The heavy rain we had at the end of July continued and the water level in the river continued to rise and rise (and rise and rise!)
It also flooded the end of our road and the driveway which meant we had to wear our gumboots and the dogs got their paws wet (Maxie even got her belly wet) when we went out for our walk. The local kids took the opportunity to either paddle/swim, and play with their motorised speedboat in the flooded road too.
The local council have spent about 10 days on site pumping water from the one side of the road across to the other side and then over a field and into a gully which runs down towards the river. When the water level goes down they stop pumping, wait a couple of hours and then start pumping again as the water draining off the surrounding gardens floods the road again.
Jaz has developed a new trick – when Ann settles down on the sofa after our evening meal Jaz insists on being completely covered with the blanket Ann uses to keep her legs warm. Sometimes Maxie also burrows her way underneath leading to some very strange lumps on the sofa!
Peter mistakenly put his green leather work gloves on a low surface in the garage one day after chopping up wood, and whilst we were at work the following day Maxie decided to have a snack and ate the major part of both gloves. She’s been producing green poo ever since!
Maxie’s been getting ready for Spring and has been practicing her escapology again. We found a hole in the wire fence where she had been sneaking through and pinching the next door dogs’ bones. So Peter’s had to renew his fence mending skills and put up an extra layer of wire to stop her.
For the August bonsai meeting we went on a dig in the Redwood Forest in Rotorua. The day was cold but very sunny. Ann gained five trees whilst Peter only got one (even though he dug up six).
On the way back we stopped at the Dam at Arapunui to exercise the dogs.
As we only have a 3 car garage (which the cars have never actually been in, due to a multi-canine take over) we thought we needed a bit more storage space so we have ordered a double garage with sleepout from Versatile to be built in the paddock. Hopefully this will allow us to put at least some of the cars, trailer and mower out of the rain.
We had a power cut early one morning during a thunderstorm and when the power came back on it managed to blow up Peter’s server that he uses for backing up the computers and his web sites. Now we’ve got to look for another one to replace it.
One of Peter’s colleagues – Greig – brews his own beer (and very good it is). We popped round for Peter to try some when Greig held an open house (100 litres of beer on tap) – note the hand pumps.
Cyril came over from the states to join the clan on the 31st (our 17th wedding anniversary).
