We had lovely morning, the promise of a good day. The dogs and I walked Holly down the hill and took her to the beehive paddock. The sheep have already eaten out the pick of the grass but plenty left for a horse! She had her head down and was eating happily as we left her to it. The sun was rising over the Radiant Range – talk about a bright orb of light! The photo doesn’t give justice to the layers of cloud and the colours and dimensions as the light hit them. Simply stunning!

The sheep were grazing quite contently in their paddock, though not so impressed with a human, four dogs and a horse walking through their space. Once up the other side of our track, I looked back and saw Holly still grazing quite happily.

Up at the house Kayden noticed an interesting behaviour from a weka near the house. S/he was sitting next to a stone quite close to the house. The way s/he was sitting made me think of a duck! We disturbed the bird a few times over the next hour or so (unintentionally), but it stayed in situ. Most of the morning while Kayden was at the table doing school work, the weka sat near the stone. When it did get up to move, I noticed it was heavy in its tummy. Perhaps gravid? Maybe we’ll have baby weka hanging about soon … they are super cute!

Weka; near our house.

This morning we made some poppies to put out near our mailbox. A good friend sent me a YouTube link on how to make the poppies using New World shopping bags. Fortunately I had three bags, so we set to the task. It was a team effort and Kayden and I were pretty pleased with our effort. Once they were made, we set off on our bikes down the hill, with Petra accompanying us for an extra run. Riding down our hill is an awesome experience. You go real fast!!! No need for pedaling, you just need good brakes! You move so fast you have tears in your eyes – it’s great fun.

We met Laurie at Rosie’s paddock – he’s building a goat shelter for the winter. We dropped off our bikes to come up the hill on the trailer and walked the rest of the way to the mail box. Once there we put the poppies up. It was a good lesson for Kayden on the importance of remembering the people who served and sacrificed during WW1 so that we can experience the freedom that we have today and respect the folk in our past who did so much.

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Once the poppies were up we went to check on Holly. She was pretty keen to come home. She doesn’t cope very well with being isolated and away from human company. I put her halter on and Kayden popped on her and I led her with him astride up the hill to home. It was fun for all except the puffing Grandma doing her best to hold the dog, lead the horse and give advise to the younún about riding on a horse. Actually it was great, I like to share my love of animals and the outdoors with others.

The rest of the day was given over to gardening and animals …again, then cooking dinner. Oh I also had to start thinking about work for Tuesday and begin planning and preparation for that. Eeeekkkkk!!!

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