Garden delight

Sunday scribblers go here

On our weekly walk we past an Alpaca farm  Alpaca's are lama's They are very easy and intelligent animals.
Don't they look gorgeous

Our garden is a delight this time of the year. The white flowers are from the cactus They bloom only short but several times they show these white beauties.
The plant behind the tin man is a kiwi fruit. Hopefully in the coming years we can eat a kiwi out of our own garden. The climbing roses were swept of the fence by the wind. So the garden door looks like a secret hidden entrance and in the right corner you see my favourite flower

Richard Lavoie

I am a  fan of Richard Lavoie. Years ago I went to a conference in Dunedin where he spoke about learning disabilities. He is an excellent speaker and I learned heaps. To my delight I found a serie of videos on You Tube. All educators, people working with children and parents of children with LD, it is worthwhile to watch this. Here is a classic: poker chips

Quotes of Mother Teresa

One of the most compassionate, wise people I know of, one who cared about people nobody was caring for

was Mother Teresa. A very special person who has left some very beautiful quotes behind. If you want to learn any wisdom than you are doing really well if you follow up Mother Theresa's words. Here are some of the quotes of this beautiful lady

Do not wait for leaders; do it alone, person to person.

Let no one ever come to you without leaving better and happier.

There are many in the world who are dying for a piece of bread, but there are many more dying for a little love.

If you can't feed a hundred people, then feed just one.

We ourselves feel is what we are doing is just a drop in the ocean, but the ocean would be less because of that missing drop

Kind words can be short and easy to speak but their echoes are truly endless

Those who say it can’t be done have to get out of the way of Those who are doing it

If whe cannot love the person who we see how can we love god who we cannot see

Spread love everywhere you go. First of all in your own home Give love to your children to a wife or a husband, to a next-door neighbour

If you want a love message to be heard, is has got to be sent out. To keep a lamp burning we have to keep putting oil in it.

Everybody today seems to be in such a terrible rush, anxious for greater developments and greater riches and so on, so that children have very little time for their parents. Parents have very little time for each other, and in the home begins the disruption of peace of the world.

If we really want to love we must learn how to forgive.

We, the unwilling,led by the unknowing,are doing the impossible for the ungrateful. We have done so much,for so long,with so little,we are now qualified to do anything with nothing.

Love is the fruit in season of all times and within the reach of every hand

If you judge people you have no time to love

Take care, Marja

Orton Bradley Park

We want tramping with my young friend in Orton Bradley Park and became friends of the park, because it is beautiful there. You can have a picnic or go on one of the many tramping routes. The park is on the road towards Diamond Harbour. I have to practise a lot because I am going to fulfil one of my dreams and that is to walk the Abel Tasman Track. A four day tramp in one of the most beautiful parks in NZ. The track is easy going and meanders alonside the sea

All these littlies go for a picnic in Orton Bradley Park

The first part of the track goes alongside the river

We return over the tableland track

A water wheel build by Orton Bradley in 1885

Contemplation at a little pond

Quote of the day

Learning disabilities don't exist

Last week I went to a talk about dyslexia and this time I sat straight in my chair because I knew what the person was talking about and it all made perfect sense to me. He said that learning disabilities don't exist and eventhough I think he didn't cover the whole picture, what he said was right and part of the puzzle.

Most people use both part of the brains and you need both to function optimally. Right handed people are predomantly left brained and left handed people right brained.

The functions of the right and left hemisphere are almost opposites, such as

Left......................................Right

Language thinking..................Pictural thinking

Intellect.................................Methaforic

Abstract................................Concrete

Realisme................................Impulsive

Analytic.................................Holistic

Most people have a dominant area. If you are dyslexic you are a predominant right brainer. You don't have to be a left hander but probably one of your decendents was. The more you are on the continuum of the right brain the more likely you are to think in pictures, which is the case of dyslexic children. For many of these children language doesn't make sense . They understand concrete words like horse and tree, because they can form a picture of it. The word hurry actually comes from a cart they used in the mines. Hurry up doesn't mean anything to them so they tend not to listen when parents say hurry up. Therefore they invented the term ODD.

Anyway they are in big trouble. When you are academically good and good in language you are very likely to become a teacher or when you are very academic a professor. These people have set up an education system in their mirrow image, valuing left brainers and down playing right brainers, although unaware of it.

When somebody is 70% right brain and 30% left, they are forced to work their whole life in the 30% area to make it stronger. Engineers and mechanics are often right brained. They have better insight in the technic than anybody but they are forced to write an essay about it, which is a nightmare for them and in practise a mechanic never has to be able to write to be good in his job. Most just drop out of school and some end up in crime.

