Mika is standing

Here's another of those baby milestones - standing up against the furniture. Well now, with both parents being computer programmers, what can one expect but an intense interest in programming tomes like 'Perl' and 'C'?

And is this not just the most adorable photo of mum Hester and son Mika? I love it!

Victoria Grove

"The adjacent oak grove was planted in commemoration of the Diamond Jubilee of H.M. Queen Victoria 1897.
Thro' the coming years we trust
When we are [...] in the dust
Dunedin's children brave & strong
Will guard Victoria's Grove from wrong."

So says the inscription on this cairn at Jubilee Park in Dunedin's Green belt; sorry, I can't make out all the words. I've gone past there before on lunchtime walks, but never bothered to read the inscription, and I had to stand back to actually see the oak grove. You don't notice it when you stand under the trees!

So these oaks are now 133 years old - if my arithmetic holds up.

Oaks were a popular choice for commemorative plantings. This was possibly because of their longevity - they can live for hundreds of years in Europe. In New Zealand they grow twice as fast, and there has been debate whether they will therefore live half as long.

Fallen Soldiers

Today we climbed the 500 metres up to the Otago Peninsula Fallen Soldiers' Memorial for a grand view over the peninsula, the harbour and Dunedin City. Although it was sunny, the maximum temperature was only 15 deg C and the wind up on top of the hill was very cold and gusty. Read more about the memorial...

After the visit to the memorial we followed a different track along the ridge of the peninsula for a while and said hello to some sheep before we turned around. It was certainly good to get out in the fresh air and away from the computer for a while!

Mika is crawling

Baby-time is full of milestones - laughing, sitting, teething, crawling and so on. We are happy to see Mika doing everything a healthy young lad should as he grows. His first attempt at crawling sent him backwards, but he seems to have the forward motion sorted now.