The other evening over dinner, Hera next door mentioned that she'd seen some Sphagnum moss along the boundary and I thought, I know where you mean! I hadn't registered that that was what it was but today, before I moved the cows out of the Tank paddock, I walked over to the boundary to check and indeed, it is Sphagnum. I'd caught it in an earlier picture when Stephan was fencing there.
I have another three video clips of the Scaup, one from last week I forgot to include earlier: diving; and two from today, three water fowl, the Scaup, a grey/mallard cross female and a Pukeko; and the Scaup and grey ducks; the male has an odd swimming gait which I don't think is related to any sort of injury. I suspect it is a courting display.
We spent most of today with the te reo class group Stephan has been working with on our current assessment task, a skit based loosely on Goldilocks and the Three Bears, giving us the opportunity to make comparisons between things and talk about their relative qualities. While the seven of them worked on their task, I knitted a glove, while being highly entertained by what was going on around me. When they had finally completed their work, we all ate together, a feast including pāua in cream and raw fish, two of my favourite foods!
Once home, I dashed out to move the cows out of the Swamp East Right, where they'd been waiting here at the gateway.
The ground has now become quite wet around the farm.
My brother-in-law (I have but one), Roger, is in the process of rebranding his acupuncture practice and has asked me to work on his new website, using a layout designed by a friend, who has also created his new business cards. It's a fun project for me, since I never feel that visual design is one of my strengths and I've looked forward to receiving the layouts ready to insert the code that will make it look as intended.
I started with a lot of text that ran on in simple lines and gradually inserted the code to move blocks of it into the desired positions on a computer screen and into slightly different positions on a mobile phone or tablet. I find it all thoroughly fascinating.
I haven't received all the material yet, so it's not quite finished.
I went to move the young mob and couldn't see them at first, in a dark clump under the trees in the bottom corner of the Pines paddock.
They came out as I called and followed up to Mushroom 1...
... where the feral pigs have already been.
A typically bleak winter scene.
This is not a very helpful photo with all the reflections on the surface but I wanted to remind myself of what I'd seen in the trough at the bottom of the Big Back South: coming down through the centre, bending to the right, is an underwater spider web. It was quite an extensive web, definitely not some random algae growth.
While I have found some information about underwater spiders, there appear to be none that build webs in fresh water in this country. Or at least there are none described.
I will have to find my polarising lens and come back here again for better pictures.
After shutting the young mob into that paddock, I came back through the Bush Flat reserve, looking for orchids.
This one hasn't yet bloomed.
This one already has.
The coral fungi in this area are always spectacular.
There are so many mosses.
Walking back to my bike across Mushroom 3 was pretty depressing: so much pig rooting damage to the pasture.
At the top of the House paddock, Stephan has been altering the fence that runs down the edge of the big drain between Flat 1 and the lane, so that the corner is less acute.
Big trucks have had difficulty getting around the 90° corner, particularly since we installed a fence along the Windmill paddock drain behind me in this picture. Even in the ute, we had to be careful getting around here, but no longer.
Straightening the strainer post at the corner of Flat 1 will have to wait until the ground is drier.
Mother and daughter, 607 and Glia 807, as I took Glia, Zella and friends along the lane past the cows.
Both were just about to begin rubbing their faces on the edges of the trough.
A magpie! In our trap!
Since we bought the expensive magpie trap, we've only caught non-target animals in it like Blackbirds, hedgehogs and possums. This was the first of three birds caught, today, tomorrow and Saturday.
The heifers, up near the top of the Big Back South, looked happy enough, still grazing, so I left them where they were.
Their coats are all hard and matted against their skin with so much rain. I wonder whether that's terribly comfortable? They probably need brushing when they're wet; but I'm not sure being a cow groomer in the rain is on my list of "want to dos" this winter.