Monthly Archives: December 2006

A bitter southerly wind with rain swept up in the night; the beach was clear and clean again but this time quite chilly – more like winter than a mid summer’s day. We went in to Bridget’s after breakfast and the routine continued – Karola looking after the grandchildren, mainly Natalie, while I pottered on with my web computer stuff on Chris’ computer. Interesting articles on economics and consciousness in The Economist this week (well, last week’s issue actually).

Bridget and Chris went out together in the afternoon, something they rarely do since having the children. The weather is so bad that Wellington city has cancelled its New Year’s Eve music concert and celebrations. We’re back at Pitoitoi listening to the rain and the surf pounding, warmed by the wood fire, Bicka asleep on the couch.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 11°C—19°C; 6.4mm rain [?]

It was a beautiful start to the day; I called Mary from the beach with Bicka – we had the beach to ourselves, it was low tide, and recent high tides had swept it clean.

After breakfast Karola went in to Khandallah to look after the grandchildren; I came in later on the Days Bay ferry and train out to Khandallah which took 2 hours (compared to 30 mins by car). It was Bridget’s and Chris’ aniversary so they went out to a film while we babysat. I continued my morning’s tinkered with my website, following up advice from Bridget on how to find an elusive bug.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 6°C—22°C; no rain [?]

Moved the sheep into the Front paddock; ensured ample water; rang Gerald and he agreed to house-sit for us. I set up the automatic choook feeder (very wasteful so I don’t usually use it). Karola saw that one of the bantams had turned up with two new black chicks so we asked Crystall to look after them while we’re away.

Set off to Wellington mid morning; lunch at Abbott’s Tea Rooms in Waipawa; arrived at Bridget’s place in Khandallah late afternoon, staying for dinner and getting to Pitoitoi around 9:00pm. Gave Bicka her evening run on the beach – one of us takes her before 9:00am and again after 8:00pm, which is good for us as well as for Bicka.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 8°C—25°C; no rain [?]

Campbell had a look round the tree plantings that’d he’d had such a major hand in doing; he was very pleased with the growth but a bit disapproving of the weeds that had flourished despite the heavy mulching. He volunteered his party to weed the Karamu/Lemonwood/Ngaio plantings and this we all did late morning despite the heat. We disturbed a hen pheasant nesting in the weeds, 12 green-brown eggs. Rest of the day was relaxed eating, drinking, and conversation, as it’s supposed to be around Christmas.

The sheep spent another day in the geese enclosure which is at last looking a bit bare – we’ll shift them tomorrow before going to Wellington (to do some babysitting for Bridget, back early next week).

I’ve found another weather station recording on the Internet – this time c/o HortResearch and based within a couple of km of here – it’s somewhere in Twyford. I’ve backdated the weather data from the new source to begin on 1st December.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 8°C—26°C; no rain [81.0]

Campbell and Jane and daughter (and philologist specialising in Icelandic) Kate arrived this afternoon. Before that I got yesterday’s post hole finished and 1/2 of another one started. In the morning I mowed/flailed the bonfire paddock. The old flail mower lost a few more teeth and finally a bolt sheared and it is now officially broken. Luckily I’d tackled the roughest spots first and so was able to complete the mowing with the usual motorised pull-behind mower. Hot, noisy, with much dust and vibration; but at least it’s done now and the grass will we hope recover from the flailing faster than the weeds.

Hawkes Bay Weather:9°C—22°C; no rain [81.9]

Hot and partly cloudy day. We went to Cynthia Chalmer’s for a long lunch with a handful of her friends and her 3 now-married daughters – all 3 in the last 7 months, the last one being the wedding we attended last Saturday. They live about 40 mins up the Napier-Taihape road. Afterwards, Karola and I went down to the river – it’s the same Ngaruroro river than runs near here, but about 20k upstream – and Bicka and Karola had a paddle.

