In October the farmers and veterinarian will be busy with lambing.

This lovely sheep had her lambs much earlier.

I enjoy the warmer days for small walks not far away from our house.
This by example is a way up to a summit.

The broom will be covered with yellow blossoms soon and is so high you can’t see anything.

On the top you can catch a glimpse of snow by the faraway mountains.

We have no snow down here but instead a lot of blooming trees and flowers
Our garden is full of interesting animals like this live bearing ‘copper skink’ which can be found only on the North island of New Zealand.

Our rabbits are also developing great and Fluffy is one who we take inside from time to time. He is Aileen’s favorite except for Anna of course

We enjoy the last days of winter and are looking forward for an exciting Spring

There are lovely farm animals like high land cows and a bunch of donkeys.

Our kids always enjoy to see the emu which is walking along the ways between pigs and Alpacas

Our garden has still things growing…

… and even our mystery plant is growing higher. Maybe she will reveal some buds some day and we can identify her.

In a corner were the hazel tree grows we found a ‘Drosselschmiede’ (translated thrush smithy)

A thrush has collected all hazelnuts in a hollow log and opened them on a stone.

The cocoon of the Emperor moth is still in our house and I am curious when we will see the moth.

Outside some bumble bees are still buzzing around.

But the cold weather makes them lazy and I guess they prefer now to stay underground in their homes.
I enjoy the last rose…

… and welcome new eucalyptus blossoms.

Winter in New Zealand is soooooo different from what I grew up and I miss the walks into the snowy forest to visit trees with squirrels peeking out…

… and feeding the wild live with hay and apples…

Aileen was teaching Emy some tricks.

While Rosie strayed around and was looking what the boys were up to

“Hey guys! Share the fun with me!”

Now this girls are already Mums!
Here are Rosie’s little babies.

We moved the rabbits into a save hutch and this is also an older pic…

… with Aileen in the run out with Emy.

You can follow all the rabbit stories on Benny’s blog. Please click here.

… they have a lot of fun in the sand pit…

… and even use the hose to make a waterfall!

Today we had a few moments of sun and a beautiful rainbow showed it’s lovely colours over our place.

David and Aileen went to a mushroom hunt in our ‘wild corner’

There are a lot fungi on tree stomps…

… but also on the ground like this orange cuties around my yarrow

The biggest surprise today was this little patch of mushrooms I first thought might be puff balls…

… but look at this!
This are lovely white buds (Champignon in German and Agaricus bisporus in Latin) growing in our little forest!
Yum! What a great lunch!

… and always wants to help Daddy.
They made a storage for the fire wood today.

David was hammering hard and after finishing his work he did want to help Daddy with a real adults tool…

… but sorry David, you have to grow some more years until you can handle this…

So much happened lately and I try to catch up…

As you know we have some cute baby bunnies.

We had a sad moment went we lost three of them on a weekend. Click here for a link to Benny’s post.

I am glad Aileen’s baby bunny Anna survived.

We take her inside as much as we can to make her a lovely pet.

Not all night visitors are that bad like the one who killed our three bunnies…

… Christoph called us out one night and showed us a hedgehog wandering around in our garden

And Jonas found our first possum on a tree! It was high up on our poplar

To save the beauties from enemies like wasps we took them inside because one was in it’s typical position before the big change into a chrysalis.

Christoph turned on his computer camera and filmed the whole magical event which happened during the night!

Here you can see the amazing process on our first video

Today the kids watched the change of the other caterpillar which was ready in the morning.

And here the magic starts…

… after a few minutes it was nearly finished.

Aileen took the caterpillar skin…

… and had a closer look with the magnifying glass

Just amazing how this monarch caterpillar went out of his skin…

In two or three weeks we will hopefully keep the camera rolling to observer when the butterflies show off

This weekend we did harvest our few pumpkins, paprika and other veggies.
Then Aileen was helping me to peel out the kidney beans…

… of course she loved the pink ones the most (they are big and pink before they change to a dark colour while shrinking due drying)

Christoph also called me out into the garden because he saw something moving while he was mowing the lawn.
It was a praying mantis

The first time I was able to make a picture from a mantis’ belly

Unfortunately the picture where you can see her blue pretend eyes on the arms is blurry but here is another from the side.

Last Thursday Emy gave birth to some cute baby rabbits.
They are snuggled in under a big layer of Emy’s hair to keep warm.

On the second day they were still pretty pink…

… but now they are already developing a fine fluffy fur. I keep you updated on Benny’s blog

Yesterday when Christoph was outside working, something fall onto his head and when he looked around he saw it was a huge caterpillar of the Emperor gum moth

He brought her inside…

… and we gave her into the jar were we already keep 2 cocoons of the same family.

She was quite acrobatic by checking out the whole jar…

… and she even looked out of the top!

But then she found a place she liked. We gave her some Eucalyptus into the jar just to be sure she had something to munch.

Then at night she started to make silky threads!
Unfortunately it was so late and we couldn’t watch (it takes her 8 hours to complete her cocoon)

So in the morning she had finished her work and now we have three cocoons

I wonder when they will be transformed since this special caterpillars can stay in their cocoons for months to many years…

To say from the size of the cocoons we have two females and one male which is a bit smaller then the others.