Kia ora and Happy New Year!
We celebrated the start of 2023 with a lovely lunch/afternoon with Marshall and Sandra. As you can see the wine drinkers are on the right!
Peter’s knee has been giving him a few problems so his daily walks with Sox had to be shortened slightly although they’re still doing 6 to 8km (weather permitting). He finally received an appointment for an x-ray which has shown a few problems which he will be discussing with his doctor in early February.
Sox is getting used to the replacement flyscreen which will hopefully be more durable.
Ann’s done a couple of extra shifts at the Hamilton Gardens – working with Peter covering for someone away on their summer holidays. Mind you the weather hasn’t been very summery to say the least. the country’s had so much rain this month that parts of the north island has been flooded out, with land slips, roads being washed away and bridges destroyed.
On one of the few hot and humid days the girls spent the afternoon in the shade.
Next day – can you make the rain stop please?
Azaria and Carolien came to visit (and sample Ann’s chocolate brownies).
Work has started on a new subdivision on the southern edge of the village by the river. Peter and Sox walk past one of the roads into the new subdivision most mornings. There are plans for around 45 new houses.
Whilst working in the garden on the morning of the 24th Peter saw a flight of three RNZAF Orion’s flying past our mountain against a very leaden sky. They were on the first leg of their farewell tour of NZ as they are being replaced by the new P8-A Poseidon.
We celebrated 18 years in New Zealand on the 12th January! Time has flown by!
Peter has finished mulching all the small stuff and cut up all the branches from our 4 firewood trees. Now he’s cutting the trunks up with his chainsaw then he’ll hire a log splitter.
The end of the month was a very wet public holiday weekend. By 6.00 on the Saturday morning we recorded 91.2mm of rain in the previous 24 hours, by Sunday morning we had a further 47.7mm and 30mm on Monday. There was very heavy flooding in Auckland including a washed out Elton John concert and flooding everywhere – including Auckland Airport! On our way out for a walk Sox and Peter had to wade through a ‘puddle’ on the driveway – it was 5cm deep at the shallowest point.
Normally at this time of year we are looking at decanting 5000 litres of water into our main tank from our small tank and thinking about ordering a tanker delivery. Not this year as both our tanks are overflowing and the river is as high as we have ever seen it.
As well as the human population of the village increasing, it looks like the rabbit population is growing as well. Walking with Sox we often now see between 6 and 12 rabbits every morning.
Peter ran a bonsai workshop for the club’s intermediate group concentrating on summer pruning and additional carving on the large privet the group is working on.
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