The Christmas before last our kids gave us Ancestry.com kits. You know the deal: you spit into a test tube, send it over to Ireland, and in a month or so you get a wadge of paper in the mail telling you who you are. I've never, previously, been interested in all that stuff. I knew my forbears came to Aotearoa in the 1850's from Britain but I didn't know from where, exactly. Clemency's results, as it turns out, were pretty interesting. She was born in England, but has ancestors from various European places, and some who are Ngāti Raukawa, so she can whakapapa back to a little marae called Kikopiri, near Ōtaki. And me? It turns out I'm more British than most British people. Apart from a smattering of Norse - probably the result of some Viking raid in the dim distant past - all my tūpuna seem to have come from a little group of villages in Nottinghamshire. Now I've been to the UK a few times, and I quite like it, but it's not home: my heart and soul belon...
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Spring starts to arrive about now. In some parts of the country the trees are mostly native and there isn't a greatly marked shift from winter to autumn. Down South where I live the change is very noticeable - some parts of Otago are renowned for their spectacular autumn colours. But because we have a huge mix of things growing and because the temperatures aren't as extreme as the USA the Spring shift can be spread over several months from late July to early October.
Second best camera .... or Number One?
The trip to Nelson is a lovely drive Katherine. About 10 hours on the road but of course there are some wonderful cafes and craft shops and vistas spread out along the trail at convenient intervals. I try to make the trip at least annually but this time I was reminded of what splendid people my family are and how much I like their company. Im going more often from now on