Angela's Christmas tree decorations

Another rainy day today, and while I've been sorting photos and posting to the blog, Gill and the girls have been making Christmas tree decorations from the kits that Angela sent us last year. Here are some photos for you, Angela, to show you the fruits of their labours.

School projects

There seem to have been no end of projects to help with at school recently. Towards the end of last term, Camilla and Louise had to design and build some go-karts as part of a class project. Much of the work was carried out at home - with not just a little help from Dad, of course - but the final assembly, painting, testing etc. was done by the girls themselves at school. Here, I'm helping Louise out with some tightening of screws and other finishing touches.

On the final day, they lined up with the competition at the top of an alarmingly long hill, in the Lowe's field next to the school. Here is Camilla with her kart ...

... and Louise with hers, looking rather nervous, as she had tipped over several times in the trial runs. Both of them did very well, although they weren't among the winning entries.

Camilla and Louise have experienced a much tougher year, homework-wise, and spend most week-day afternoons doing their "topics" or weekly research studies. Despite them being the youngest children in the Year 7/8 composite class at Oropi, they've done very well indeed, and are often among the top students. Here they are finding answers to the weekly list of general knowledge questions on the playroom computer.

Both Hannah and Lesley tried the NSW examinations for the first time this year, and did very, very well indeed. Hannah achieved Distinctions for Maths, English and Science, while Lesley managed a High Distinction for Science and a Merit for Maths. Here is Hannah being awarded her Maths certificate at a Pyes Pa School assembly.

On the first weekend of term, both Oropi and Pyes Pa Schools hosted their annual AgriGala & Calf Club Days. Camilla and Louise were involved in fundraising activities for their class trip, due to take place later in the term. Rather than selling chocolates, we decided to make a "Treasure Island" from papier mache and have a "Guess where the treasure is buried" competition. The photo below shows them manning their stall, with appropriate pirate hats. They ended up making over $200!

Calving and lambing time

The other thing that arrives with the flowers is calving and lambing. Our neighbour Alan arranges his lambing to start quite late, and everyone else has usually had theirs by the time the first of his arrive. "Rowdy", the ewe that we raised four years ago, had triplets for the second year in a row, and they are in the field directly in front of our house, at the end of the lawn, so we can follow the progress. Alan left her (Rowdy's, that is) tail on so that we could continue to recognise her among the rest, which are all docked.

This year we acquired two more male calves to add to the collection - Toffee and Treacle are almost ready for the "you know what". This shows the girls with their friends Joe and Ross at the Kehely's farm, looking at the cows which were in calf - they actually saw one being born ...

and then checked out the selection of young calves.

A week or so later, our two new calves arrived. They have been christened Spongebob and Patrick!

Spring brings more than flowers ...

Rain, and lots of it ... a soggy day from the kitchen window

The magnolias are always spectacular in Oropi, but this particular one is outside Gill's offices at Barke's Corner, overlooking the golf course:

This flower is on a magnificent tree just outside Oropi School:

The Oropi School grounds have some great indigenous trees too, including several large totara, shown here in the background:

A few weeks after the magnolias, the flowering cherries start to flower. This year, because we had an unusually warm and dry start to spring, the Prunus in Oropi, at an elevantion of over 400 meters, flowered at almost the same time as those in Greerton, close to sea level. Usually they are several weeks behind! This in our garden, which we planted five years ago, one is of the variety "Awanui".

More winter photos

Some time ago, Hallam asked for some photos of winter scenes from around here in Oropi. It's taken me a while to get these together, but they will supplement what I posted before. You can click on the thumbnails to view larger versions, and if they're not detailed enough email me and I'll send bigger images.

We're well into spring now, of course, and while the frosts are over, we're still having the occasional cold blasts. Today, however, it's been completely overcast the whole day, raining off and on, and now the guti has rolled in. The girls have taken the opportunity to spend much of the day making Christmas decorations, from the kits that Angela sent us last year. I'll post some of those photos later.

This is a shot down the valley from our house, on a frosty morning,

and one up the valley, with Treacle (the cow) looking on.

Hannah, testing the ice ...

Diana, I think you'll be familiar with this subject, from a photo taken in Inyanga our youth. Here it's Louise, Camilla and Hannah trying to be cheerful about this unreasonable request:

Some very odd ice crystal structures on our driveway ... made a wonderful crunching sound when Lesley and I walked over them on our way to meet the school bus at the gate.

... and more interesting ice crystals in a pond on the corner of Gluepot and Oropi Roads, on our way driving to Oropi School.