Kia ora,
Peter’s model railway is slowly growing. His first loco arrived early in the month and he’s had it running around the track with a single coal wagon behind it. He managed to buy some coaches and a loco from Trademe (an online auction site – our version of Ebay) but needed for some electronics from the UK to modify the loco before he could run it. He also managed to get a third pre-owned loco from the UK along with the bits to convert it to run on his track. Meanwhile he’s been planning the layout of the buildings and roads in the middle of the layout. He has also started adding wood and coreflute to create bases for inclined tracks, hills and cuttings.
Ann had a quiet birthday, with some books and fudge from Peter and the girls.
Our summer has been long and very hot – which is great but it does mean lots of water usage – on bonsai and showers! Ann was about to order a second water delivery as the level in the tank was getting rather low when we had torrential rain during the morning of the 21st – yay!
Peter has also been selling off a few of his bonsai trees. One collector in Wellington bought enough to allow Peter to do a 2 day delivery run down there. That meant an early walk for Sox before Peter drove down to Wellington and stopped overnight in Petone. Despite missing one morning walk Peter and Sox have clocked up another 330km during the month.
On his way back from Wellington Peter drove over the Rimatuka hills and had breakfast in Eketahuna before driving to Palmerston North where there was a model shop he wanted to visit.
Ann finally managed to tidy up all the old children;s books and cuddly toys we had in the sleepout. One of her old colleagues at Pat Ave had the seven boxes of kids books and another one had two BIG bags of cuddlies.
We had our usual bonsai meeting and a workshop over in Morrinsville. Peter also helped run a privet workshop for some club members newish to bonsai.
Marshall, one of our bonsai friends, offered us some of her spare mulch for our garden – to try and cover the bare patches where Honey and Sox run up and down the hedge.
Marshall and Peter loaded the trailer whilst Ann had the very important job of photographing the work!
We’re crossing our fingers (and everything else) in the hope that Covid infection rates drop enough that we can go back to volunteering at the information centre at Hamilton Gardens by Easter.
We’ll end the month with more cute photos of our exercise machines!
