A lovely weekend

Last weekend was our regular six-weekly 'quiet weekend' where we try to clear the calendar of obligations and relax and do nothing in particular :-)  It was lovely.  Martin ended up spending a lot of the time baking - as well as pikelets for Saturday morning tea, he made bitter chocolate cookies for afternoon tea:

and had his second ever go at macarons on Sunday:

Yum!

The weather was mostly pretty grey, but when the sun did come out I had a lovely time curled up in the hammock with Martin rocking it from time to time.

Indoors we had fun watching bear cam - including a super-cute bit where these three 'cubs of the year' (i.e. cubs born this season) were boundingly learning to swim :-)

image source

There's so many lovely things around home at the moment.

This little piwakawaka (at least, I assume it's always the same one!) is hanging around our house heaps.  I see him/her a couple of times most days out either my bedroom or the kitchen window.

This afternoon it was in the oak when I was right nearby at the bottom of the wheelchair ramp.  It had some large-ish insect in it's claw that it was devouring in swift, precise movements.  I didn't have the camera on me at the time, but it was delightful to watch :-)

The hyacinths (complete with volunteer self-sown viola) are doing beautifully.  Our porch is also looking very colourful: flower decals on our door, a new 'spinny thing' and, hanging from the eaves, a colourful resin pompom-thing that catches the light beautifully when I'm sitting in the chair.

Out of the kitchen window we can now see a female extinct huia:

Sarah recently acquired seed-based bird feeder that a crowd of sparrows discovered yesterday (although most flew off before I could get a picture):

And bear-cam continues to be a never-ending source of delight.  Today I particularly enjoyed seeing this sow with four spring cubs show up at the main falls:

You can watch a video here (the whole video's about an hour long, but the link should take you to the right spot - if not, click through to the last 10 minutes).  I was fascinated that you could see the sow's teat's full of milk when she passes the camera side-on - and the tiny cubs are just super-cute!  The falls are a dangerous place for tiny cubs to be, though - there are heaps of adult male bears there and one of them killed a spring cub (from a different litter) a few weeks back for - seemingly just because it was in its way.