Enjoying the earth

Look at all the wonderful produce I brought home from a neighbour's garden this afternoon.

We got limes and oranges, red guavas, baby onions, a little lettuce, and a whole armload of silverbeet.  Plus some flowers and fresh rosemary and bay leaves.  I would have taken some beans but honestly they were a bit too big and woody.  What a treat.
 

Echinoderm locomotion

At the beach we found some sea urchins.  They're good to eat but it takes a bit of doing.

We didn't eat them.  We just played with them for a while and exclaimed at how they wave their little spines around.

Then we set one down on the rocks and it made a break for it.  This is at 8X speed.

Well, Canadians heat their houses, so it isn't a Commonwealth thing...

As we approach winter, I've had to face the facts about this new house we're in.  There is no heating.  None.  No furnace.  No heat pump.  No bathroom heaters.  Not even any heated towel rails, for heaven's sake.

It's a house with zero ductwork whatsoever.  And single-paned glass.  Currently all our home heating is based on kitchen appliances and light bulbs.  And this is the norm here!  I just cannot understand how a country in which water freezes outdoors can have a culture that eschews insulation and central heating.

So I went off to The Warehouse and set myself up.  Here is what we've got to keep our 1500 sq ft house warm this winter:

A convection heater for the main rooms downstairs-- its interior looks kind of like a toaster with a fan attached.  It has a timer so I'll set it to get a head start on us in the mornings so the kitchen will be cozy when I stumble down in search of coffee.  I'll probably drag it from room to room a dozen times a day.

There's a little portable heater for the downstairs bathroom, and it ought to be able to blow the chill out of a bedroom pretty quickly.

And upstairs there's the old noisy heater.  It still pumps out the heat; it just makes a holy racket doing it.

Come and get us, winter!  We're ready!
 

Those arm-squeezers in every Wal-Mart pharmacy?

Yeah, they cost $4 here.

There are actually a lot of ways to categorise them

Amiri has started a seed collection.

He's got popcorn, various beans, spices, sunflower seeds, flax seeds, and more.  Over the last week, he has spent at least ten hours absorbed with his collection-- sorting, labelling, funnelling them from one container to another.

Hurry, there's got to be more!

On Easter Monday the boys came home and began tearing around the house.

Because the Easter Bunny had come and left eggs all over.

Where are some more?

Here, join in the fun!



Finally our bunnies settled down to sort their haul.

 

The magic of video editing

Late last year, a film company shot a commercial just around the corner from us.  They told us it was for the Yellow Pages.  Of course I hung around and took pictures like a looky-loo.

They set up in the park, the one with our playground, for about three days.

They blocked the street off and built this complicated track for the camera to trundle down.

The actors spent most of their time zooming back and forth in a car on a trailer.

Even from a distance, what's up with his hair??

There was also a pony. 

Who also got into the car at one point.  What is going on?

And we couldn't really figure out what the marching band was all about but they spent quite some time scurrying back and forth.

Well.  We no longer have to wonder.  May I present the finished product.

Descending to the depths

We went on a little adventure out to North Head.  That's where we did our sledding.  (When we were there a year ago, the boys needed assistance to climb the hills.  Clearly that is not the case now!)

This time we packed our torches (flashlights) and were prepared to explore the tunnels.

Once upon a time, North Head was a state of the art defense post, with magnificent long-range guns meant to take out any ships that came into the Harbour intent on nefarious shenanigans.   Happily, none of the guns were ever used in conflict, and the armaments and underground structures are preserved as relics of a by-gone era.

 

The whole huge hill is honeycombed underneath with a maze of deep, twisty passages that suddenly open up onto enormous gun structures.  And back in the spidery dark, there's tiny rooms with low ceilings.  With smaller rooms just around the corner.  Vertical ammunition shafts leading to who knows where.  And lamp passages: narrow pitch-black hallways barely wider than a man's shoulders that snake around the perimeter of the underground complex and open onto little windows in the rooms.  We explored every one and I'm expecting them to have a starring role in a nightmare one of these days.  (MY nightmares, I mean...the boys thought they were so much fun!)

It really was fascinating to explore them.  Once we emerged into the sunlight, though, there was some swordfighting to be done.  Notice Amiri's headlamp.

School photos

I thought it was so cool how the school had options to bring in siblings for the photos.  I even saw one whole extended family posing for a shot.

The photos were taken outside in one of the covered 'pods' or courtyards surrounded by classrooms.  The backdrop is some bushes with the playground on the other side.  Children were rumpusing around on the equipment during the photo sessions; I was actually surprised not to see any frolicking caught on film.
 

Summertime sledding

Look at the awesome sledding hill.  Who needs snow?--the grass is nice and dry and slippery.   And who needs a toboggan?-- someone left some big sheets of cardboard laying around.

Should I go?

OK, I'm going!!

He made it down, and then back up again.

And Arram went too!