Te Kowhai Tree

This is a picture of the flowering part of the Te Kowhai Tree.

They are everywhere in New Zealand and are a beautiful yellow colour.

Tui birds love them, but then so do lots of other birds, because each of those flower pods holds lots of little yellow seeds that the birds love to eat.

If you discover the little yellow seeds on the ground in abundence, then you know there is a tree near by.

This is what one of the seed looks like from the Te Kowhai Tree.

Very small, not hard but not totally soft that it squashes under your fingers.

Very attractive to kids as you can imagine! And that is where our mishap fun for the day comes into this post.

The above seed is actually the one that the kind Doctor in the Emergency department removed from Alex's ear yesterday morning!

Yes, that is correct, my 4yr old son carmly sat at the breakfast table and annouced that he had something sticky in his ear.

On further investigation it turned out to be true, and there was no way we were able to grab it ourselves. So we wipped him off to ED and the nice doctor flushed it out with Saline.

If that hadn't of worked then we would have had to go to the hospital and have it taken out under sedation, but we were determined to try every other option first!

Alex said that he found it in the garden at Daycare and decided to keep it when they called him in for lunch. Fair enough thought, although why he had to store it in his ear we will never know.

I think he has now had enough lectures about putting things in his ear (Mum, Dad, Grandma, Doctors & Nurses) that we are pretty safe that he won't do it again!

But then he is only a little boy and these things do happen!