Today I was lucky. I went down to my neighbourhood park to see if there were any quinces from the tree there, and all of these were lying on the ground. Often these are picked up quickly by those "in the know". I also found some chestnuts. Unfortunately, some have been squashed by a contractor's truck working in the park and others have been eaten by rats or mice, but there are enough here for one evening's snacking. Foraging for food is getting more common here; at one time hardly anyone took free fruit and nuts, but many of our new immigrants from Europe and Asia come from traditional food-foraging cultures. Now we have a large part of the city where there are gardens and fruit trees but no houses (what we call the Red Zone where earthquake-damaged homes have been demolished) foraging has become a good way of using some of nature's bounty that would be wasted otherwise:
http://www.stuff.co.nz/life-style/food-wine/food-news/67690529/fruit-foraging-in-christchurchs-red-zone
The weather has been quite warm today, but has been followed by a dramatic weather change this evening. I spent half-an-hour this morning raking up leaves in the garden, making piles of them for the cats to run through and scatter. Great fun! I spent the rest of the day getting all domestic, moving my furniture around my living-room just for a change of scene and also to put my dining-table near the window, so I can use it as a painting and crafts table. My little painting nook in the sunroom is far too cold in those winter days when there is no sun, and it's a waste of money just heating that room for me to work in it for a few hours a day. So things look the same but different. Now I need to make some new cushion covers to make the couch look a bit fresher. I'm a lousy seamstress, but I can probably manage cushion covers. I hope.
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