No work here today but maybe it’ll begin again tomorrow. Campbell and Jane are staying the night so I’m hoping we’ll see them in the afternoon.

Sheep are restless for a bit of novelty but there’s still plenty of grass in the geese enclosure so they can do cleanup duty for another day at least.

Couple of days ago I recalled that Karola thought bees were reinfesting the outside wall of the upstairs bedroom we call the &lquo;bee room&rquo;. I hopped up on the balcony rail and saw that they’ve got a nest in under the eaves of the main roof, they’re going in and out at the bottom of the barge board (I think that’s what it’s called – yes it is, Mrs Google agrees).

I spent the evening sorting through the URLs I’ve got on del.icio.us.com – the free website for making a note of any web page that takes your fancy. I’m trying to reduce the eclectic spur-of-the-moment tags I’ve given them so I can find things again when I want them.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 12°C—27°C; no rain [81.3]

Hot and mostly sunny; we went to the Ormond Chapel in Napier for the 9:00am service then returned home for a relaxing day. Sheep are OK in the goose enclosure; geese haven’t actually flown away either. I finished yesterday’s strainer post hole and got 1/2 way through another one.

Karola played a CD of Winchester Cathedral Christmas carols she’d borrowed from the Hastings library. She played it on the stereo system we saved from going to the dump/tip many years ago – it was Anna’s and Marc’s and Marc had just bought a new one, and now it’s our best music player. Karola also pressed ‘repeat’ and after hearing some of the carols for the 3rd or 4th time I twigged and turned the repeat button off. Brings back memories of our life in Winchester for almost 30 years.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 14°C—26°C; no rain [81.6]

Beautiful day.

My tasks:

1. Pea picking with Karola
2. More strainer post holes; only 1m depth of 1 hole done today
3. Treat sheep for lice and against flystrike with Karola

Karola’s tasks:

1. Pea picking
2. Treat sheep for lice and against flystrike

Mid-morning we went and picked peas, filling a couple of milk-pail sized plastic buckets – they tasted sweet and fresh. Karola then took some as presents to neighbours, the Scotts and the Ladbrookes.

Late afternoon we rounded up the sheep and I attended to the feet of 6 limping ewes:

• ewe #203 – front right
• ewe #215 (red tag, missing big tag) – left rear
• ewe #204 – front left
• ewe #209 – front right
• ewe #212 – right rear
• ewe #216 – right rear

No lambs and none of the young ewes were limping, mostly it was the same old ewes that had the bad feet.

We also sprayed all the sheep; ewes, lambs and Nelson, with Magnum to protect against flystrike and to kill lice – I’d seen some of them rubbing and quivering a lot, probaby irritated by lice. Then we put all the sheep in the geese enclosure, to the considerable annoyance of the geese. They’ll stay there until it’s eaten out, weeds, good grass, and unpalateable grass. That’ll give the Triangle a bit of a spell.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 14°C—23°C; no rain [81.0]

Overcast day with some very light rain during the day and heavier showers in the evening. We went to Trish Chalmers’ wedding at Woodford House (Karola’s old school) chapel with reception lunch at Selini Vinyard; 120 or so people there; a merry time had by all. Karola felt strangely at home in the chapel she attended twice a day for 5 years when boarding there. She was in Wallingford house and there were large flags for each of the houses on the chapel walls; made it all seem to me like something out of Harry Potter. Service was short and sweet; it was taken by a most presentable woman vicar, the chaplain of Woodford House.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 5°C—18°C; 5.9mm rain [80.9]

Cold night but we woke to a bright, sunny day with clear views of snow heavy and low on the Kaweka ranges. Longest day, summer solstice, today.

My tasks for the day:

1. More on the HTML book course – no progress today
2. Mulching/mowing: 3 hours of bone-shaking noise and nervous excitement. Near misses avoiding: wiping out several of the Titoki trees along the new drive, damaging the front gates, cutting the irrigation alkathene pipes to the front gate area, and several new young peach trees. The problem is that the mulcher sticks out from the tractor on my right by a couple of feet and it’s very easy to misjudge distances. I did complete mulching along the new drive, along Karola’s rubbish bund, the bamboo shoots coming up in the Triangle paddock, and along the boundary with the new peaches.

