Her name is; LOLA

Riley got one. William got one. I REALLY wanted one for a while now and then, to both Russell and my surprise, we casually spoke about it the other day and decided...we'll get one.

We fetched the little bundle of fluff yesterday. She is 6 weeks old and has the most beautiful eyes. Russell named her Lola.
Although my poor husband is allergic to cats, he also has the most amazing way with them I've ever seen. (and horses for that matter) His presence and interaction with them causes instant calmness, (purring and falling asleep in Lola's case) and complete surrender. It is truly beautiful to behold.
I call him the cat whisperer. :)
We are not allowing Lola into our bedroom at the moment. We are trusting that, like to the New Zealand pollen, his allergies will adjust to her soon.
So here is a blog post dedicated to our new kitten, Lola.

Lola is a charming, very brave, content and adventurous kitten. She does many things like:

Eat

 

Cuddle

Doing yoga

Day dreaming...

 

More yoga...

 Sleeping

More cuddling...

More sleeping...

And more...

 And of course, lots of playing!

 

Two roads diverged a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth.

Then took the other; as just as fair,

And having perhaps the the better claim,

Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for the passing there

Had worn them really about the same

And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I-

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

  
              
                                                                                           -Robert Frost

This is one very cool guy.

Wellington has a culture of cycling and since Russell is starting part time work this weekend in town, we decided that to save on parking money, cycling is the way to go!!

We LOVE food

Our produce of the week displayed

We figured out that ordering a box of organic vegetables a week from local farmers and having it delivered to our doorstep saves us $12 a week. 

Works for me! 

I made a chard, courgette, roasted tomato and onion quiche for dinner tonight. Delicious! 

What I love about this setup is that you only get what is seasonal and available...so dinners are creative, innovative and you simply use what you have. I find it stimulating and it saves money. I just make sure that I have ample supply of olive oil, organic brown rice, lentils, beans, flour, oats and cheese and voila! Whip up some gastronomic magic! 

We are yet to discover our favorite free-range organic chicken and meat supplier. All of the organic farms are in competition for the best, naturally and ethically raised animals. We want to go visit some of these farms and see which ones resonate with us the most. 

An excursion into the land

So, just a quick one. Yesterday we went out to Makara and Oharui valley, a semi-rural area just over the hill to the north-west of Wellington city, about 20 minutes away. Makara is where the wind farm is (seen in the distance on one of the previous posts) and yesterday we found out why. It was a really windy day yesterday anyway, but we went to Makara beach and caught a taste of some real wind. It was pretty awesome. We were being whipped by sea-spray and lashed by sand and so didn't stick around too long, although there was a family who was getting ready for a hike in that craziness; mmm.

Oharui valley and the area around it is a beautiful place consisting of mostly what are called 'lifestyle' properties (basically a house on a plot of arable land), but there were also larger, working farms, mostly cattle and sheep farms. We drove around checking them and the animals out. There were some plots for sale, some of them really quite nice. Unfortunately the camera's battery died before we got to the really awesome spots. What I really like about this area is that it's really close to the city, about half an hour or so and yet it feels like you're in the country. This is pretty much what we had in mind for our piece of land - something to consider.  :-)

First Hike in Wellington

Good day all. My, my, it’s been a while ay? I’ve been leaving all the heavy blogging to Elsje these last few weeks. Anyhoo, here we all are again. 

So Elsje, Cristina, Angelina and I took a leisurely drive around to the eastern side of the bay to a beautiful little town called Eastbourne. The weather has been a bit erratic of late and we were blessed with a beautiful day and on the way to the trailhead we saw loads of families taking advantage of the sunshine. 

A friend of ours who has lived here for a few months longer than us told us that Wellington is ‘all about the green.’ I went a bit nuts on the hike and took 150 photos, requisite ferns included of course – the below shots are some of the better ones.

We took a hike over a ridge to a beautiful little spot called Butterfly Creek. For Elsje and I it was an important outing. We had been feeling a little bit ‘out of the loop’ living in Wellington, like we hadn’t quite been ‘let in’ to our new land. We had a similar kind of experience when we first got to the States, but the experience of couchsurfing and camping opened the country up for us and allowed us to really get a feel for the place. This hike was a sort of like that; walking on the land, through the forest, gave me a sense of being grounded, like ‘ah yes, here I am, in New Zealand.’ Elsje mentioned that the land feels so benign compared to South Africa and Namibia – no dangerous or poisonous creatures to speak of – and yet it is both seismically and volcanically active. I really like that.   

 

Two avid hikers

Ah, the green

Kept looking behind me for elves...

The troops

The interesting patterns on the inside of the trunks of the tree-ferns

The awesome patterns on these leaves reminded me of Maori tattoo patterns - it actually only occurred to me then that the Maoris took their inspiration for their tattoo designs from nature. Especially the fern-shoot in the below photo, which I did not take.