Winter break

I've been neglecting the blog recently - let's call it a winter break. A combination of the cold weather laying us low with coughs and flu over the past couple of weeks, general busyness and the new garden sucking my spare time.

The girls have been preparing the school 'mini-heiva', here they are in costume with little bro' who just wanted to be in on the action too. Now with the long 'winter' holidays looming, the girls are rehearsing for the dance school performance.

It was also school photo time, so here they are, the changing faces....Matotea's last photo, next year it's high school.

Mother's day also passed, the girls wrote me both gushing poems, and I got lots of hugs so I felt truly pampered! In turn they got to go to the Mother's day bash with their aunties - Matotea won a fabulous hat.....which she promptly sold - she's trying to raise funds for the heiva! The girls are also being apprenticed in weaving by their tattie Dorianne, with an eye to selling their creations at the heiva's arts center, Matotea is even considering participating in the weaving competitions, for the prizes - an entrepreneurial spirit that I find admirable! Even if it is just to use to buy popcorn at the heiva.

In the garden, we have moved from pig tilling to brute force, the men put up a fence and dug out some paths, turning the beds. I've followed up filling the paths with gravel and starting to plant out some veggies and mulch. It's become a slightly obsessive thing, I can't believe how excited I am about it, it's silly really. Just hope we actually get some harvest, I have already got some string beans and christophene climbing up the chicken wire, tomatoes, peppers and aubergines in, with borders of greens and lettuce inter planted with onions, garlic and scallions, and a host of other seeds to plant.

I will try and be more diligent with the blog, and there'll be plenty of news to report with the upcoming heiva festivities...