"He rangatira nō te tau tītoki"

Our Enviro-Ed rōpū has regrouped and we went out to see if we could collect some tītoki seeds now that they're in fruit... however one can never be quite sure with tītoki. 🌿🍒

"He rangatira nō te tau tītoki." An old whakatauki with reference to the irregular fruiting of the tītoki... a fruit highly prized for its oil, but in times of scarcity was reserved for chiefs.

This year we cracked it though, with an abundance of bright red (and deceptively tasty looking) berries!

With great enthusiasm the kids tucked in, with a mixed bag of reactions... personally, it would have to be desperate times in the bush for me to turn to these as a food source. Check out some of their hilarious reactions above 🙃 😋

I'm never ceased to be amazed by these kids enjoyment of their gully either. After a bit of a snack we went down for an explore, and I often think they might get bored if we spend too much time down there. But we certainly haven't seen any inkling of that yet.

Nothing like a sense of exploration!

The kids discovered just how close we are to the moana here too, with a hikoi up a small slope that they have coined "Kererū Hill".