Kia Ora

We began the month with a trip back to the UK to support Peter's dad and say farewell to his mum. Although we were only there for eight days we did manage to visit family in Brum, Cardiff and Peterborough. Dave, Ivy, John, Harry and Peter (two generations of the Mudie clan)
	We managed to see Ann's nephew, Mark, niece, Lisa and great niece Paige.
We also visited Ann's aunt and her cousins. Owen, Peter, Ann, Tim, Shân and Vicki (and bump).
We also spent a couple of days with Ann's dad, Mike, and David and Carole.
	What a disreputable lot (except for the awesome female, of course). Meet some of the members of the 49th Rifle and Pistol club (where Ann and Peter originally met). Brian, Moss, Ron, Ann, Clive, Peter & Phil with Alan in front

Ann was horrified to wake up on the fifth day in the UK to see snow falling, with more snow settling on the Clent Hills! We were both very happy to get back to NZ, and walked out of the airport to the sun shining, 24 degree heat and a whole bunch of singing cicadas.

The girls were very happy to see us. Maxie didn't leave Peters' side for the whole of the first evening, but then practically ignored him the next day! Jaz, of course, was blissfully unaware that we'd been away for 12 days!

We finally got around to buying more beads for the second bean bag (it's always been a race to who gets to the big bean bag first)! Now they have a big, squishy bean bag each - no more fights.

Ann has been on holiday this month so we managed to get plenty of gardening done. The veges are still going well, we harvested 10 kg of Kumara (Sweet Potato) - not bad for four shoots taken from one store bought kumara. We also had a late picking of strawberries. The dogs have finally eaten all of our apples and we're back to buying them for their bedtime snack.

Whilst coming back from our walk with the dogs one evening a little piglet managed to squeeze under the fence and started running across the road. Both Jaz and Maxie were very keen to get up close and personal with it so Ann had to try and herd it back into its garden pretty quickly.

Last Sunday we went with the bonsai club to Rotorua for a day out visiting 5 bonsai collections. It was a lovely day - with sunshine, good collections and great friends. Peter also went to a garden club to give a talk on bonsai.

Peter has started cutting back the red robin hedge - it'll take him almost a week to completely prune it - then we can mulch it all. And just to keep him even busier Ann has ordered 50 more Kanuka hedging plants and 30 trees for growing on for firewood. It'll take about 6 years for the trees to grow large enough to coppice.

Ann is now back at school for Term 2 and Peter continues to look for a new job.

We are well into Autumn and this is one of the views from our dining room.

News from Home

Ann's godson, David, married Victoria. They look beautiful and Ann is feeling rather old!