turn the lights on in the house. And they remained on all day.

11:30am

  By 11:30 am it was really quite dark. Sass wasn't happy and declined her walk and wasn't keen on being outside at all. We live on the East Coast of New Zealand, at the bottom of the South Island, and although we were expecting a bit of a haze from the fires we didn't expect it to be so bad. Runny, itchy eyes and nose are the order of the day at the moment for most of us.

The Met Service photo above shows the smoke plume in the lower left corner spilling across the Tasman Sea and reaching New Zealand. I know what we are experiencing is nothing compared to what is happening in Australia, it is really quite devastating and distressing to watch. What makes it worse is that some of the fires were deliberately lit.

On the 2nd we had a visit from Alice and her mother who are here for a couple of weeks staying with her daddy's family. Alice is to be baptised on Sunday so that will be another big family gathering - as long as we all get there. Some of us don't know where the church is but we have all been given directions, address and a map! 

So watch this space.

And last but not least, I thought I would show you the cover of the little booklets I made up for the grandchildren and their kids. These are some of the stories my little mother wrote for her grandchildren and I managed to get them ready to give out at Christmas. Number one son designed the cover and I think it looks great. I think Mum would have been pleased with how they turned out.

Looking forward to a year filled with promise.

Best wishes as you go forth into 2020 

Diana

'Tis 2019

First of all let me wish everyone a belated New Year.

How did you celebrate? Did you celebrate?

We didn't. We had our grandson staying

so thought we might at least sit up until midnight

 but he scooted off to bed about 10:30pm

and so we went not long after.

It still happened without us :)

We were a bit spoilt on New Year's day, a friend invited

 us out to lunch and we had a very enjoyable catch up

 with her at one of the hotels a couple of suburbs over.

That evening we were also invited to our son's home for the evening meal. We had a delicious cold meal, summer noodles, followed by icecream with a passionfruit sauce over it.

This was all finished off with rose petal tea

(coffee for my GKB) served in beautifully fine

 porcelain tea cups. So delicate. In the bottom

of the cup was an image in the porcelain of the

head of a Japanese lady. I think you'll see it

if you look closely at the picture below.

We all headed to the beach afterwards, next time

I'll take my swimming togs. It was a beautiful

 evening and the water wasn't too cold. Some of

us paddled, one of us decided the water was

too cold and another one guarded the cardigans,

cell phones etc. We headed home about 8:30pm.

After grandson headed back up to Christchurch

 we had a day or two just relaxing and then Sassy

arrived to stay for a couple of nights. She's missing

her family but once she realized we were actually

going to feed her and take her for walks she perked up.

She has been good and it's been fun having a dog again

 for a little while. We were out early for our walk this

morning as the forecast was for warm temps during

 the day, it's 31C at present. Unless it cools off somewhat

 she may miss out on her evening jaunt :)

And that has been our first week of 2019.

I hope yours has been just as relaxing.

Diana

joining Deb today for

Friday foto friends

A photo scavenger hunt

I am joining in a photo scavenger hunt this week with Hawthorn and friends over at I live, I love, I craft, I am me. Some of the photo's are from the archives, some I have used recently and some of you will have seen them before but I hope you still enjoy them.

1:  The setting sun

We had been up the coast to visit the blowholes and the pancake rocks. At the end of the day we headed back to daughters holiday accommodation for a pizza tea. This is the view we had of the sunset over the Tasman Sea from the upstairs sitting room :)

2:  My local wild place

This is a garden in the town where my GKB grew up, so although it is local it is not local local. It is on a hill on the other side of the city. It was established by the artist Ralph Hotere and overlooks the Otago Harbour. All of the plantings are native trees and bushes and those legs you see belong to a sculpture by Shona Rapira Davies titled They do cut down the poles that hold up the sky. A lovely peaceful place to sit and relax and enjoy the native bush without leaving the city.