Girls are equally affected by dyslexia but they mostly go undetected. Because they have several  language areas they can compensate for it. They are however far slower in processing the language.

In this time of vast change we need  creative people and if we ever want to see an Michelangelo again or an Einstein the attitudes have to change and people have to realise that right brainers learn differently instead of being learning disabled.  Maybe some left brainers can't because they have a learning disability in right brain thinking.

Quote of the day

Kiwiana

Kiwiana or kiwi icons are on the newest post stamps which you can see in the top left corner. To become a kiwi these things have to become part of your life. According to that I am only partly kiwi.

So let's explore these kiwi items

Paua shell  This shell is only found in New Zealand. The creature clings to rocks in the sea 1 to 10 meters deep,along the shore. It is a very colourful shell and you can buy lots of jewelery made from Paua shell. Kiwies often have them at home and were in use in the past as ash trays.  

Pavlova is a typical  NZ sweet dessert which appeared in NZ when the Russian ballerina Anna Pavlova

toured the country in 1926. The Australians however claim it is theirs

 

Hokey Pokey icecream is eaten a lot in kiwi families. It is vanilla icecream with lumps of sponge toffee.

Fish and chips or Fush 'n Chups is very typical. There are heaps of Fish and Chips shops. The ships are packed in paper or newpaper and eaten with tomato ketchup.

I love particularly the wedgies made of kumara you see on the photo. A kumara is a sweet potatoe.

Jandals is the typical footwear of New Zealand. Of course mainly seen in summer. On the photo in the shape of a silverfern. This is an embleem for many NZ sports teams. There are many NZ native ferns and fern trees especially on the West Coast

Swanddri bush shirts A NZ woolen shirt mostly worn by forest workers and farmers

Gum Boots or Wellingtons Mostly worn by farmers, nicely combined with short shorts

Buzzy Bee a typical NZ bright coulured toy the wings rotate when you pull the Bee on a string.

Rugby is not only a sport but a religion in NZ where big man run after an oval shaped bal. When someone has got the ball others tackle him to to take it of him. The Haka, a Maori war dance is performed at the beginning of the game. The All Blacks is the name of the team of the saints.

Kiwi Everyone knows the green wiki fruit. It is also a the name of a nocturnal flightless bird only found in NZ. It is an endangered species.

I like kiwies and I even wrote a poem about him here. But I made him a bit Dutch Oops

I am not really a rugby fan. Soccer is my sport. This gives me a  minus but most of the others are part of our lives now.

Quote of the day

Once you can ride the wave of desire, it runs its course and subsides. Then you may discover what is deeper than this pulsing energy. Just as the clear, calm depths of the ocean lie still below the thrashing waves, so the heart's pure longing ...to connect is what underlies our passion - John Welwood

Guy Fawkes

Saturday night we went with a van with 5 youngsters to Rollerston. A big firework had already taken place

in Brighton last Thursday. The weather was slightly chilly at night but we kept warm by walking over the fair and after that with a picknick of candy to top up the sugar levels,we danced on the fantastic music of the army band. At 9.30 the lights went of and the spectacle began of the fizzling, crackling explosion of a thousand bright fireflies, spiders with bright red arms crawling up the black sky, golden stars cascading above us and a fountain spraying silver glitter ligtning up the horizon. Real magic lifted everybodies spirit for the moment to be

QUote of the day

Chicken talk

Economical times aren't good but whatever is going to happen, we are self sufficient. We have a well sized vegie garden and last week W has build a chicken house from scraps. It's quite posh and it became the residence of 4 chickens. They were probably used to small spaces because they went besirk when we just got them and rolled on their backs in the sand.

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The newly build chicken coop

This is one of the 4 girls who is part of our residence

They are producing on average 3 eggs a day and you can guess who has to go in the pan first

We are talking chicken now, we check if they are inside if a storm comes up, feed them in the morning and we are checking for eggs all the time. It is quite cosy to hear the chicken on the background when drinking tea outside.

I love eggs so I am going to try some new things now, like my favourite; egg benedict. I have never poached eggs before so it is going to be quite a challenge for a dyspraxic like me. Cooking has never come easy to me and I don't look TV anymore because the only thing you see is cooking programs and that brings up night mare causing memories. I only make an exception for Jamie Oliver because I admire this amazing chap. I am impressed how he has transformed schools to eat healthy food, teaching whole towns in england to cook healthy and I love his 15 restaurants. All over the world you can find these restaurants where disadvantaged youth get training on the job in one of these top restaurants. I hope we get one here one day because I have a young friend who would love to become a cook.

Lots of things are on at the moment and Blogging has moved to the background again but I will hop in whenever I have some spare time. Take care, Marja