Kia Ora

May 1st (a Saturday) heralded the start of duck hunting season. The shooting started around dawn and woke Maxie up who promptly woke us up by scratching repeatedly at the door – so no lie in for Ann.

Peter spent a few days helping friends to pack up their house and move north. They are renting so don’t have space for all their bonsai – guess who’s looking after them for the moment?

Fine start to the month with clear sunny days but cold nights. We managed to last until the middle of the month before we lit the fire but we've had it going almost every night since.

Ann made more sorbet – a citrus one with pineapple and orange, and a gin and plum one – yum! She's also been making fudge – more yum!

Peter has been very busy pruning all the hedges – which are all at least 10 feet tall. Once he had them all pruned it took a day for him to mulch them with an industrial sized chipper we hired. It produced four trailer loads of mulch - enough to do all along the corokia hedge and three of the growing on beds.
	Whilst Peter was mulching all the hedge prunings Jaz sat regally in the back of the ute....
...whilst Maxie was on mouse watch by the compost heap.

Ann's had a couple of days out from school this month - travelling north to Auckland and south to Taupo for workshops and seminars.

Maxie developed an eye infection and the vet had to put some orange dye in her eye to check it.
	Jaz wondered what all the fuss was about! Jaz also has a new Snuggle heat pad for her bed – if she ever decides which bed she’s going to sleep in !

We went to another Rotary Book Fair at Te Rapa racecourse - but only managed 21 books this time, 8 for Peter and 13 for Ann.

Our solitary feijoa tree has been awesome this year producing over 40 kg of fruit.
	Just in case you wondered what a feijoa looks like. They taste like TCP but Kiwis tend to love them.

News from Home

Peter's dad, John, had a slight problem with his gas fire last week. He heard a loud thump from behind it and had to call out the gas fitter out to see what was wrong. After getting behind the fire he managed to pull out a rather large birds nest - which filled two green sacks with rubbish and twigs!