3:  Mug of favourite drink in the garden

Christmas Day 2016. The family had gathered at youngest daughter's home to celebrate. Dinner was over, the dishes were all cleaned up and put away and it was time to take a cup, or glass, of our favourite drink and relax somewhere and chat. The photo below is me, my daughter and grandaughter sharing a quiet moment together in the backyard. The other two possibly had a glass of wine but my drink of choice was instant coffee, made the way I like it :) Goodness knows where everyone else was, there were at least 20 of us there for the day.

4:  My kind of beautiful

Isn't she beautiful? Well I'm guessing this is a she, cos she looks pregnant to me. Anyway I love these big draught horses and you don't see them around much these days. Don't ask me the breed, I couldn't tell you, I took the photo from the car while we were doing some sightseeing last time we were up Middlemarch way .

5:  Look to the skies

On the same trip up to Middlemarch this was early evening sky at the camping ground we stayed at. My GKB took this photo and some people have said the cloud formation looks like a giant hand in the sky. Anyway I think it is quite dramatic.

6:  Mini beasts

Well you can't see the mini beasts as they are inside the nest. 

This is the nursery web of a nursery web spider and the babies stay inside for couple of weeks. I guess if you don't mind spiders you won't think of them as beasts but if you see them magnified they are very definitely little monsters.

7:  Rain

One evening late last winter we had a shower of rain. Or maybe it was early in spring as I see new buds on these branches. Overnight we had a good old frost. In the morning my GKB took a sequence of photos. The raindrops had frozen on the bare branches of this bush and it looked rather pretty with the early morning sun shining on them. A little like the spindly little bush had been draped with a string of diamonds :)

8:  Something summery

Flowers always say summer but this is 
a photo I love, taken one hot day last summer.

Wouldn't you have thought it would be easier to just get under the table instead of clambering up on top of it to find the little bit of shade afforded by the sun umbrella? This puppy is a real character :)

9:  Urban wilderness

What can I say? An urban area in the wilderness. 

Queenstown, New Zealand.

10: My own choice

Parked up for the winter, caravans on a
 bleak winter's evening in Central Otago.

I hope I haven't been too wordy

See you next week.

Diana

Caught napping

Grand daughter's puppy Sass was 

caught napping on her owners' bed.

And one sunny day she decided to take a nap out of the sun...

...wouldn't it have been easier to just crawl under the table?

What? What??

And today she was not napping - she was left inside a little longer than usual and this is what met my daughter when she returned home!

Who Me? No, it wasn't me.

 It was one of the cats, the grey one...

Have a fun week,

Diana

And because dogs are critters 
I'm sharing this post with Eileen at:
Saturday's critters.

Creatures great and small...

...well, mostly small :)

Both my little mother and my GKB are napping at the moment, it's that sort of day, so I thought I'd take the opportunity to put up a few photos I took during the week. 

My eldest granddaughter came over to visit her great grandmother and brought her little dog, Mack, with her. Mack sulked throughout the visit because my GKB didn't pay him due attention when he first arrived. When my GKB was ready for him Mack turned his back and refused to have anything to do with him. Doesn't he look just a little sulky to you?

Then a day or so later youngest granddaughter arrived with her new puppy, which she was not supposed to get and is now in the throes of winning her father over and showing him she is a responsible owner. Meet Sass, isn't she a cutie, 8 weeks old and exhausted from playing with the big dog at another friend's house so she slept the visit away.

Today I went to a friends home or a flying visit and one of the local duck families came to the back door to visit. Mum and five ducklings. It had been raining so they were poking around in the grass looking for worms I guess.

That's Mum standing to attention and watching me closely.

Mum and some of her babies, they're about half grown and stay with the mother for about 20 weeks.

This wee one is the runt and considerably smaller than his brothers and sisters. More scruffy looking too.

And guess who this is? This is dad, heading in the opposite direction to his brood at a very fast pace :)

This is one of two families of ducklings in this little village, there were 11 babies in the other family but I believe some of them went missing in various ways. I haven't seen that family for a while.

Have a great week

Diana