Possum tales

.......or tails.

When our ginger was a very tiny kitten, she would go to sleep in my grandmother's pine chest of drawers, curled up with a possum tail. She loved playing with it, then would treat it like a warm mother cat to curl up next to.

Fast forward 3 years. We gave the possum tail to our latest addition, but he wasn't terribly interested. He's never been very kittenish in that regard. But this evening he humoured me, and he "Killed" the possum many times on my sewing table. After about 5 minutes he fell asleep, all tuckered out with the effort.

A view of the hills

The best view of the hills near Otaki is from the cemetery attached to the Rangiatea Maori church. If you climb to the top of the graveyard, the views are very special.

The cemetery is fascinating, being the final resting place of many of the early Christian missionaries. It is the bi-centenary this year of the Christian Gospel arriving in New Zealand. As always, the sad reminder of the sacrifice of many of those early Christians; grave after grave of their young children who died of disease.

Moving House

We have maintained contact with the couple who sold us Coneysthorpe. On Sunday, we had a lovely visit from the wife and daughter. They brought us photos of when they moved Coneysthorpe from its original home in Mangaweka, which is about 90 minutes to the north of where the house stands today.

The roof of the house was removed and the building chain sawed in half for transportation, then reassembled on the new site.

We must be the only owner of a house, half of which was once pulled over and given a speeding ticket. Evidently, at one point on the journey, the rig carrying that part of the house snuck over the speed limit and was greeted by a lady police officer who promptly fined the driver!

Getting the house over our local bridge involved raising the building on hydraulics in order for it to clear the posts on the bridge.

The Queen of Tarts

The Queen of Hearts she made a tart
All on a summer's day.

26 degrees here in the shade and it is Autumn! I couldn't bear to cook a big dinner for our evening meal, so had to be inspired by a lemon tart instead!

Birds in residence

It occurred to me this morning, as I was retrieving our wheelie bin from the front gate, and saying hello to our resident kingfisher, that I should start a tally of all the bird species I have seen at Coneysthorpe, with a sub-list of those I have heard only.

So here goes from memory:

Blackbird, Song Thrush, Sparrow, Starling, Magpie, Rook, Chaffinch, Plover, Shell duck, Pheasant, Tui, Fantail, Hawk
Kingfisher, Rosella Parrot, Goldfinch

Heard only - Morepork Owl

I'll let you know when I can add to the list!

Three little eggs

I am still finding all sorts of treasures in the garden. In the process of pruning the hydrangeas, I found this. I don't know what kind of bird abandoned the nest, but suspect it could have been a thrush, as we have so many of them in the garden. It makes me sad that her eggs didn't hatch.

Autumn chores

I always hoped I would settle in a country where autumn = bare trees and ankle deep leaves.

I got my wish.

But today it was 25 degrees Celsius and I was raking leaves. There is something very wrong about that activity/temperature combo.