The nights have turned rather chilly, with temperatures dropping to zero. We’ve had a week of stormy weather too with thunder, lightning and flooding in the South Island.
Ann finishes Term 2 on 4th July and gets a two week holiday. By the time she starts back everyone in the Northern hemisphere will be breaking up for their summer hols.
Peter is studying for his next 3 exams when he can, one each from IBM, Microsoft and Citrix.
It’s been a fairly quiet month with a lot of time spent in the garden at weekends, and at work during the week.
We managed to get the last of the trees planted (for growing on as bonsai) as well as about one third of the hedging ‘Red Robin’ – just over 100 more to go.
Most of the ake-ake hedging plants are doing well although a couple are looking a little under the weather. Still we have spares just in case.
One Saturday, Maxie decided she would chase the postie on her motorbike down the road – so we’ve had to finish putting up wire mesh fencing all around the section. We estimate we’ve put up close to 500m of wire fence to keep the dogs in!
We had a good bonsai workshop weekend with Clinton Nesci from Australia. We managed to get quite a bit of work done on a couple of trees.
As it was a whole week-end workshop the dogs came too. Maxie wandered around the workshop making friends with everyone whilst Jaz pinched Sam’s bed.
The vet suggested we try to clean Jaz and Maxie’s teeth regularly to avoid expensive dental bills later on so both dogs have been getting used to having their teeth cleaned – with chicken flavoured toothpaste – yum!!
az likes to relax on the sofa – in whatever pose she can manage!
Both dogs wanted the same end of the sofa – the one nearest the wood fire, of course.
News from Home
Mark has his first part in a low budget feature film. He started shooting middle of June. Filming should finish soon then there’s a few months in post production and hopefully a premiere at the Arts Centre in Cardiff at the end of October. The film is called Tough Reality and he plays a mean prison officer.
Michael passed his final Tae Kwon Do exam and is now a 1st Dan Black Belt.
