Monday 27 September 2010

Pleasures of the season

Today has been warm with the promise of summer.  Yesterday was a typically sping day, warm out of the wind but cool in the wind.

Just as I was wondering how I was going to entice two of my grand-daughers to come for a walk with me, the man who traps eels in our creek stopped by to leave a message for my son and in doing so told me he had left his eels and a trap where the little creek feeds into big creek.  The girls' ears didn't miss that piece of information and they were very keen to go see the eels.

I knew exactly where he meant and within minutes we set out.  To Georgia and me this is the place where the mallets are and relates back to my first ever blog post.  http://paulinespaddock.blogspot.com/search/label/Mallets

It was a lovely day, (ignore the wind) - mellow, with lovely soft sunshine.  The dairy herd in the paddock next door to my house looked like the contented cows we imagine produce our milk. 


Call me nuts if you like. but even the effluent ponds look lovely:


Further along the track, the recently born calves also looked happy.


Between the two were a few cows that have given birth in the past 24 hours.  I love to see new calves testing out their legs:


But our destination was the creek.  It was flowing quite swifly after all the recent rain, a bit murky and looking awfully cold.

Not that cold water means anything to the enthusiasm of children.  The minute they spotted the eel traps, the girls kicked off their gumboots, hitched up their long pants and waded in. 


If you look carefully, and I do mean really look hard, you can see the eels that fascinated the girls so much, in the trap.


But kids being kids, they soon tired of the eels and went on to play, as they usually do, in the creek, picking up 'beautiful' rocks, throwing twigs into the creek and watching them 'scoot' down the creek.



To Sammy, Georgia's little dog, the flow of the creek was quite strong.  I laughed listening to her encouraging him to come across, "Come on, Sammy.  Dog paddle.  You're a dog, dog paddle, Sammy.  You can do it, Sammy!"  He was washed downstream a bit, but he make it safely across.  Poor Sammy, his valiant effort was met by peels of laughter!


It was a lovely afternoon but eventually the cold of the girls' legs, and the little midgeies that were attacking us, meant we had to head home, Shayde with a precious rock from the creek in each hand:


Georgia dragging her 'boat'.  (Come on, look closely, you can see it's a boat!)

And me with my hat full of 'treasures' retrieved from the creek.

Ahh, I love where I live!!

5 comments:

  1. Lovely exposure and colour in the first four images. After that, well smashing pictures but it must be hard to use a camera whilst persuading children that drowning is a nasty way to go. A grand post.

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  2. You live in paradise!
    The eels?....are they destined for the dinner plate? The Great Dane loves fried eel, but I don't cook it, so he has to wait for a trip to Denmark to indulge that appetite.

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  3. What a wonderful post, Pauline. Knowing it made me feel I was there. I've not seen it so green though. The fruits of the winter rains are the glorious greens of spring.

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  4. Pondy, The man who collects the eels does it commercailly and I've never asked him exactly what he does with his catch. But I imagine they are sold for food. My kids used to catch eels and bring them home and cook them, something I refused to do, I hated the smell. But I love smoked eel!

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  5. What a beautiful post. It is lovely where you live. And the eels kind of creeped me out.

    But I guess even living in paradise there are slimy things!

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