During our summer holiday we drove from Westport to Karamea on the western coast of the South Island and our car overheated – while Tom was collecting water from a stream I stopped to capture the lush green of the native bush and mist. It was such a beautiful place, so damp and cool with…

I found this calendar in a second-hand bookshop (this lovely place) a while ago and had to buy it – even though it's a calendar for 1994. Each page features a watercolour painting of New Zealand native plants, and there is a small blurb on the back about the artist: In 1942, Marjorie Henderson left…

We've been enjoying some beautiful settled weather here in Wellington and have even been able to eat outside without our food blowing away in the wind. Last night we packed up our dinner and took it to a beach on the south coast where friends were waiting with their dinner. So lovely to do that…

What a beautiful Friday it's been: a lot of rain then a lot of sun, good chats with friends, general happiness. Here are three other good things: + Tom brought this hydrangea stem home from work as a 'happy weekend' gift. + + I have had this bright and cheery 'Welcome to Palmerston North: the…

I found Jekka's Herb Cookbook at the library, and have been enjoying it a lot – the illustrations are especially beautiful, a full culinary history of each plant is given, and there are lots of delicious herb-utilising recipes, too. Lemon verbena sorbet, for example. Also pictured above: some herb-like embroidery on a piece of beautiful hand-dyed…

Here are two things I had a nice time making lately. + + + + Pressed flower gift tags. These were a mash-up of this project, and wanting to find a way to use up scraps of plastic covering the kids used on their school books. I pressed some more flowers (this took 2-3 weeks)…

Happy end-of-the-week! It's felt like rather a long one here. Wellington has been unusually warm, wind-less and humid. We're not used it at all. The garden loves it though, and in celebration of lush flowers and leaves I made some botanical-related things to put in my etsy shop. Bags, baby shoes and pouches. And also…

Here's the reading list, as promised. All the books here were recommended by readers of this blog in the comments section of this post – thank you for your suggestions. I've tried to arrange them into rough groups (again, no doubt imperfectly) for usefulness.  I'm currently reading two novels: My brilliant friend by Elena Ferrante and Life…

Near and far: the view from my bedroom window, with extra sea-fog on a humid summer's day this week. And aquilegia flowers in bloom in the garden. As promised, here's a list of recommended music gleaned from the comments section of a recent post. Thank you for the suggestions. It's quite fun I think to have…

Thank you for joining in with the giveaway over the weekend. It was fun to read your comments and I have a year's worth of new books and music to check out now, which was all part of my sneaky plan.  In my next post, I'm going to compile a list of everyone's favourites for…