It’s the Spring Equinox here today and we’ve been having crazy stormy weather every day for the past week. Up on top of our hill it’s felt a little battering at times, with the wind roaring straight in off the Tasman Sea (often bringing lashing, horizontal rain or hail with it). Here are some photos I took on the Spring Equinox a couple of years ago when the weather was a little different….

We’d had some friends come to visit and decided to have a sort of “Easter egg hunt” for the kids to celebrate Spring. It’s funny living in the Southern Hemisphere where lots of seasonal celebrations have come from Northern Hemisphere traditions and so are out of synch with the seasons in our part of the world: Eggs and baby chicks at Easter when it’s actually harvest time…. Fake snow, reindeer and holly in the middle of Summer…. 

Here we were celebrating all the beautiful Spring flowers in our garden at this time of year, plus we’d just acquired 10 new baby chickens as I remember. We’d decided to do a Spring Treat Hunt at the last minute and had picked up whatever goodies we could from our local shop. I had great fun hiding them around the garden, matching them with different coloured flowers or appropriate locations. Hence the goldfish in the pond!

A bumble bee in the hollyhocks and an elephant in the allysum!

These might just be cheap, artificial sweets, but they colour-matched the irises perfectly!

Happy Equinox wherever you are – Spring or Autumn/Fall. Fingers crossed that the storm blows itself out for our weekend…