urban daisy

Mulberry stained, still sandy from the sand pit, and having just liberated a flower from Grandma’s garden, Blossy shares a moment with Max.

Possum fur is delectable. It’s hard to believe the New Zealanders don’t think possums are cute, but they are an introduced pest over there, decimating the native flora.

See Blossy’s glazed loook?  We are all wearing that. Holidaying is hard work, and everyone is exhausted.

I thought that a two hour wait between flights would  involve a lot of sitting around.  Not so!  Certainly not if you enter New Zealand with a set of hiking boots in each of your six (!) suitcases and you declare that you have visited a farm in the last 30 days.  It was an exercise in patience to unpack each of those six suitcases before the airport audience, pull out all the hiking boots, have them inspected, treated, and returned good and clean (and WET) to pack back into the cases.  That all pretty much covered the two hours nicely.

New Zealand, at least the little bit of it we’ve seen, is a place of  magnificent beauty.  I will never joke about it being just  another southern state of Australia again.  It really is unique.

This lake is across the road from where we are staying:  the mountains are “The Remarkables”.

I wish we had planned to spend more time here.  So far we have been very busy with the activities our hosts had planned for us (which have been great), but I yearn to explore some of the heritage listed national parks in the area.

Today we spent the day  at the snowfields.  It was cold.  It’s very, very cold here!

I hope to catch up with everyone when I get home.  :)

Oblivious to the incoming tide, Blossy hunts up her now sandy, spilled sultanas.

It’s the Irish Chicklette.  She was building sandcastles on the beach, but the endeavour was hampered considerably by Miss Baby, who would go poking her fingers into them as fast as they were built.

Run….JUMP…

Splash!

Some challenges should only be faced together.