Monthly Archives: September 2011

SwimGym then back for a morning with architect Les and builder Paul going over Karola and my plan for lighting circuits and power points in the cottage and garage. Les and Paul made many useful but not plan-crushing suggestions and we will mull over and judiciously incorporate these in the plan. I expect to go out for quotes next week. It’s a lot of wire, a lot of lights and switches, and lots and lots of power points. Karola now has the unenviable (I think) task of choosing the actual light fittings; I will be content with joint selection of the switches and power points.

Meanwhile the waste management drip lines went in and the backfilling of the stormwater and sewage drain trenches was completed by lunchtime. A lone electrician was still working all afternoon but as far as I can tell the Phase I of our electrical works is also complete.

As rain is forecast I have ordered some gravel for the drive to cover where the trenches cut through and along the east side of the cottage to avoid a horrid slippery, squelchy mudbath. Paul also arranged for the roof downpipes on the east side of the cottage to be joined to their stormwater drains temporarily. Just a few minutes of rain on the expanse of roof would otherwise pour onto the drive.

Karola and I went to Hastings for lunch as we often do on a Friday. We had a quiet afternoon having been pretty much exhausted by the mornings review.

Lamb #131 died yesterday; this was a runty lamb with bad arthritis so in some ways for the best. Ewe #717 is still plaintively searching for her lost twin however, which is sad to see. Checked that the 7 ewes and 13 lambs over next door are OK and have water. Checked that we still have 28 ewes with lambs here although counting that our 41 lambs were also accounted for was too difficult. In total we should have 35 ewes with 54 lambs plus the 6 ewe hoggets.

Oak Avenue Weather:2℃—17℃ no rain [82.6] 06:18

Major earthwork day. The rather imposing Hynds waste management system multi-chambered tank went into the ground; the stormwater and sewage lines were laid and council-inspected, and the electricity mains trench was dug from the homestead garage up to the cottage.

Oak Avenue Weather:2℃—17℃ no rain [83.4] 06:18

No SwimGym today as we needed to be on deck for the drainlaying. It began at 7:30am. Basically Karola and I have spent most of the day keeping an eye on things and making sure that what was dug was what we expected. They are very fast; the stormwater and sewer lines are dug and the pipes laid. Tomorrow the big pit for the waste management tank is to be dug and the system installed. Also the mains electricity trench is to be dug and the cables laid. Looks like all the earthworks will be complete and trenches backfilled in three days.

Interesting technique I’d not heard of before, the use of “bubble up” chambers in long drainage pipe runs where there isn’t much fall. Basically a long run is cut into sections, each with quite a steep fall. At the junctions of these sections a sump lets in water from the inflow pipe low down and begins a new section with an outlet near to top.

This may be a trick that the Romans used for their aquaduct when they created a 50 kilometer long one from Uzes via the Pont du Gard to Nimes with a fall of only 15 metres.

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The Nimes aqueduct is one of the best preserved and best researched ones in the Roman world. In the period 1984 – 1990 detailed studies were made on the aqueduct from its source in Uzes via the famous Pont du Gard into the upper regions of the city of Nimes. The results of the research were published by Guilherm Fabre, Jean-Luc Fiches, Philippe Leveau and Jean-Louis Paillet. This interdisciplinary team paid attention to all relevant archaeological, geo-morphological and hydrological aspects of the aqueduct. Most other publications have their focus on the Pont du Gard, while only some also pay attention to the unique and well-preserved castellum divisorium (distribution basin) in uptown Nimes, the source and the castellum in Uzes and the tunnels along the downstream section.
The source
The nearest source of high-quality water for Nimes was a spring called Source de l’Eure in Uzes, located near UCETIA (now Uzes), which drains a 45-50 km2 catchment area. A direct route over 20 km to Nimes would have required a tunnel of 8 km. A detour to the west was nearly impossible because of hills. The only alternative was a detour to the east, partly along the rivers l’Alzon and Le Gardon which nearly 50 km long (see also photograph). The aqueduct channel, of which 90% was subterranean, was typical 1,2 m wide and 1,8 m high. The overall fall was only 15 m from the source to the castellum divisorium (distribution basin) in uptown Nimes which gives the aqueduct one of the flattest gradients among the Romans aqueduct. The maximum capacity was 35.000 m3/day but because of leakage, illegal taps and encrusation the capacity at the end of its life was 10.000 m3/day.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Karola also admired her plane tree that she moved as a two-metre high sapling to guard the old sealed borehole in the Front paddock. It has bud-broken and bright green leaves are in abundance. Karola put a new tree guard round it with a windshield netting round the base to discourage rabbits.

Oak Avenue Weather:3℃—20℃ no rain [82.9] 06:18

Karola and I loaded up some of her well seasoned elm baulks onto the trailer so that we can take them to Tony Page’s workshop and see if he would make kitchen benches out of it.

The interior door frames have arrived for the five doorways which are to have relocated existing doors. In fact the frames came back with the old doors installed and they look very nice.

Alan Copas rang around 4:00pm to say his team are coming tomorrow to begin the drainlaying. He said it was a courtesy call as if I had no say in the matter. I called him back and said it depended on whether it was convenient for our builder (later I checked and it is). Also I pointed out that as I hadn’t seen and agreed to the revised quote from his electrician they could not assume they had the job of digging the electric mains trench. Not much respect here but his guys are quite different, pleasant and helpful.