Karola’s task for the day:

1. Weed spraying round the Camelias on the lawn and behind the garage – accomplished

In the evening we went to a Carol service at the little restored wooden country church, Christ Church at Pukehou, about 20 minutes drive from Karamu.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 8°C—18°C; 1.1mm rain [80.5]

Showers on and off all day, including one torrential downpour, so no work outside today. However I did get stuck into my HTML/CSS course – the book is called Head First HTML with CSS & XHTML and while it’s very elementary for me it is filling a few gaps and I’d recommend it highly for beginners who want to do more than have their own home page with a photo and some big print on it. Also today I found a superb, simple little free Mac program for resizing and compressing images/pictures/photos for the web called ImageWell.

My “frogs”(in a soup of tadpoles – see yesterday’s journal entry) for today were:

1. Get on with the HTML course – which happened; I’m over 1/3 way through tonight.
2. Using the tractor and heavy mulcher, to mulch/mow: the bonfire paddock; the line of the new boundary fence alongside the peaches; the edge of the new drive; the track under the oaks by Karola’s rubbish bund; and the bamboo shoots coming up yet again in the Triangle paddock. Rain deferred this one.

Karola’s were:

1. Make progress on reorganising her study – which she did.
2. More weeding down the side of the house – which was rained off. However Karola did cut back the Wysteria that was encroaching vigorously on both verandah and balcony, and, something I find hard to do, she cleaned up the clippings as well

Karola and I dashed into Hastings at 5:00pm to complete the purchase of our tickets to UK next year – 18th July till 22nd August we’ll be in London or thereabouts with Anna and our two grandsons. The travel agency promises never to be beaten on price but Air New Zealand website was offering $500 per person cheaper so that’s why we rushed in with evidence of the lower price; the agent must be pretty annoyed with Air New Zealand undercutting them like that. We got the online fare and a discount of $30 per person. One of the few occasions where it’s been a “Community Chest” with a “bank error in your favour” (for those who remember Monopoly) – usually it’s extra taxes and surcharges hidden in the fine print.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 4°C—15°C; 9.7mm rain [80.0]

I am experimenting with the simplest time management / goal oriented planning process I’ve heard of. Having spent inordinate amounts of time on “Getting Things Done” – which was partially successful – I have at last lighted upon a system that matches my fairly simple lifestyle. All you do is choose a couple of big chunks of work to do each day that make some tangible progress towards your goals, and you let the usual million other things that distract or disarm you just slot in round the couple of major items as they can. Each mornng you write down what the big things are for the day; in the evening you scold yourself (or get a warm glow) based on whether you got those couple of big things done.

In the USA they sometimes call this the “Pickle Jar” management system – couple of big pickles in the jar (the big tasks) and then pebbles (other bits and bobs and interruptions etc) are dribbled in to fill the rest of the space. I’m thinking of calling it the “Two frogs in a tadpole soup” management system. We’ll see how it goes.

Karola pointed out that our weeks-old bonfire was steaming in the rain; there’s still fires smoldering deep inside the heap of ash and soil. I stopped watering the Lemonwoods etc.

Today I did get another strainer post dug despite the 10mm torrential rain today the ground is bone dry 500mm down – the strainer holes are 1300mm deep. But I failed completely on the other “frog”, to do some chapters of a training book on HTML and CSS. Hmmm.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 7°C—24°C; 3.8mm rain (10mm more showing in Mary’s gauge – up to 34mm for the month) [79.8]

Occasional rain. Computer stuff all morning – Karola disappeared into town until lunchtime. Karola spent the afternoon weeding – a neverending task. I slowly finished putting in a strainer post – I have 8 to do before I hire the post driver again to bang in some intermediate posts. We went to Casino Royale this evening in Havelock North – Century Gold cinema with plush “aeroplane-style” seats and seat-side mini-tables to balance wine glass or coffee cup on – very civilised.

