Kia Ora

We spent a wet Saturday at the beginning of the month planting trees in the paddock. 10 Eucalyptus, 10 Acacia and 10 Robinia pseudoacacia . These will be coppiced for firewood in a few years time when they've grown nice and big but at the moment it looks like we've planted a field of bamboo canes.
	As well as the 30 trees for firewood we started a second part of the Kanuka hedge Ann wants to go around the paddock. Only 42 plants this time, still need another 100 or so to finish it off next year.
We've decided to move the vege beds from the side of the house and put them in the paddock where we've been growing the bonsai trees. Peter has built the first two and Ann has already planted seeds for peas, radish, carrot, lettuce, spring onion and snow peas. We're also growing some berries - 3 types of raspberry (red, yellow and black), loganberry and boysenberry. In a couple of years time we'll have loads of fruit - yum! Where the old vege beds were we're going to level the soil and Peter will build some more staging for the bonsai.
	Last seasons veges are almost done - we'll have to start buying spuds, red onions and carrots soon. We still have a single row of carrots left - Ann pulled this one last week-end for a stir fry. It weighed in at 1.1kg.

Ann has been making her own bird feeders too - from dripping, bird seed and any out of date bits and pieces she can find in the pantry.  We’ve been hanging the feeders up on a Saturday and by the following Tuesday the feed has all gone.

Mount Tongaririo, a volcano 'down the road' (about 2½ hours drive away) caused a bit of a stir with a small ash eruption. It closed a couple of roads and stopped local flights for a few hours and was the talk of the country for a few days.

Peter has begun working full time for the IT company he was contracting with. It's longer hours than he used to work but he's enjoying the variety of work.

During the evenings we've been working in the garage repotting the bonsai. Although it's only been a couple of years since we repotted some of them they have a lot of root. Looks like we need to repot more frequently here.

Maxie managed to find a hole in one of the fences and escaped last week. We found her exploring the neighbours' garden. Needless to say Peter spent an hour fixing and mending the fence.

	We welcomed Growler into the clan on the 31st August as we celebrated 21 years of marriage. Ann named him Growler because the first thing he had to do was tell Jaz off as she tried to rip his paw off!
A friend of ours here in New Zealand, Tim, is a Rotarian and decided to create a book entitled 'Hamiltons of the World' to raise money for charity. http://www.stuff.co.nz/waikato-times/news/7494645/Our-Hamilton-has-plenty-of-namesakes

News from Home

Mel (Peter's niece) was in the news again raising money to support elderly victims of crime in Northfield. She has raised more than £1030 so far!!!