Re the electrical work, David Hay has convinced me that it’s preferable to have an external meter box on the cottage where the heavy aluminium three-phase mains cable terminates instead of the slim profile internal distribution box. He also pointed out that I didn’t need the expensive extra sub-mains board in the garage but a simple ordinary 2.5mm twin plus earth cable could easily power the lights and power sockets. David expects to send me a revised quote based on this and including the simple mains bypass of the homestead old junction box on the east verandah.

Matthew is building the support for the frames holding the three large sheets of glass enclosing the sun porch.

Sheep are banished to the Front paddock until the digging is completed.

Oak Avenue Weather:3℃—19℃ no rain [82.9] 06:18

SwimGym but half an hour later, or earlier, depending on how you look at it. Gym was almost empty; swimming pool likewise. Not sure why.

I spoke with David Hall of Copas re their quote for Phase I of the electrical work; it’s not clear he was quoting for all that I’d asked for so a revised quote is due.

Much of the day fiddling with the Sketchup plan to get the placement of apppliances and benches where Karola prefers them.

Karola put up electric fence round the lawn and let her ewes and lambs on for the afternoon.

Edward Longshanks, The Nibbler

Riding School For Grandchildren At Christmas

Karola said to Anna and Bridget …

Hi guys, I have just visited a riding school about five minutes away. Lovely ponies and very friendly instructor. Are you interested in going riding this Christmas?

Oak Avenue Weather:0℃—16℃ no rain [83.0] 06:18

Bit of a cold, cloudy day with some showers. Karola moved the ewes off the driveway and took down the electric fence in preparation for another working week on the cottage. She also made space in the store room for the new appliances, safely under lock and key until the cottage itself is secure. I helped Bridget with a bit of programming and paid the bills and continued with my Sketchup model of the cottage (in 2D).

Clocks “sprang forward” last night so for a while it’s getting up in the dark again.

Oak Avenue Weather:4℃—19℃ 1.4mm rain [82.9] 05:48

After breakfast we drove off to Palmerston North, from sunshine into rain, and over the Manawatu Gorge Saddle Road as the gorge road itself is closed indefinitely due to continuing large slips. We had lunch snacks on the way and easily found Kitchen Things where we were outnumbered by the staff, being the only customers there on a Saturday afternoon before the evening big All Blacks match against the Wallabies on Auckland’s Eden Park. Afterwards we went to Burleigh and spent the afternoon with Harry, Chloe, daughters Laura and Tessa, and Tessa’s husband Pete, and Tessa’s baby, Ashleigh. We set off homewards about 5:30pm and arrived ten minutes before kick-off at 8:15pm. A fairly exhausting day of driving for Karola.

Harry’s Clan – Burleigh, September 2011

Bright Green Spring Foliage Of An Oak Near The Canary Island Pine

Lambs Anyone?

Claret Ash, Usually The First To Break Leaf At Karamu

One of my favourite trees, along with the big Lime tree and the English Beech.

Oak Avenue Weather:8℃—21℃ no rain [82.3] 05:48

SwimGym and, later, another lovely lunch at Taste in Hastings. In the afternoon Karola visited a horse-riding establishment to see if it’d be suitable for the grandsons and granddaughters when Anna and her boys come out at Christmas.

The Villeroy&Boch loos arrived this afternoon.

Paul finished the initial refurbishment of the six existing double-hung 6/6 sash windows that are being reused. The next step is to have them puttied/primed/painted by the painter, Brett Newton. Paul has repaired where the frames were rotten and, to our delight, it’s only taken a week.

Meanwhile Matthew has pretty much finished the kwila decking on the kitchen verandah.

The quote for Phase I of the electrical work arrived as promised and it looks significantly cheaper than the Best-Forsyth one. I need to talk to David Hall and just make sure I understand the response fully. Based on discussions with Peter Judd, the Peak Plumbing and Gas electrician, we’re having three phase wiring out to the cottage and the heat pump will operate on three-phase to spread the high loads applied when the compressor switches in.

I am continuing to document the white goods: model, supplier, installation, and dimensions. The dimensions then allow me to draw up the fixtures for the bathroom, kitchen, and laundry.

In preparation for the ewes and lambs grazing the main drive over the weekend I slowly drove them all into the Goose paddock. I also checked that the ewes and thirteen lambs over at the neighbours were still in good nick and had water.

Oak Avenue Weather:8℃—17℃ no rain [83.2] 05:48

Bit of a shame but #915’s twin lambs both died in the night – just too small or their mum too inexperienced I guess. I buried them both by the old wooden gate into the Front paddock.

Day spent at computer working on cottage stuff. This included ringing Copas re the drainlaying, Copas re the quote for Phase I of the electrical, Best-Forsyth re Phase I of the electrical, Tony Page re the stairs, and talking to Nick Curry re the showers. Nick came over in the morning and spoke to Karola and Paul, checking that the showers we’re ordering would fit and work as we positioned them. Tony Page sans beard (which threw us) came over and measured up for the stairs. Matthew has just about finished the kitchen verandah decking. Paul is continuing mending the old existing double-hung 6/6 sash windows.

Margaret Barker, owner of Larnach Castle in Dunedin and leader of the New Zealand branch of the IDS (International Dendrologist Society) came with Diane and Peter of Touchwood Books for lunch.