Mother and daughter rabbit are still hopping round in the geese enclosure, watched closely by the geese and a pukeko.

Watering to the Australian section, 5-fingers, and native corner turned off; watering commences for Lemonwoods, Karamus, Ngaios. This rain barely wets the ground.

Karola moved the sheep into the Triangle and the bonfire area. The two white bantam hens that have been sitting on maybe a score of eggs for the last few weeks finally gave up; it may have been that they chose a fair-weather nest and got soaked in the recent rain contributed to their good sense in abandoning the nest.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 15°C—21°C; 2.3mm rain [80.5]

Still no sign of the Puketapu weather station coming back online – I’ll give it a bit longer. If I need to switch it’ll be to an even less representative monitor either in Hastings or Napier.

Filling out tax forms is a tad tedious but the more complicated bit this year – filling it out for 2005/2006 – is that Karola began trading, became what they call a “sole trader” in April 2005. So I need to construct a simple profit and loss account and asset register (for depreciation), and hope that the farming expenses approximately match the income.

It’s drizzling, as forecast, but should clear tomorrow. Mary’s rain gauge shows 24mm rain in December so far, up from 18mm before we went to Wellington. Still not enough to more than freshen the grass; we’ll need to water the young trees again soon.

Crystal Ladbrooke brought over the brown bantam hen and 3 chicks she’s been raising for us – the chicks now have adult feathers and will have to fend for themselves. A white bantam hen with 3 chicks, a week or so younger than these, have been kept in a coop here and fed every day by Ben and Gill; they too (the chicks) are being let out now to fend for themselves amongst the cats and rats. Both hens are very protective so there’s a good chance the chicks will survive.

Karola and I did a bit of a walk-around and Karola mused over where the cottage should be resited – again. I think we won’t settle on that for sure until I’ve removed all the bamboo so she can better visualise the options.

A flurry of text messages this afternoon from Yvonne – Francis and Michelle are engaged to be married. We thought Michelle was looking very established in the kitchen at Yvonne’s housewarming on Saturday. I believe Francis proposed to Michelle on a surprise trip to Kapiti Island this week.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 13°C—15°C; 2.8mm rain [79.8]

Most of the young trees have survived our trip to Wellington – not that they came with us you understand, but they were out of sight and mind for a week. I noticed that one of the water troughs near the old wooden gate was empty; inspection determined that the hose connecting the alkathene tail from the trough to the tap had come adrift. By the hole in the ground it looks as if the water ran from the tap for a while then someone, a passer-by perhaps, must have turned it off, thank goodness.

The 9 Rangiora along the railings on the south side of the new drive, and the 6 Rangiora and 1 Karaka on the other side, are looking stronger than when we left. In the south eastern corner the 55 Grisolinia are all green and crisp; no heat stress or wind damage that I could see. On the other side of the driveway entrance a Titoke, 2 Rimu and 2 Miro are all fine.

The 21 Titoki along the eastern side of the new drive, and the 7 on the other side, are getting taller and mostly doing well, although they really need to be released from the weeds crowding them. The Rangiora by the taps on either side of the new drive are doing better than before.

Along the front of the geese enclosure the 7 Pittisporum are thriving; the 2 Pohutukawa nearby along the end of the garage are holding their own; the small Braeburn apple tree in the geese enclosure has an abundance of new leaves. The 34 Box trees we brought up from Bridget’s place are mostly OK although they’re still about the same size and 2 or 3 have died back significantly.

