Sandbox
Blue bees[edit] | ||||
| Posted by Nad on 26 April 2014 at 19:48 | ||||
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This post has the following tags: Our second year on the land
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We have at least five kinds of bees on our land - apart from the usual honey bees and bumble bees we also have carpenter bees, tiny black bees and tiny blue bees. Today I finally got some good shots of the tiny blue ones which range from about 5mm to 1cm long. The flower it's pollinating is Basil which is a very small flower about 5mm in diameter. The Basil and Chia have really taken off in our garden and are absolutely alive with many kinds of butterflies and all the different types of bees. This is really nice to see considering there's so many bees dying around the world from pesticide consumption and monoculture farming which makes their immune systems weak as they need a variety of different pollens to be strong and healthy.
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Back to the land after our holiday![edit] | |||||
| Posted by Nad on 24 April 2014 at 22:20 | |||||
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This post has the following tags: Our second year on the land
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| We finally got back to the land yesterday! we caught a plane from Brasília to Porto Alegre which took less than two hours (it would have been 36 hours on the bus!), and then got the next bus from there to Canela which was only about twenty minutes after we arrived (buses to Canela leave every hour from the airport). The plan was to stay the night in Canela at Donna Eloi's who owns the main front house at the place we used to rent in Canela, and then meet with our neighbours who were going to be in Canela the next day and could drive us back to the land.
Unfortunately that didn't quite work out because the neighbours ended up not going to Canela, so we had to stay another night and arrange something else. It turned out that our old flat is empty so we actually stayed in there for a couple of nights :-) As a back up plan we called our truck guy Tonho to arrange going back with him and ordering a whole bunch of wood and roofing panels etc to take with us, but again the plan fell through! This time because it rained the whole night which would mean the roads were too muddy for the truck! So we decided to just leave the heavy stuff we didn't need at Donna Eloi's and get the bus to Vaca Velha and walk back. It was a bit nerve racking because in winter the days are short and we needed to make good time to get there before dark. We made it just as light was fading and needed to use our cell phones to light the way through the forest at the end! Everything was ok with the house and we got a good night's sleep :-) The next day we were quite surprised to see how much the vege patch had taken off! And also to see that all five bananas that Beth's parents had brought a couple of months ago had taken off - we thought only one had survived! Here's some photo's showing the vege patch in January compared to now, and one of the bananas.
The really big bushes which weren't even visible before the holiday are Chia which we're growing to harvest the seeds from as they're very healthy and good for digestion. They're currently the centre of attention in the vege patch which hundreds of bees, ladybugs, butterflies and other insects all over them. In particular the red butterflies really like them and there must be at least twenty on each bush. Here's a couple of photos showing some of them.
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Back in New Zealand[edit] |
| Posted by Nad on 12 April 2014 at 21:23 |
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This post has the following tags: 2014 Holiday in Brazil
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| I hadn't heard anything from Mum and Dad well after they should haven arrived, so I sent a worried email. A few hours later they replied with the following final holiday drama!
What a journey home!!!!! We got on the plane at Santiago as planned at 11.55pm, there was a bit of revving and the plane moved away from the terminal, then the captain said we seem to have a mechanical problem we are going back to the terminal. Well we sat there for about 3 hours and then he said that we were going to a hotel for the night. That meant we had to get our luggage off the plane, go through customs and immigration and then get to the hotel. So at 4,30am we got to bed with the alarm set for 8.30am as we had to be at breakfast by 10.30. They were supposed to pick us all up at midday, but of course they didn't arrive until nearly 12.30. Anyway, we then got on the plane to take off at 4.10, however after a few revs and such like the captain said he was sorry but there was the same problem as before and they were waiting for the mechanic everyone burst into spontaneous laughing. Eventually after 2.5 hours, we took off, everyone cheered and clapped lol! |