Gill TXTed a couple of times as she and Ben travelled back from up north.

Bridget tussled with her PHP web programming while I watched (screen sharing) or tried to make helpful suggestions.

Oak Avenue Weather:2℃—16℃ no rain [82.8] 05:48

SwimGym. Rest of day taken up with cottage things; shopping for white goods; talking to Paul; inspecting the kwila decking as it goes on. Shopping list will be sent to Cottage Journal in next day or so.

Karola found that ewe #915 had, to our surprise, delivered small twins. That leaves only one “dry” ewe who could still, I suppose, surprise us though she’s on the edge of 150 days since the ram went to market. The other late arrival, ewe #673’s little bundle of delight is well.

Oak Avenue Weather:1℃—15℃ no rain [82.7] 05:48

Cold but not a frost; rain overnight and occasional showers and a cold wind. Did computer chores like doing the bills online and updating the sheep / lamb records.

In the morning we went into Stortford Lodge for my monthly blood test and Karola picked up prescription for me.

Late afternoon we took Mary to Napier Airport and saw her off on the 16:00 to Wellington.

I’m still not getting on with what I should be doing, the schematics for the electrical wiring, plumbing, and security wiring plan. Chris of City Timber in Wellington rang to say the stair timber was on its way via Peter Baker Transport, consignment #9625346. It’s still in transit as I write.

The kwila planks have arrived for the verandah decking. The gutters are all up but the spouting comes later. The same company, Long Run Roofing, sell a gutter guard which is a strong fairly stiff plastic that clicks inside the gutter profile. It only costs around $18 a metre which is a fraction of the “top of the range” gutter guard we have on the homestead garage. Karola is undecided and will wait until we’ve been in the cottage for a while before revisiting this topic. Paul has taken out a couple of the existing double-hung 6/6 sash windows and, to our delight, has mended the one most in need of repair himself. One corner of the lower sash has rotted away.

Oak Avenue Weather:4℃—13℃ 0.8mm rain [82.8] 05:48

SwimGym etc. Then I spent the morning struggling with Applescript and Apple Mail software before finally convincing myself what I wanted to do was just not possible – well not without weeks of work.

The cottage front door was missing its doorstep and Paul has taken the (redundant) old, battered cottage back doorstep and cleaned it up, glued it firmly into a single piece, and fitted it to the front door. It looks right. Also, the roofers sent a man to add on the gutters and spouting; it’ll take him two or three days I guess. In the evening Karola and I finished our current round on the cottage lighting and power point plan. We have specified 38 lights and 86 power points which seems rather a lot for a small cottage.

Meticulous Maids arrived around noon for their monthly cleaning.

Karola and I put the 10 hoggets into the trailer and took them down to the works for 2:00pm as requested. A sad event, but necessary.

Oak Avenue Weather:7℃—17℃ 12.2mm rain [82.3] 05:48

Sunny morning; Gill and Ben left after a late breakfast. Karola and I did a final couple of hours mulching Casurina clippings but nothing much else outside today. I continued with my computing stuff.

Oak Avenue Weather:2℃—15℃ no rain [83.0] 05:48

Saturday. Late start. Lunch at Pernels Fruit World. Karola did some mulching up in the orchard – the stuff the orchardist declined to do – about half of it done now.

I spent the time on computer regressing into a deep pool of questions needing answers. The first thing I want to do needs an answer. The answer to that needs another answer on a different but related topic – and on and on. I think I have “bottomed out” for now and will begin climbing back out of the pool. It’s all to do with setting up the next generation of our web journals.

Before I spend more happy hours indulging myself creating the next generation of my web logs I thought I’d just reflect for a moment on what, if anything, I hoped to achieve. I’ve started with the latest version of WordPress and a WordPress “theme” called Weaver that caught my fancy because of the name and the colours of their default “skin” and it will take compelling reasons for me to change now, but I am not satisified with the standard “blog” function alone, hence a bit of a “mull over” before I go further. Initial experiment is at https://brackenbury.nz

I’ve chosen some major divisions of information which have withstood the test of time (4 weeks 🙂 ) to give me something real to assess and critique.

There will be more on this.

Incidentally Ben put me onto a talk by Sir Paul Callaghan that he gave to a packed audience in the Wellington Town Hall last week. A shorter form of the same speech is on YouTube:

Henere Ormond and his Badminton Champion Son Scott

Henere and his son dropped by to show Karola some family photos.

Jack Hargreaves I presume? No, It’s Our Ben Bell

Oak Avenue Weather:2℃—17℃ no rain [83.0] 05:48

SwimGym and breakfast as usual.

Les’ sketch for the upstairs ceiling discussed with Les then Paul and:

• Les’ sketch ideas largely adopted – in particular the two shallow boards from side to side of the flat ceiling intersecting with the two posts
• Paul’s twin beams above the ceiling connecting the posts to the rafters on either side
• Original plans calling for the posts to extend all the way up until they intersected with the rafters near the apex
• The trapdoor idea so that if access were needed to the ceiling void no more destruction of the ceiling would be necessary

By the time they left for the weekend Paul and Matthew had made the hole in the ceiling and put up the two poles.