Karola’s 61 yew trees along the road fence north of the old entrance are doing alright but need weeding; the Australian section and 5-Fingers and the native corner next to the orchard road gate are all pretty dry so I turned on their irrigation. Along the orchard driveway a couple of the Lemonwoods have died back but almost all of them are gaining height and new foliage; the Ngaios are motoring away; many have doubled in size. The Karamus are a variable lot, many of them seeming to sprawl like ground cover rather than adopting the upright posture I’d hoped for.

Ben left me a list of bird species seen at Karamu – I’ll put that on the web site at some point.

The sheep are all much as we left them; numbers tallied. Ewe #216 is limping – and so is ewe #211 (no tag) but in her case it looks like she’s recovering well.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 12°C—21°C; 10.5mm rain [81.3]

A surprisingly smooth exit from Pitoitoi in Wellington; first stop at Bridget’s in Khandallah; I made a side trip to Mary’s in Karori and then we went off up State Highway 1 to Bulls. Afternoon tea with Harry, Chloe, Tessa and Laura – Harry showed me some of his latest Techno-Systems inventions – I do like the designs that are sophisticated in concept but very simple when built. We all went over to Kaz and Yvonne’s place, Ngaio Glenn on the road from Sanson to Fielding, for their housewarming party. Godfrey and Sue Walker were there along with a number of neighbours. We left mid evening and were back at Karamu by 12:30am. Karola kindly put up with another couple of tapes from “Great Minds of the Western Intellectual Tradition – Part 4: The Enlightenment and its Critics”. The six 30-minute lectures we’ve listened to on this trip complete the 12 lectures on The Enlightenment; next we’re on to The Age of Ideology which I suspect will be heavy going. I particularly liked the lectures on Hume and Adam Smith on this trip.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 10°C—25°C; no rain [?]

Bridget’s place again all day – me continuing with the Windows XP installation on her laptop – then we’d invited Felicity and Geoff over for dinner at Pitoitoi. Geoff was disappointed that I liked his present – Bob Dylan’s “Modern Times” CD – he’d sort of hoped I’d want to give it back. Karola said she’d thought of getting me it for Christmas too. Karola baked some schnapper which turned out very well.

Now it can be told; the TV/VCR at Pitoitoi isn’t broken; the 1st ten minutes or so on the videotape I was trying to play had been recorded at 1/2 speed but the episode of “Foyle’s War”, and the preceding short “Creature Comforts” were perfectly viewable after all.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 8°C—20°C; no rain [?]

We went over to Bridget’s for the day; Bridget wanted me to wipe her old IBM T30P laptop clean and reinstall Windows, in fact upgrade it to a clean version of Windows XP; it’d been a Windows 2000 machine since I gave it to her 5-6 years ago. It all went very smoothly but very very slowly; every day I celebrate my switch to an Apple Mac – even though my Mac Mini is itself old and slow in comparison to the latest Macs.

In the evening we swung by Mary’s place before joining Anne and Tony Fletcher for a meal at their house in Karori. Tony is still working for IBM. He also has an interesting sideline in playing the world currency markets, in a modest way. He’s signed up with a company that provides real time information about the currency markets and buys and sells his currency as and when he tells them to – all via the Internet of course. Tony also has a wormery but apparently it’s in self-sufficiency mode at present.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 8°C—22°C; no rain [?]

Bridget found a live white-tail spider in Natalie’s dolls house in the living room last week. These are venemous spider-eating spiders, immigrants from Australia, that are the most venemous spider in New Zealand and can inflict a seriously painful bite. Bridget and Chris are remodelling their garden; leveling the old lawn and shrubbery with heavy machinery so that may have disturbed the white tail and made it move indoors. Anyway, because of this Bridget is getting the house fumigated against spiders and while that was going on she visited us at Pitoitoi. Natalie was recovering from Chickenpox; Alex was just getting it; and Bicka was somewhat jealous of these two tiny intruders diverting attention – so it was not the smoothest of visits.

