Ann & Peter in New Zealand:

	Ann & Peter in New Zealand
	2015

Kia Ora,

Honey has continued to scratch and bite herself 'til her legs and paws are red raw and furless. The vet thinks she may have a food allergy so she's on a special food diet (costing an arm and a leg of course), more steroid tablets and a twice weekly bath with some special shampoo to try and help soothe the itchiness.
	Maxie can't see what all the fuss is about.

Ann's camera broke and whilst she was buying a new one she also decided to move into the 21st Century and treated herself to a Samsung Galaxy tablet (which she's still getting to grips with).

Jean and Tim had another tree blow down in their gully so we popped over with the chainsaw, attacked it and got ourselves another trailer load of wood for next years' fire. Peter put some of the smaller wood straight into the garage to dry out - big mistake! Ann went out to say goodnight to the girls and saw this 5 cm long weta sitting on their water bowl.

Then a few days later as Peter was chopping up more of the wood to go in the wood store he came across another one! Ugh - if Ann had realised that the free wood came with hitchhikers she might not have accepted so quickly.

We had a period of high winds which brought the roof of the shade area for the trees down and smashed one of our smaller bonsai pots (the tree was fine thank goodness).

Ann has decided that she's getting too old to do her job at the same pace anymore so next year she's only going to be working 3 days a week. Peter will still be slogging away 5 days a week for the moment.

Towards the end of the month we said a very sad farewell to a special friend. We first met Jeff at a bonsai meeting almost 11 years ago and became firm friends. Peter and Jeff also spent several years going to beer club together. He was a kind and generous man with a wicked sense of humour.