Ann & Peter

in New Zealand

Haere Mai

The Easter weekend was very busy for us. We started our fruit orchard by planting some trees - lemon, mandarin, apple, pomegranate, nectarine and lime as well as a grape vine and two kiwifruit vines. We have still to get a cherry and a pear to go with our existing feijoa. All these varieties produce fruit at different times of the year so we should be able to pick our own fruit for about nine to ten months of the year.

Peter has finished building two more lots of bonsai staging, a small one for a large show tree and our Japanese stone lantern, and one the same size as the existing two. We have tried a different backing on these, bamboo canes rather than brushwood. They look good even when it rains. Peter's got one more piece of staging to build and that's it. No more staging and no more bonsai. We've vowed that if we want another bonsai tree then we have to get rid of an existing tree (mmmm!)

Jaz loves to snuggle under a blanket but as she was on Peter’s sofa she had to make do with his sweatshirt. At times there is not enough room on Ann's sofa for all threee of them. Guess which one has to move - yes you guessed correctly - it's Ann.
Jean, Karyn, Nori, Brigitte and Josephine came over for lunch during the school holiday.
	Josephine was nervous of dogs but Maxie and Jaz soon had her making a fuss of them!

We had a wonderful trip up to Auckland to see some bonsai collections. Before returning we also stopped at a bonsai nursery and managed to get eight fairly large pots (at a large discount) – we can now finish potting up our trees - yay!

Peter had been planning to go on a 3 day course in Wellington but this has been put back till early May.

Jaz disappeard one evening whilst out doing her regular patrol of the garden. When Peter went looking for her he could hear her identity tags jingling when he called her. She had managed to get through the hedge into next door's garden and couldn't find her way back (typical of Jaz). We think she'd been chasing a cat. When Peter went out of our front gate, into next door's garden and shone the torch on her she came charging down the neighbours' garden, through the front gate and up the paddock to our front door like a bat out of hell. She greeted us all as if she'd been away for months!!

News from home

David and Ann had a great time in Turkey.

Lisa and Paige enjoyed Pontins.

Michael and Alex check out some gerbils at the local pet shop.