This morning was grey. Grey sky, grey clouds and grey outlook over the mountains. It wasn’t as cold as I thought it might be though and I didn’t need a coat when I left for my walk. I was curious to know how far I actually cover on my feet each morning so I set my Strava app on my phone and away I went. Walking was quite pleasant, no wind, not cold and the birds were singing melodiously. We have an abundance of tui and bell bird as well as finches, wax eyes, fan tails and a few others. The type of birds we regularly see depends on the time of year. This time of year we also see kereru (wood pigeon) , bush robins, karearea (NZ falcon) and occasionally kea. In the Spring we have brown creepers, shining cuckoo and grey warblers. I have at times noticed pipits and we have a pair of fern birds near our main gate. Of course the weka are everywhere and morepork are the birds of the night! There may well be others that I haven’t noticed. Listening to the different bird calls is another one of those simple pleasures that I get living here.

I don’t read too much into the time taken because I moved Holly’s fence, took photos, stopped to admire plants and spider webs and believe it or not had to wait for two cars before going out onto the road! 2.5 km is a good walk though and Laurie says the gradient is 1:10 so I can probably add 10% to the total distance, (I like his thinking). Hopefully I am at least maintaining my fitness because once I get back to work and out into the bush, I know I am going to need it!

Today was a little bit like groundhog day. School work in the morning with Kayden and sewing in the afternoon. We had a bit of variety at 10:00 am with a Zoom conference with some of our church friends. It was nice to see their friendly faces, although our microphone was playing up. That made active participation a bit of a challenge. Still we got there in the end.

I’ve sewn the binding onto my quilt and am in the process of hand stitching the back. It looks okay but I must admit to finding the mitered corners a bit challenging. Still for my inaugural attempt I guess it’s not too bad. I’ll show some photos when I have it done tomorrow. Kayden has been very focused on making short movies using his Lego and toy cars. We bought him an app yesterday called Stop Motion Studio. It is proving to be excellent value for money as he is becoming quite creative and his clips are looking pretty good.

That’s about it from me tonight. I’ll leave you with a few more photos from my day.