Re painting: Les advised Brendan that we had decided to ask Brett Newton to do the exterior painting and had not decided on what, let alone who, should decorate the interior.  I called Brett and asked him to liaise with Paul while he painted the exterior. Paul needs the external windows and doors and frames primed before they are put in, and the frames, doors, and windows need to be put in before the exterior is painted. Oh and the stairs need to go in before the dining room window opposite the stairwell is fitted.

I left message for Chris at City Timbers asking how getting the stair timber to Hastings was coming on.

I talked to Steve of Best-Forsyth and David of Copas to make sure they had all the information they needed from me.

Then I rang Hurford Parker, Insurance Brokers, to chek that we were properly insured for the cottage. Spoke to our new rep, Dean Sewell, and he confirmed we were covered properly under a “contract works” insurance until 28 Dec 2011. This insurance expires when the builder signs a “practical completion” document and hands it to us. If this date extends beyond 28th December we must tell Dean so he can arrange extension cover. Currently we are insured for all the usual things, including theft of newly installed electrical wiring (such as happened more than once to villa development in Otane that Paul worked on recently).

Call from Progressive Meats that Karola’s ten ewe hoggets were welcome at 2:00pm on Monday. Karola put the hoggets in the Orchard paddock for the weekend. The rest of the sheep, except for the ewes and lambs in the paddock next door, have the run of the Middle, Front, Island, and One-Acre paddocks

Bumped into Alan Ladbrooke when taking the mulcher back to the big shed and let him know Karola needed to talk re the relaying of water use to the council weekly. Also that we needed a bit more space in our shed so could he move the Hydralada from the front of our bay when he had a moment, and now we have had the Casuarina hedge trimmed would he like to ask his son Adam to mulch up the trimmings where the hedge extends into the orchard. Turns out that Casuarina trimmings do not mulch well in orchard mulchers as, unlike fruit tree prunings, Casuarina is very supple and stringy, so we’ll have to clear the trimmings ourselves.

All of us went into town for a special lunch at the Taste restaurant; it was crowded but food still very good. Quiet afternoon, light supper, All Blacks vs Japan – polite game and Japanese team tried very very hard.

Oak Avenue Weather:8℃—17℃ no rain [82.9] 05:48

A Lie-in till 9:30am after breakfast at 6:10am and then the fun began.

Today there was a discussion about the ceiling supports for the upstairs room in the cottage expanded.

Yesterday Paul suggested large 150mm x 40mm beams across the ceiling to support the posts at the head of the stairs, posts to support the ceiling. Then we ended up agreeing to have those beams be above the ceiling and hence invisible.

This morning Les agreed to the beams but only in addition to his plan which has the posts extend upwards until the intersect the rafters near the apex. I thought he meant the invisible version but later events make me unsure of this.

Later Karola and I met with Paul in the upstairs cottage room. I assumed that any beams or post extensions would be done above the ceiling and invisible to us but that this meant breaching the ceiling in order to do that. I outlined four options I wanted to discuss:

Karola was against the GIB option; I agreed because I suspected that having the narrow flat part of the ceiling be of different material to the main sloping sides of the ceiling would make the room feel narrower.

We looked where the existing T&G boards were joined and I concluded that the boards needing to be cut did not have enough joins near where access is needed to be practical.

The trapdoor option looked possible: three existing T&G boards would need to be cut in the middle of the ceiling where it was intersected by the two posts. These three boards would have a border of say 30mm wide, 12mm deep boards with mitred corners that dropped into a similar frame attached to the ceiling. Actual dimensions would need to be set by someone with more experience and sense of the effect than I have, but something lightweight.

We agreed to go with the trapdoor option. That means there’d be no large beams visible below the ceiling but there would be beams and struts above the ceiling; all we would see is a three-board-wide and 900 mm long manhole/trapdoor next to, but not encroaching on, the two posts. The holes for the two posts could pass through holes made to fit and adjoining the manhole.

In the evening Les sent me an e-mail with a modified form of the trapdoor solution that we will need to mull over and discuss further.

Another discussion arose with Paul concerning the stairs; we concluded that while enough wood has been purchased for a stair rising 2.515m in 3.0m:

Late afternoon I sent Copas the information so that they could quote on Phase I of the electrical work.

In the morning I helped Karola with some sheep work. First we drafted out ewes and lambs from the Front paddock, leaving behind the ewes that have not lambed (and may not lamb) #673, #912, #915, and ewes with lambs #403 and #704. The others went into the neighbour’s paddock so that their children could enjoy them.

Then Karola, having worked until nearly 2:00am this morning on her sheep genealogy, chose her six ewe hoggets to keep leaving 10 to be sold.

The hoggets she chose to keep were: #003, #007, #009, #019, #040, #043. I then applied the big tags to these six. Up until now they only had the button tags which meant we could distinguish them in the yards but not out in the paddock. Now they have one large and one medium numbered yellow tag, just like the rest of the ewes.

All went well except for #007, the daughter of one of our flighty Texel ewes, who I didn’t hold quite right and she jerked her head and tore out the tag. We applied antibiotic and tried, successfully to put in tag #005 which belongs to one of the hoggets being sold. This year, unlike others, makes choice of tags more difficult because 6 looks like 9, there being no leading digits to ensure you read it the right way up. So we chose tag 5 as being the most different from all the others and now the documentation will have to reflect this change – that #005 was born as #007 and the real #005 was sold.

