Baking

I have been doing quite a bit of baking.  I made danishes

macrons

 

perfect

not perfect

 chocolate sauce

done

and I made apple tarts

by Bryony

Mr Blackbird

Mr Blackbird likes eating my tomatoes.  It's a bit annoying.

I put up our usual bird deterrent

but it didn't work this time, possibly because there isn't much room between plants so the birds can't see it easily.
  The problem got worse.   Mr Blackbird started pecking holes in the faintly orange tomatoes instead of only the nice almost-red ones.  I thought about it for a bit, and realised the birds had only become a real pain since it stopped raining (about 10 days earlier).  We put out 3 water dishes around the tomato patch and (tada!) problem solved.  No more holes!  (Except in the kids' strawberries, but that's a different issue)

One more photo

Bush walk

After reading "Last Child in the Woods" and observing the calming effect, on ratty children, of an hour in the bush, I've decided that part of our curriculum this year will be a weekly trip to the bush.  This week we went to the Barrett Domain, a nice quiet but not too big piece of bush at the other end of town.  On a weekday morning it is pretty quiet, apart from the occasional dogwalker.  At the far end is the Barrett lagoon, which is definitely not quiet, due to all the paradise ducks, mallards, coots, swans and geese which live there.  We took our read-aloud school-books and I read while the kids had a picnic lunch. 

We saw some Eastern Rosellas

Daniel caught quite a few Damsel flies

which he let go in the garden at home, hopefully they find some water

Photos by Bryony (except the one of Daniel)


P.S. Daniel took the photo of the Eastern Rosella