Kia Ora

Peter spent the first three days of his new job at Ricoh in Auckland. The new job comes with company branded polo shirts, trousers and jacket. Ann is happy as it means less ironing.
	The level of crime in the village is (was) non-existent so you can imagine the shock when the local pub was robbed and the new owners (of two days) assaulted and tied up.  Fortunately everybody is now ok.
We had a good time at the annual Pirongia craft fair and bought a lovely stone for the garden (besides the usual wine, coconut ice and fudge).
	The girls are both fine – and very happy at the moment since Ann started her holiday so they have company all day (and get lunch too). Ann is glad that daylight savings has started and the weather is warming up. This means that Jaz is less reluctant to brave the outside when she needs the toilet (rather than waiting too long then pooing all over the garage, hers and Maxie’s bed and the laundry)!

Ann is pleased to have some holiday as she managed to sprain her lower back at the beginning of the month – trying to protect her new hip from an overactive student! She’s been having physio and is now able to stand up straight and walk more normally – and not look like she’s poo’d her pants!

Mind you some of the second week of the holidays will be spent in school - moving classroom AGAIN! The building works are going well but now the builders need to start on the renovation – which means vacating those rooms. So four classes have to move and Ann is ‘lucky’ enough to be one of them!

They say that although there are six degrees of separation in the world it’s only two degrees of separation in New Zealand and this is so true. Ann picks a physio at random to treat her back – then discovers that not only does the physio know someone who used to work with Ann at Patave School, but that her aunt and uncle are good bonsai friends of ours! 

Peter was invited to give a talk and workshop at the New Plymouth bonsai club. He went down on the Saturday morning and did the talk in the evening, followed by the workshop on the Sunday morning. He had a great time looking at the collections down there and working with the club members. This is the tree he worked on during his talk.
	At the last bonsai club meeting we made pots – can’t wait until they’ve been kiln fired so we can maybe plant them up.

We had a second bird stuck in the wood burner flue for a day and a half (luckily the weather warmed up so we didn’t need to light the fire). Peter decided to climb up onto the roof and check the chimney. The netting was still in place so the birds have had to be very wily and climb up inside the netting to get to the top of the chimney before falling down inside it!  How stupid is that! Anyway Peter has wrapped some extra netting around the base of the chimney which should stop the birds’ antics (fingers and toes crossed).

We’ve finally finished digging up all deciduous trees from the garden – only have pines left which can wait another year or two!  Spring is beautiful – everything is starting to bud – so much flower and green shoots – yeah!

News from Home

Congratulations to Vicki and Sean on their beautiful wedding.
	Congratulations to Charlotte and Reece on the birth of Aoife. She’s gorgeous.