Autumn days

This weekend has been a pretty relaxed one. I had some kind of nasty bug thing on Friday so after calling in sick I ended up sleeping almost the entire day (very unusual for me). I was starting to feel a bit better on Saturday although still planning to take it quietly. Small daughter and I went on a bit of a shopping trip for her: time for new shoes and slippers after her current ones literally fell apart on her feet. We also found some small drinking glasses that are a good size for her hand, as she's quite keen to start using "big glasses" (as opposed to plastic) and "big knives and forks". At nearly 7 this is a fair request but we only had one small glass left from a set some years ago and everything else was too big for her to hold.

We went pineconing on Saturday afternoon in Redwoods, which was a whole heap of fun. Small daughter and I did this last year and got about a laundry basket-ful of pinecones for the fire. This year hubby came too and we had so much fun looking for pinecones, finding pinecones, trying not to get snared in rogue raspberry canes, finding more pinecones, walking too and from the car with bags of pinecones - fortunately it's flat and easy walking, not like the near-vertical place we used to pinecone up the back of Thorndon in Wellington when I was a girl! We got a good big lot, and I'm sure we'll do it again during autumn while the pinecones are still dry. It was a nice, gentle walk with the added bonus of looking and finding things for the fire.

The change in the weather is definitely noticeable now: daylight saving finished last night and the nights have suddenly got cold in the last couple of weeks. I got the duvet inners aired today and both inners went back onto both beds (in summer we use only the lightweight one on each bed) because we've all noticed the colder nights! However, it's still very very dry: we've had a couple of days of rain, not enough to break the drought. There is colour on the paddocks again but the water table is still extremely low and our fire danger seems permanently stuck at "extreme".

Today was a lovely relaxed day too. We had some more sunshine (although there was a definite nip behind the sun and jerseys were necessary in the shade). We had lunch with some friends from church, then back to another part of Redwoods for a gentle wander and chat. Dinner was a good big hunk of corned beef with all the usual veges - the return of hearty autumn food. And corned beef was always my favourite!

It's hard to believe that we've nearly been here a year. We arrived on the 17th of April last year, just after Easter (which was later last year). It's gone very fast.