Kia ora,
Our water pump returned after a service and the electronics being fixed.
A blackbird decided to nest in the climber by some of the bonsai staging. When we found it there were already 5 eggs in it. We just hope we don’t disturb the parents too much whilst we’re watering the bonsai in front of it.
The October club meeting was Ann and Melody talking about accent plants and how to display them in a show.
Peter got caught up in more traffic jams – this time a very vociferous small flock of turkeys crossing the road.
The bonsai club show was the following weekend. Set up was on the Friday and was the usual organised chaos.
The show was a great success as always.
We displayed 3 or 4 trees each. We’re down sizing our collection to make it more manageable so we booked a couple of traders’ sales tables and an Eftpos machine. Over the weekend we managed to sell roughly half of the trees we took, most of them Ann’s as Peter had already sold off a number of his trees.
We put seven trees in the show and came away with the Best Group Trophy and a Merit for Ann and Peter also got a Merit.
Because we were at the bonsai show all day Saturday and Sunday Tom popped around and gave the girls their lunch and let them out for a comfort stop.
It started raining on the Monday after the show, by 2pm on Tuesday we’d had a lot of rain, so much so that the front gate was flooded and the river went up to a 24 year record of 23.53m deep (normally less than 2m).
As if Peter didn’t have enough firewood to cut up, one of the pine trees we are growing suddenly started leaning and had to be taken down along with another one which was rocking in the ground when the wind blew.
Severe winds hit the South Island a few days later with wind gusts of 230 kph. Fortunately, we only had a bit of rain and mild gusts of wind. A week later we had yet more strong winds and rain – 45mm in 24 hours, most of it during a thunderstorm at 3.00am
Peter’s chainsaw broke again. This time the exhaust shield came off meaning he would burn his fingers if he used it so it was retired and he bought a new slightly smaller one.
Over the Labour Day holiday weekend Peter and the girls were on cat and chook feeding duty. Sox kept a good lookout to see if she could see Squeak or any of the visiting cats from neighbouring houses.
As we both turned 65 we were offered free hearing tests. We both had a loss of hearing in our left ears but didn’t need hearing aids unless we were going to spend a lot of time in very noisy large work or social occasions.
Ann has been diligently following her physio exercise plan and and is making slow but steady progress. Zoomie (walker) is still very much needed on a daily basis. Peter’s been kept very busy chauffeuring her to a variety of appointments – hospital, physio, hair etc – and is still doing most of the work at home. He’s been a real star.
After we both decided to get rid of some of our bonsai Ann suddenly decided to get rid of some of her books! She asked Peter to get some banana boxes when he next went for groceries. Instead he disappeared into the garage and returned with two large boxes immediately so Ann couldn’t change her mind. We now have (temporarily) some empty book shelves.