Brimar Hedge Trimmers had come last night and told me they could trim the Casurina hedge today. Unfortunately next door’s orchard drive, which runs along the boundary, has just been repaired with a lot of expensive gravel and it wouldn’t stand up to being buckraked to remove any significant hedge debris. So, cutting our hedge as I’d wanted, shortening the main trunk by a few inches, wasn’t possible. They couldn’t cut from our side as this would throw the debris mainly on the neighbours new gravel track; they couldn’t cut so much from the Scott’s side because major debris would injure our mountain flax and kanuka trees under the Casurina. So the compromise was to cut from the Scott’s side but only take off the shoots from last year.

Karola reminded me after lunch that Brimar had come and the hedge was trimmed. If you don’t pick up the trimmings very soon after they’tre cut, the grass grows through them and they are the devil to pick up so we called Mark and Karola went and got him and we mulched from 3:00pm to 6:00pm and finished the lot. Karola then took Mark home to Napier.

Gill and Ben and Mary arrived around 5:30pm and we had a delicious fish pie dinner prepared by Karola.

The Cottage in Context

Oak Avenue Weather:3℃—20℃ no rain [82.8] 05:48

SwimGym and breakfast of course plus lengthy debates about the effect that Daylight Saving will have on our SwimGym schedule.

Then Karola went on with her tree moving and planting and watering work, and feeding Edward Longshanks of course.

Bret Newton’s painting quote came in today so I was able to discuss Bret Newton’s and Brendon Smith’s quotes with Paul; we will be able to decide who should do the exterior cottage painting quite soon.

Les the architect and I discussed by phone the quotes and some ideas we have for the bathroom to allow us to fit in two medium-sized basins. Les advises against dropping the shower size from one metre square to 900mm square, particularly as this is the main shower being used most days. He thinks a 700mm gap for the loo will be OK, not too tight because, although one side will be solid wall the other is the glass wall of the shower. In that case we can extend the apparent size of the “borrow” from the dining room and make it seem 1.25 metres wide rather than 1.o metres; that gives us a piece of wall long enough for the two basins. I am rather pleased with this bit of apparently lateral thinking where, by making the real area of the bathroom smaller we enable it to hold more. The “fake” extension of the borrow will be a set of shallow cupboards and shelves holding bathroom perquisites accessible from the bathroom.

Paul then discussed how the two posts replacing the upstairs room dividers would support the upstairs ceiling. Paul wants the tops of these posts to be anchored to substantial short beams across the ceiling that are themselves joined to rafters for strength and rigidity. These beams are probably 150mm x 50mm and less than two metres long. Easiest to fit would be to fix them to the underside of the ceiling as there would be no need to get into the small ceiling cavity to do that but I think having a couple of 150mm x 50mm beams visible across the middle of the ceiling would be unattractive, not to say ugly. Also, although the ceiling at that point is about 2.4 metres high, a beam projecting down by six inches would visually divide the room up and close it in. The compromise is for Paul to make a temporary manhole up into the ceiling cavity and lay the beams across the top of the ceiling, invisible to us.

As Paul left for the night he dropped in a quote for the internal plumbing from Gareth of Wells Ltd. As requested this quote left out the drain-laying which I have asked Copas Plumbing and Electrical Ltd to do in combination with the septic tank. His quote was still comparatively high.

Mid afternoon Karola took me shopping for an extra oil-filled electric room heater and food.

Off and on during the day I got a chance to work with Bridget on her Web-based project or Geoff Robinson on his personal website about his and Edwina’s travels in Russia. My own web journals languish pretty much but at least I am getting daily entries done.

Last but not at all least, thanks to Geoff Robinson who kindly recorded and sent me a DVD of three very well made TV programs on Russian art. We both look forward to viewing these although it may be a while before we’re on top of the current flurry of coinciding events. Geoff also sent a news cutting about the Rugby World Cup and New Zealand, describing New Zealand’s large number of gangs like The Mongrel Mob and Black Power and Hells Angels. These began in New Zealand just as I was leaving school and from time to time the gang activities have clashed with ordinary people but most of the time we live our lives and they live theirs – mostly they harm each other. We live a couple of kilometers from Flaxmere, home to a large Mongrel Mob fraternity and a smaller rival Black Power gang branch. (branch, pack, section, division …?). Our Baldrickian plan is to keep in good with the Mongrel Mob and with the local Exclusive Brethren who own orchards along and live at the end of Oak Avenue. We hope that between these two groups we might have a measure of protection from the bad guys but probably our good fortune so far owes more to us not being particularly conspicuous; this is less true with the moved and renovated cottage. We like the Exclusive Brethren families we’ve met and several of the boys have helped here on the smallholding. The Mongrel Mob have dropped by to ask for firewood occasionally and have been grateful and polite. We do have an awful lot of firewood and no place to burn it so no problem there. They seem always to be wanting to make a hangi for some female older relation who has a birthday coming up.

Oak Avenue Weather:__℃—__℃ no rain [82.1] 05:48

Last night and early this morning I think we made progress on the layout of the bathroom, kitchen, and laundry.

Later I rang Brimar Hedge Trimmers and asked them to trim our Casurina 6 metre high hedge on the boundary with the Scott’s to the south so that our wireless Airnet telephone and Internet access is not interfered with.  It turned out that they had not done our hedge this winter because the farm track on the Scott’s side was unusable. However, tons of gravel has been poured onto it in last few days and Brimar’s machine is just down the road at the Harrington’s so they may be able to come and do our hedge later this week.

