Kia ora,
Honey has decided she likes the single bed that Sox uses in the morning to get some sun.
Sox prefers sitting on “Peter’s sofa” by the fire.
On a roaming shift at the gardens Peter came across this group of mobility dogs in training.
We had a busy week of hosting a couple of our bonsai friends. Gordon came over from Thames for the workshop weekend then we had Tony staying with us for 5 nights.
We both had time at the club workshops with Tony in the new Tui room at Hamilton Gardens before working on our trees with Tony for 2½ days at our place.
At the monthly bonsai club meeting Tony did a critique of club members’ trees.
For Peter’s birthday he had a new loco, a couple of wagons and a water tower from Ann, whilst the girls gave him some sheep!
To celebrate we went to the Smith and Mackenzie Chop House with Tony for dinner.
We decided to have solar panels installed to keep the ever increasing electricity costs down, and keep us going during the occasional power cuts we get. Twenty panels, 8 on the East side, 4 on the North and 8 on the West, plus an 8kW battery in the mower storeroom. The timing was just right with the installation finishing on a Tuesday and there was a power cut in the village on the Friday which didn’t affect us.
Peter gave a talk on bonsai to 35 people at the Raglan Garden Club one Tuesday lunchtime. It was a sunny day and a quiet drive. The garden club members enjoyed his talk and had some positive feedback.
The weather seems to be going crazy, whilst there are massive wildfires in Europe we were hitting -4 degrees overnight during the last few days of the month.
Ann ran a workshop about accent plants and other things to use for the club show in September. Peter brought along some display boards for everyone to practise setting up their trees.
Ann had her orthopaedic outpatient appointment. The surgeon was surprised that she still had a lot of back pain and has referred her for a CT scan of her lower spine.
Getting around the house and garden, as well as longer walks has been challenging so Ann bought herself an all singing, all dancing walker. Now she needs to work on her “driving” skills before she strips all the paint off the door jambs and skirting boards!
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