California: the House of the Wild Fennel

Thursday night somewhere in a time zone...we arrived at Sascha & Ariella's house...the House of the Wild Fennel! Their house sits on the edge of a canyon that overlooks the sea in Del Mar (north of San Diego). Even though it was night time & foggy I could see the lights down by the sea & the flowering bushes in the side yard. Henri & I stayed up way too late chatting with Sascha.

Eric & giant Pacific seaweed

Ariella, Ben & Eric in the canyon

treehouse in the canyon

Robin & Ben & Chihoully sculpture @ Salk Institute

playing at La Jolla

Sascha & Ariella are amazing!

seal basking @ La Jolla

Henri of the sea

The next morning dawned foggy---so Henri took the boys exploring into the Canyon. Getting up early means the dew highlights spider webs. We saw trapper spider webs & the classic Charlotte's Web style (path-blocking) webs. The boys came back from the canyon muddy & happy. ...Then we did lots of mundane errands. The highlight of the day was spending time in the Pacific Ocean at Torrey Pines State Park...full of excellent cold seawater, waves of excellence and magnificent seaweed. Other hightlights included Eric and Ariella hiding in plain sight in the backyard tree, the backyard teepee, spying on the neighbors, Ben & Ariella describing what the sun looks like as it sets(it's a smooshed egg, it's a carrot)& standing amongst the fennel, wild scrub & bees to watch the sunset over the Pacific...

Our Mailing Address

If you want to correspond the old fashioned way here is our mailing address:

43 Hanrahan Street
Ilam 8041
Christchurch, New Zealand

If you want to email us please use Robin, Ben or Eric's email addresses.  We will probably have email by Sept 8. (If we have reliable email before then I'll post it on this page).