Chris from City Timbers in Wellington rang to say he’d located the Eucalypt saligna I wanted. The stair strings comprise 250mm x 50mm rather than 150mm x 40mm and no 200mm x 25mm could be found for the risers but instead 100mm x 25mm was located. Checking with Tony Page at Cedarville, that’s OK.

I rang Copas Plumbing & Electrical and offered them the drain-laying part of the plumbing work, getting quite a hard sell from Allan Copas that:

I checked with builder Paul and there is no difficulty in separating drain-laying and plumbing, in having different contractors, it’s provided for on the council forms.

Mark arrived as planned and Karola had him dig out a couple of trees, saplings only a couple of years old but already almost 2 metres tall. Mark also created holes to receive them, one, a Plane tree, next to an old sealed-off well, the other a young Liriodendron alongside Bicka’s grave in the lee of the Canary Island Pine.

Mark and I then assembled the portable yards and proceeded to dock the remaining 17 lambs, being led a merry dance by some of the more contrary ewes and their frisky offspring. Meanwhile Bruce Richardson (HB Mobile Shearing) arrived, set up, and the shore Karola’s 16 ewe hoggets. Bruce advised us that none of them had their “two-tooth” teeth so, for one week or maybe two, our 16 ladies would all be classed as lambs.

Afterwards Karola and I disassembled the yards. Mark then helped me put the “fadge” of lamb’s wool in the homestead garage and then bolt the stock crate onto the large trailer, in preparation for taking ten of the 16 to the works in the next few days.

Then Paul of Arrow Autoelectrix arrived, as expected, and we discussed the security needs of the cottage. He will get back to us on a way to combine the monitoring of the homestead with the monitoring of the Cottage and costings for the sensors and wiring needed in the cottage.

After the chat with the security alarm person today Karola made sure to alarm the homestead when we took Mark home to Napier and had a “fish and chip” meal out. We got home around 7:10pm and, forgetting that she’d alarmed it, Karola opened the garage door and drove in. The alarm went off, as it should, and I, within a couple of minutes, turned off the alarm. I expected the usual follow-up call from ArmourGuard in Christchurch just checking that we were OK, No call. Imagine my surprise when a burly young security guard rang the doorbell at 7:55pm. Apparently we’d pushed two buttons together on the remote keypad, triggering what they term a “Panic Call”. Heaven help us if we were ever really in trouble – 45 minutes to answer a “panic call”.

Oak Avenue Weather:3℃—15℃ 1.4mm rain [82.5] 05:48

SwimGym on the warmest early morning for weeks. We paid our half-yearly dues by cheque which certainly made Jonathan the owner very pleased. Maybe he finds it hard to winkle out almost $1000 a year each from his pensioners, especially the well-heeled ones.

Took Karola into town for doctor’s appointment and yet another heart pill subscription, then on to claim for her lost spectacles and get fitted for new ones. Karola is such a mix of ideas, she is pretty luke warm on computers (to put it mildly) but, without any encouragement I’m aware of, has decided on an induction hob for her new cottage cooktop and she wears transition glasses.

I thought there was a mistake in the calculations for the wood needed for our stairs. Builder Paul agreed so I called Joiner Tony and we discussed it, corrected the numbers, and he gave me some wood size options in case larger timbers were available. Later I called Chris of City Timbers in Wellington and read him the timber materials list (see the Cottage Journal for details). He will ring me back after seeing what Eucalypt saligna he can locate.

Call from “Kitchen Things” in Palmerston North, our cooktop, oven, and dish washer are ready to be picked up. Manawatu Gorge road closed for another week due major slip so I said most likely we will come over and pick up on 22nd September.

Called Paul in Arrow Autoelectrix of Taradale – they installed our alarm system a decade ago – movement sensors, smoke detectors, heat sensors linked to an ArmourGuard monitoring system 24×7 when activated.

Spent the rest of the morning on the electrical specifications for the cottage, part 1 (see the Cottage journal). Called Grayson Allen of Peak Plumbing and got the name and number of his electrician: Peter Judd, 027-448-3025. Apparently the heat exchanger has some particular electrical requirements that affect the installation of the mains supply.

Bridget Geenty (BG), kitchen planner, went out to lunch with Karola and for a couple of hours they discussed …. kitchens. Karola is getting more certain about her ideas and BG is patient and tries to help but her graphics program is, IMHO, rubbish, and the drawings tend to put one off rather than encourage.

Ross came round from Best-Forsyth and we went through the Phase I specification for electricity supply to the cottage. I agreed to send them the cable lengths by getting them off the site plan (Google Sketchup) which I hope they round up as it’d be rather a nuisance if the underground cable was a centimetre or two too short. Saved Ross actually measuring anything.

Bridget is getting enthusiastic again about her programming and I helped (I hope it helped) for a while in the afternoon with trying to understand some developer tools for PHP, the web language she uses.

Unexpected Massive Hailstorm in Wellington

While Hawkes Bay basked in the sun, Wellington had a major electrical storm and a hailstorm.  Allegedly hailstones as large as golf balls rained down on Karori and parts of Wadestown. Photos courtesy of daughter Bridget.