Around Bridget’s visit I did some programming – another clever little program I expect to use when re-building my web site; unfortunately very few people are as fascinated by my little programming projects as I am, especially not Karola – and not even Bridget these days; her two children divert her attention, unsurprisingly.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 10°C—23°C; no rain [?]

I computed all morning and just caught the Day’s Bay ferry to Wellington at 12:40pm. Karola picked me up and we went to Bridget’s – where she’d been all morning. Later we visited Mary in Karori, intending to take her to Gill’s place in Seatoun to water her garden – Gill and Ben being on holiday up at Karamu, house-sitting for us for the week. But it was not to be; a neighbour of Mary’s had locked herself out and wasn’t too well so Mary couldn’t leave. Karola and I went to Seatoun and I watered the garden for an hour and also picked kilos of fresh broad beans.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 11°C—25°C; no rain [?]

Karola had her dental implant put in this morning; we then toddled off to Wellington via the Wairarapa and the Rimutaka mountain road, arriving at Pitoitoi in Day’s Bay before dark.
Listened to an hour or so of the philosophy tapes. Lunch at Abbots Tea Rooms in Waipawa.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 6°C—23°C; no rain [?]

More fence deconstruction – and now all the dismantled fence is out of the way of the hay maker, Richard Rolls, who may be coming to cut the Middle paddock and what remains of the Top paddock this week, depending on the weather.

Sheep have been moved into the Front paddock for the week.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 5°C—18°C; no rain [80.6]

I checked the rain gauge first thing this morning and it still had 18mm in it – so the rain last night didn’t exceed the losses due to evaporation over the last few days.

Gill and Ben arrived from Wellington late afternoon for their week of rural R & R here; we’re hoping the weather improves for the next week – doesn’t mimic the wintery weather they’ve left in Wellington.

I did another 50 or more battens; only 25 to go. I also began “freeing” the young Pittisporum trees along the front of the geese enclosure.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 6°C—17°C; 1.7mm rain [80.6]

I continued removing old totara battens from fence wire; Karola is making a cache of these just off the back drive.

Adam has put water in the Fergie back tyres – I look forward to experiencing the improved traction without needing a drum of water balanced on the back forks.

We penned up the sheep and

• vaccinated the three youngest lambs and docked them
• worked on the feet of #204, #215, and #206 – it turned out that #206’s feet were OK and #216 was the one with a limp – we’ll have to catch her again and take a look later

Chrystal was supposed to bring her lamb over to be docked and vaccinated, she calls him Piccolo, but Piccolo didn’t show.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 8°C—25°C; just a very little rain, 2.5mm [80.6]

From the weather website:

ADVANCE WARNING: The daily regional forecasts on this page will be temporarily suspended between Sat 9th and Sun 16th December. 
Our apologies for any inconveneince this may cause

WIth several hours of hot work and sore backs we finally got the battens off the orchard drive boundary fence and the fence tidied away until the wire and battens are recycled.

Karola also did more weeding and has made improvements to Bicka’s pen – filling in the holes and preparing to plant Iris along the inside of the pen brushwood fence.

I gather it was 25 degrees today and will likely be the same tomorrow.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 10°C—27°C; no rain [80.6]

We took the wool in to the wool buyer in Napier – a miserable $159.49 for a bale of the wool from 21 sheep; still, it pays for the shearing. That was for 59kg of fleeces and 8kg of odds and ends.

We also installed leaky pipe irrigation for the Grisolinia planted in an L-shape on the south-eastern corner – it’s also watering the rangiora along the railings of the new drive entrance and a couple of rimu as well.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 6°C—21°C; no rain [80.5]

While feeding the cat/bantams/geese this morning I was visited by a rabbit and one youngster – they live somewhere in the geese enclosure and came hopping up to the fence to have a look.

More weeding for Karola; more low-key planting area fencing for me, including adjusting the height of 2 posts by pulling them up a few inches with the Fergie and a chain to make the fenceline more level, and adding a top wire about 100mm above the netting, to dissuade people from climbing over. I also tied the netting to the guide #8 wires, top and bottom, using lacing wire.

