Stranger than most!

We find odd things around our garden and on the deck. 'Odd' in the sense of interesting or unusual or surprising.

A piece of garden sculpture the visibility of which comes and goes, as the garden grows

Monarch butterflies seem to enjoy visiting the Mulligans - can't think why, as we don't do much special for them!

Caterpillars appear on our swan plants and proceed to devastate them. This caterpillar is feasting on the second 'crop' of leaves on the plant this year.

The caterpillars sometimes wander off the plants and end up where one mightn't expect them.

The caterpillars wrap themselves into a chrysalis, a beautiful shade of green, with striking gold dots.

I discovered this cocoon on one of the deck chairs. I had always assumed they just wrapped themselves up in a spot, and then stayed there. But no! Not this one! Over the next hour or two it proceeded to move itself around the furniture, presumably looking for a good place to settle while it metamorphed. I don't know where it ended up, or what it became, unfortunately.

This chicken has yet to lay any eggs, but enjoys basking in the sun.

This chap just hangs around

While this fellow just lies about the pots.

This stick insect was annoyed when I cleaned the ivy off the wall of garage - camouflage removed!!

We have new neighbours

The tenants next door have 2 lovely young cats. One is a tabby, the other all black. They have taken to exploring at our place, coming through the back fence. As a result, I was in the garden the other day, when I heard a bell quietly tinkling. And there they were. The tabby is the brave and inquisitive one, the black one is nervous and more timid.
But they are kittens, so they're lovely.

Feijoa Feasts

At present we have been harvesting Feijoas faster than we can eat them. Last Sunday I collected about 16Kg alone.

It has almost reached the stage where we cannot eat any more, and must try freezing them.
The Trees which are producing this bountiful harvest are really quite small:

Monet and the Impressionists

Friday last we visited the Monet exhibition at Te Papa - Monet and the Impressionists. Wonderful.
One of the nicest things was seeing the pictures in ornate, gilt frames!
As there were so many glorious paintings, I thought the easiest thing to do was to share them in a separate slideshow.

Time Out

We have just treated ourselves to an overnight stay in Martinborough in the Wairarapa. The purpose of the trip was so that Desiree could interview Eileen Kelly for her oral history project. But in view of the circumstances, we thought it would be nice to have a brief breathing space to ourselves.
We were able to book into the Martinborough Hotel, which is normally beyond our range, but LastMinute.com had a cheap room available.

Desiree was quite taken by the black-and-white decor, especially the pelmets over the curtains, which she is thinking about imitating for a window in our stairwell. The room was called Henry Bunny, after one of the local settlers. All the rooms had names of settlers, and the Hotel was decorated with 'antiques' - all in all, very nice.

The evening was spent in the bar, having dinner & chatting, after which we had an early night, only to find our room seemed to be above the kitchen. Fortunately, the noise wasn't too intrusive.
The trip was somewhat spoiled by the change in weather for the next day - a bitterly cold southerly blew through overnight and the morning was wall-to-wall rain. No wind, just very heavy cold rain. Oh well!
But we did manage to find Eileen in Carterton, and complete the interview, and we came away with in interesting collection of documents to copy, and an old record of the All Blacks in South Africa in 1960. I'm going to try to digitise it.

Sisterly Affection

Sarah and Jayne were excited at the news that Charlotte was coming home so she could attend her Grandmother's funeral. So naturally, they created a sign to hold up at the airport!

It's a family joke, that eludes me at present, but they all think it's funny!

R.I.P

Iris Bryson Mulligan
10/10/1916 - 2/4/2009

Part of the Mulligan, Murrell, and Clearwater families.

View a slideshow of photos of the Iris and her family.