This is the road outside Bridget’s place in Station Road

Showing the size of the hailstones

The decking outside Bridget’s front door

Burma Road in Khandallah

Oak Avenue Weather:7℃—20℃ 1.6mm rain [83.5] 05:48

Cold, grey Sunday. We decided not to dock the late lambs today and see if it warmed up a bit later in the week.

I spent the day working on my web journal technology, WordPress with the Postie plug-in. Karola did lots of cleaning here and in the cottage. Preparation for our guests later in the week.

Having watched All-Blacks versus Tonga rugby match on Friday evening – and the quite amazing spectacular opening event beforehand – and the UK versus Argentina on Saturday night we’ll give rugby a break for a few days. Oh, and glimpses of Federer not beating the world champion at the Tennis US Open and Sarina Williams being absolutely ruthlessly bonnie as she crushed all opposition. I do think New Zealand put on a terrific opening ceremony for the Rugby World Cup – made one think of China’s Olympic Games. Very strong Maori theme and that added lots of colour and atmosphere.

Oak Avenue Weather:6℃—15℃ no rain [82.9] 05:48

Finally the backup of my computer onto the replacement Time Capsule is complete. It’s taken over 24 hours. So, back to almost normal although with lambing and the cottage and now mary, Ben and Gill coming on Thursday for a long weekend, and Margaret Barker of Larnach Castle in Dunedin, the “big wheel” (Jam and Jerusalem) of the NZ branch of the International Dendrologists coming to Hawkes Bay on 18th, and Karola’s nephew UK policeman Tobin Joint visiting as part of his Rugby World Cup trip, and our potential trip to Wellington to pick up Eucalypt Saligna to be made into the stairs, and the new oven, cooktop and dishwasher to be fetched from Palmerston North, it’s quite busy for the next week or two and the Web Journals are suffering.

The stairs are suddenly urgent because they are assembled off site and we can’t put one of the new windows in before threading the stairs through the opening – well I certainly hope the opening is big enough. Eucalypt Saligna is a sustainably forested hardwood, also known as Red Eucalypt or Sydney Blue Gum, which is grown in the Waikato and, obviously, in Australia. It is allegedly very hard to mill and to dry but OK to work with after that and is a light-coloured hard-wearing timber good for stairs. Our friends Geoff and Felicity Rashbrooke have their front stairs made of it so we know what to expect.

For Dave Mitchell, “who’s red and fast up a tree?” answer: <http://treetools.co.nz/_blog/Treetools_Blog/post/James_Kilpatrick_Masters_climb_on_YouTube/>

I’ll edit these entries to avoid repetition later – idea is that the Family journal will cover more topics but avoid any in-depth stuff leaving that to the Cottage and Smallholding journals.

Today, what of today:

With tractor moved a small number of large pieces of oak from beneath the Big Oak, results of its pruning and rebalancing earlier this week, to the wood dump by the 121 entrance.

At Karola’s suggestion I set a fire on an old oak stump near the Big Oak – the wind was gentle and away from the Big Oak – to see if that would avoid the need for an expensive stump grinding service.

Prepared the portable yards ready for docking of the remaining 17 lambs this week.

Hastings is the hottest place in New Zealand again today, max 21℃.

Oak Avenue Weather:4℃—21℃ no rain [83.3] 05:48

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Oak Avenue Weather:__℃—__℃ no rain [?]

… to be continued

Oak Avenue Weather:5℃—21℃ no rain [82.8] 05:48

Kirsty Faulkner and her partner Bruce Utting called in for morning tea on their way to Gisborne.

Bret Newton, painter, who painted the outside and much of the inside of the homestead and the outside of the cottage many years ago, having returned from his holiday in Europe, came and sized up the painting job for the cottage. He’ll give us a quote in a few days time.

I buried a pig’s head and three possum carcases Karola retrieved from the Avenue; these are not the most unpleasant things people have dumped there.

Jenny and Noel Hendery came for afternoon tea and we talked endlessly (I imagine) about the cottage. Their very old dog Jess was put down last week and they don’t plan on a replacement.

In the evening Karola attended a meeting in Twyford School of some of the local orchardists and horticulturists who are protesting against the most recent rules and regulations concerning the measuring and reporting of water usage and the allocation of water rights.

Mary and I talked through another computer problem, this time with the automatic pre-filling of name and password fields when logging in to a Web site. Unless its explained, one imagines the row of black dots in the password field, in front of the typing cursor, are supposed to be there. But if you just type your password after the black dots you are in effect adding characters to what the computer thinks is the current password which, once you know, is obviously not going to work.

Oak Avenue Weather:2℃—20℃ no rain [82.8] 05:48

SwimGym then breakfast and after that we went into town for (unusually) synchronised haircuts at the Cut Above salon. Then on to Best Forsyth the electricians to take them through phase 1 of the cottage electrical plan and encourage them to show a bit more enthusiasm, then a little more shopping and back home. More discussions with builder Paul.

Julian from Airnet dropped by to check the line of sight for our anticipated new Airnet wireless transceiver for Broadband and Telephony. Lunch then, later, Jeff from ProDoors arrived and we discussed the internal doors and door frames needed for the cottage. Later I called Tony Page of Cedarville Joinery and arranged for us to visit his joinery on Friday to discuss his potential engagement to make the cottage stairs.