Adam Ladbrooke began taking some of our big heap of earth left over from digging the Ha-Ha – he’s taken about 30 apple boxes (large boxes, not bushel boxes) so far, each weighing about 1 tonne – they’re so heavy that his tractor’s back wheels come off the ground – he carries the boxes on front forks.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 7°C—19°C; no rain (18mm recorded overnight here) [80.3]

The day started cloudy but very warm. Bruce Richardson of Mobile Shearing came just before 9:30am and by 11:30am our 20 ewes were shorn, and Nelson the ram. Bruce also helped by docking and castrating the four late lambs who missed the initial dock; we used rubber rings this time even though the hot iron is probably best for tails as they heal up faster and minimise the possibility of fly strike. I must say that even though the several books we have on sheep say that rubber rings are the least painful, my observation is that our lambs get back to feeding, gamboling and dominance games faster when they’ve had their tails cut off with the iron – within 4-5 hours they seem to have mostly forgotten about it, whereas the rubber ringed lambs look distinctly unhappy for a day or more.

As usual Karola helped as “fleece-o”; the rest of the day she was weeding – a never-ending task and quite enjoyable in the right weather. I tore down and reassembled the electric fence separating the orchard from the bonfire paddock, giving an extra 0.5m to the orchard; the 4.00m gap between the Royal Galas and the fence was just a bit too narrow; I’m hoping 4.5m is just enough – wide enough for the orchard tractors and implements; narrow enough so that the full width of grass gets cut in one pass. After that I continued with my preparations for the removal of the felled poplars. I took the battens off about 20m of fence; pulled out 3 posts, and removed the wires for later reuse.

One of the bars, rectangular in cross-section, on the old iron gate into the Island paddock has come adrift at one end. Maybe Luke can help with getting it welded.

And it’s been raining steadily since about 5:00pm; first decent rain we’ve had in weeks. However, just a couple of hours before that I set up the rain gauge out by the pump house, so we are capturing local rainfall from now on. The gauge was a birthday present from Mary.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 11°C—21°C; 19.2mm rain. [80.6]

More topping/mowing; and continued on deconstructing the orchard drive boundary fence in case O’Kane’s do come to deal with the felled poplars this week. This included hanging, temporarily, gates across the orchard drive so that poplar trunks can be dragged from where they’ve fallen to the bonfire without endangering the Ngaio trees.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 9°C—21°C; no rain. [?]

Karola topped the Front paddock on the Fergie – first time she’s done it.

I made latches for the North entrance gate; I made another for the gate into the orchard drive planting area; I also painted that gate (primer for galvanised steel and a top coat of Karaka green).

Mid afternoon I went to the garage at the end of the road and got another 20l of diesel plus filled up the empty petrol cans with 91 octane, including my 20l green jerrycan which I keep and refresh every 3-4 months that is for emergencies. If necessary I can run our little petrol generator for weeks on that.

I had a long chat with our orchardist, Alan Ladbrooke: he’s still chasing the contractors to come and remove the poplars they felled for me along the orchard drive; he and Karola are going to share the spoil from digging the Ha-Ha – Alan needs it to fill holes in his 3 orchards; Karola wants to fill holes left by rotting roots of felled trees and to build up areas that become large puddles (or small lakes) when it rains.

I began taking the Totara battens off the old boundary fence along the orchard drive – it’s been lying on the ground since the felling of the poplars. Good wire will be reused elsewhere; I plan to use new wire and battens when I put the boundary fence back up, after the poplars are cleared away.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 4°C—18°C; no rain. [80.3]

I finally got the gate across the northern entrance hung and closing properly. Also hung a gate across the end of the planting area next to that entrance. Gentle rain is still wet, and temperatures dropped so we spent much of the day inside.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 8°C—20°C; 4.3mm rain. [?]