Ann & Peter

in New Zealand

Tena Koutou (hello everyone)

Despite it being the end of Autumn, May has been warm and wet – which means the grass has grown, and so have all the weeds! Here in Pirongia we have had some rain and one night of high winds whilst there has been flooding both up North and down South. There have also been the first snows of the year on the ski fields.

Jaz has been a real ratbag this last week at night time. She's woken us up several times each night barking none stop. Ann thought it was because Peter was putting her to bed on the wrong side each night and by barking she was trying to get Maxie out of bed to see what all the commotion was about - thereby letting Jaz sneak into her side of the bed.
	Ann washed both pairs of gardening gloves a couple of weeks ago, and made the fatal mistake of leaving them to dry on an airer in the garage. As soon as Maxie found them she confiscated three of the four, shredded them and buried the evidence whilst we were at work. We've found bits of fingers but that's all.
Two years ago the riverside walk by Peter's office was washed away during a storm. The council are finally doing stabilisation works on the river bank. The tree trunks they are using are about 50m long and nearly 1.5m diameter. When delivering them the truck has to be very careful not to hit any of the cars parked at Peter's work.

Both of us have had bad colds this month. Peter, of course, blamed his on Ann's work.

The dogs have had a busy couple of week-ends - inviting their friends over for romp in the paddock. First it was their friend Rose, who had to bring Jeff and Jenni to act as chauffeur.

The following week-end Sam arrived bringing Dianne & Noel as his chauffeurs.

The second hand book fairs at the race course in Hamilton have started. We managed to come away from the first one with 19 books for $30 - not bad going. Whilst we were in Hamilton for the book fair we went to a small shop selling sweets and food imported from the UK. We came out with Wagon Wheels, Snowballs and Jaffa Cakes! They were all expensive but Ann was a happy bunny!

This autumn we seem to have been over run with ladybirds and flying cobwebs. Everywhere we look there are dead ladybirds, the deck brolly was covered in them when we took it down for winter. Then last week-end as we were walking around the village we were attacked by half a dozen flying cobweb strings (cobwebs which had blown loose of their moorings, become squashed into long thin strings and were flying around on the breeze) - yuk!