Karola and I checked the lambs and ewes in the Front paddock – no new lambs, still three ewes to lamb. Another hind-leg limper – could it be arthritis I wonder – I’ve already seen one rather runty little lamb with a gammy hind leg in the Middle paddock. Yesterday I thought I saw a lamb limping on a front leg but I couldn’t see it today.

Oak Avenue Weather:3℃—16℃ 0.1mm rain [83.3] 05:48

Most of the day spent on multiple aspects of the cottage refurbishment which I discussed with builder Paul and then in a meeting with architect Les.

Oak Avenue Weather:2℃—21℃; no rain [82.9] 05:48

SwimGym and breakfast, then Mark arrived. He began digging the next large pit for future dead sheep while I took the trailer load of metal scrap to the scrap merchants. It turned out that the scrap metal merchant is now Andrew who used to own The Stables across the world. Karola spent the time discussing the cottage windows with joiner “PJ” from Steads.

Late morning Mark and I set up the portable yards (that we bought on TradeMe many months ago) up near the Scotts boundary and the peaches. There’s a fence there that makes a natural funnel and we set up the yards off to one side of the narrowest part of the funnel. Then Karola, Mark, and I drafted out two or three ewes at a time with their lambs and herded them up the funnel and into the yards. The aim being to try to keep lambs with their mothers so we could tag them accurately. By 3:00pm we’d tagged and docked 38 lambs. We found two cases of misclassification of the sex of a lamb and in one case we misread the ewe’s rag so two families of twin lambs have the wrong tags.

Oak Avenue Weather:1℃—16℃; no rain [83.4] 05:48

I finished Karola’s GST in the morning after a careful wander round the sheep. All present and correct in the Front paddock; I managed to read the tags of all but one ewe in the Middle paddock despite their propensity to make off at a brisk trot, lambs in tow, as I sidled up to them. Only three more potential mums. Ewe #906 has a new ram lamb #157.

In the afternoon Karola and I finished loading the big trailer with scrap metal, cutting some pipes etc to length with my vicious electric reciprocating saw. Makes quite a din.

Later, I did two loads of mulch and finished putting mulch on all the new Ngaios, in fact on the whole 60 metre strip containing the new ones and Ngaios from the last four years of planting. Frost has reduced the earlier Ngaio plantings to about half so we’re making one last push to get this year’s trees past the frost tender stage – hence the frost protection, the leaky pipe for the dry months, and the mulch for conserving moisture and suppressing weeds.

Oak Avenue Weather:1℃—16℃; no rain [83.3] 05:48

After a late start I stayed inside in the morning, despite the beautiful weather, grappling with Karola’s GST for June/July, now overdue. Karola did get me outside to cut up a couple of long bits of metal guttering as she loaded up the big trailer with metal rubbish to take to the Scrap metal Merchant on Monday, using a deadly electric reciprocating metal saw. Karola also dismantled the rusty old iron railings she’d been using round the lemon tree in the front paddock and they’re going for scrap too. Two years running in winter we’ve had the lemon tree stripped by unknown assailants who’d have to cross a big ditch and barbed-wire fence to get to it from the road.

Lunch – soup and salad – in the homestead sunporch.

Mid afternoon Colin and Maggie Nagel, old friends of Karola’s family originally farming in Bulls and now retired to Taradale, in their 80s, came to afternoon tea – by surprise, as is their wont. They spoke of old times when they stayed at the homestead and endured the floors being sanded and exterior painted.

Colin and Maggie Nagel Snapped with Karola at Karamu

Late afternoon I did another load of mulch, another ten metres of Ngaios mulched against the dry summer ahead. Late afternoon and well into the evening Karola burned wood and plant rubbish from around the big oak in a rusty old metal drum.

Small Trailer Load of Mulch

Karola went round the sheep in the morning, I went round in the afternoon. Ewe #911 (no-tag) produced two tiny and very well licked charming lambs. Only five more potential mother ewes.

Oak Avenue Weather:1℃—17℃; no rain [82.9] 05:48am

SwimGym then breakfast, as usual on a Friday. work inside on cottage things until lunchtime. Then we went to Taste restaurant and had our frequent Friday treat – lamb shanks for me, fish for Karola then off home so Karola can feed her lamb.

I put another trailer-load of mulch on the Ngaios, another ten metres covered. On my way I went past the ewe hog gets grazing in the neighbour’s paddock and noticed what looked suspiciously like a dead one lying sideways on the ground. I stopped; it shook its head. Clearly something was amiss, it seemed too flat on the ground. I climbed the fence and strode over and all was revealed. The hogged had got stuck in a large rabbit hole, on its back, and had obviously been there for most of the day. I hauled it out and it lurched around, falling over now and then. After about ten minutes however it seemed to have recovered itself and ran off to the rest of the hog gets who were watching this whole exercise with much interest.

I noted that Jim Cornes 50 or so lambs grazing on the acre or so of neighbour’s fallow ground, having had their two weeks on that patch, had gone, thought Jim’s electric fence is still there.

Oak Avenue Weather:-2℃—13℃; no rain [83.2] 06:00am

Quiet day, mainly working on e-mails and documents about the cottage.  I did get outside briefly to put a small trailer-load of mulch on the Ngaios. I covered 10 metres and have 50 metres to go.

Oak Avenue Weather:0°C—19°C; no rain [83.5] 05:48