Monthly Archives: January 2013

Cool morning and hot afternoon.
Henare came at 8:30am and continued with the gravelling project. I fetched another load of gravel – and after lunch another one. Maybe two or three more loads needed and with luck we’ll do them tomorrow.

The tractor was still thickly covered in dust from my foolhardy (health-wise) mowing of the goose paddock making a dust storm as I did it. Still, the paddock does look nice – very park-like as intended. I hosed down the tractor and added another 10 litres of diesel before using it to move some of the earth Henare had dug up – to let the gravel-filled trailer up close to the area needing the gravel.

Karola did more bottling and writing things up. I did the shopping and had my quarterly blood test.

Oak Avenue Weather:11℃—26℃ no rain [?]

SwimGym

Henare came about 8:00am and worked until 3:00pm; he finished almost all the ground preparation for the vegetable garden area.

I at last finished the remaining section of edging round a 6-metre Bay tree hedge-to-be – the only piece left to plant along the cottage railings.

Karola continued with her bottling fruit. She also rang and ordered another four raised bed kitsets for the vegetable garden from Waipukurau – we need six.

Kirsty and Bruce dropped in – we were expecting them on 3rd but they came back from Gisborne a few days early it seems. We had afternoon tea with them and Henare.

The vegetable garden ready for laying gravel

Oak Avenue Weather:11℃—24℃ no rain [82.1]

Henare came at 8:30am – back from dropping Scott off in Hamilton with an Auntie and Uncle where he’s going to board while attending 6th form at a school in Hamilton. No fruit picking today so we set Henare off on our next project – making the gravel base for the six vegetable garden raised beds. The topsoil has to be removed before we put on the gravel and Henare did about half of that today – the area is about 40 square metres between the cottage garage and the pump shed. I got one load of gravel and we used most of that to support the wooden plank edging between the gravelled area and the lawn.

Matt Saunders and his two daughters and their dog came over today – making sure we’d found Bramble after the alert last week when we couldn’t find her. Bramble had a good romp with their dog, Oscar.

The photo shows our Damson tree fruiting well, I assume they’ll be ripe in a week or so. Our venerable plum tree is having a better year and has started providing ripe plums. Karola has been out shopping for fruit and at present, unsurprisingly, there’s heaps and heaps of fresh fruit in Hawkes Bay.

Oak Avenue Weather:11℃—23℃ no rain [82.5]

SwimGym

Karola and Annemarie went into Hastings to look at some art. For lunch we went to the Clifton Cafe at Te Awanga and from there took Annemarie to her bus in Hastings for the return trip to Wellington.

Karola let her sheep graze the orchard drive for a couple of hours late afternoon.

Oak Avenue Weather:9℃—23℃ no rain [82.6]

A relaxed start to the day. We went to Black Barn for lunch, joined by Peter and Charlotte Offenberger. A relaxed end to the day included watching an episode of Lewis together.

Oak Avenue Weather:9℃—23℃ no rain [82.0]

After a good meal last night at Taste we slept in.

Karola and Annemarie went out to Napier, sightseeing and shopping. Karola bought a small sheep figurine from Statements – the art gallery in Napier Karola particularly likes and which is changing ownership shortly.

I did a little on the bed for the last six Bay trees making up the cottage hedge inside the railings. And I took Bramble for an extra walk and cut a few thistles.

This evening we had a superb venison roast meal and watched a Christmas film I’d recorded on Sky – with a large number of familiar British film actors in it.

Oak Avenue Weather:12℃—22℃ no rain [82.1]

SwimGym. Big alarm when we got back because Bramble had disappeared. After searching around the cottage and homestead without success Karola called neighbours and left messages that Bramble was missing. Then we searched more widely and about 30 minutes later Karola met up with a muddy and excited Bramble up in the orchard, playing in the mud caused by the orchard sprinklers. Bramble also had several grass stems of sticky seeds firmly stuck into her coat.

I took off most of my clothes and took Bramble into the cottage laundry shower along with a dog comb. With less fuss than you might imagine she was clean and seed-free. I of course was pretty wet by the end of it, nevertheless.

Later Karola groomed her and because she hadn’t been groomed for a while Karola got lots and lots of loose fur off. So now Bramble is clean and groomed and, after our walk round the orchard just now, exercised.

Overcast day and warm but not too hot. In the morning I went in to Hastings and collected the bread plus some venison for tomorrow night etc. while Karola made super-human efforts to clean the cottage before Annemarie comes tonight.

Later I mowed the cottage lawn which, because it was watered as a byproduct of watering the Bay Trees last week, is very green. Lawn must be about the most ridiculous unsustainable form of gardening there is. You pay for special seed, you spend precious water irrigating it when water is scarcest, you use time and “oil” to cut back the luxuriant growth caused by the irrigation, and the lawn clippings are too concentrated to make decent compost. Still, it’s an even bigger travesty in Florida.

Annemarie is due by bus at around 7:00pm. Karola has booked a table for us at Taste, the restaurant we like in Hastings adjacent to Cornucopia, the organic food shop.

Oak Avenue Weather:10℃—20℃ no rain [82.1]

I continued mowing the Goose paddock to make the first paddock you see when coming into Karamu as ark-like as possible. It took a couple of hours and was pretty strenuous and particularly dusty and noisy. I wore my usual crash helmet with ear muffs but the dust got everywhere. Afterwards, after a shower and breather, I hosed down the two sides of the cottage most affected by the dust.

I slept most of the rest of the day.

Henare and Scott dropped by – he’d hidden some pears for us by the front gate this morning which I happened upon when I went to get the mail. Scott is off to Hamilton to begin in a new school with even better badminton training facilities nearby.

Karola bought two mosquito netting curtains for the laundry and laundry loo windows and we put up a simple rail for each.

TXTed Anna as it’s her birthday – Anna the “Director of Trade Marks” at Olswang.

For our amusement on Anna’s birthday a tiny piece of cinema verite – I had just mown the goose paddock with much noise and vibration and enormous amounts of dust. Unscripted and unintentional footage.

Hot & Bothered

SwimGym

Afterwards I did a quick shopping blitz. Bought new summer shorts as all three pairs have “gone” at the hem. Oh, goodness me, they look just like the old ones.

Karola readies the house for her visitor, Annemarie More, on Friday – which means me freeing up Karola’s half of the cottage attic as a small temporary bedroom. Karola put up coat hooks on the back of the laundry loo door so that Annemarie has somewhere to hang her clothes while showering.

After dinner I started to mow the goose paddock – makes it look very “park-like” – until darkness stopped play.

Bridget, who went out to the Days Bay flat this morning, sent a photo showing that a couple of the trees on the Reserve behind us – nuisance exotic trees, very tall, very brittle – have been cut down by the council, as advocated by Karola to them last time we were down.

Days Bay Flat – Felled Nuisance Trees On Reserve Behind

Oak Avenue Weather:13℃—27℃ no rain [82.8]

Late start. Karola was out earlier and went off shopping. The sprinkler has had two days on the little lawn outside the homestead garage after being mown and it’s showing signs of greening up nicely. Karola moved the sprinkler onto some of her Karamu shrubs under the oaks.

I took the Landrover and trailer to Goldpine and bought some edging timber (25mm x 100mm or 1″ x 4″ treated H4). I asked for 7 x 6-metre lengths and when I got home realised I’d been given 4.8m lengths instead. It’s these sort of mistakes due to my daydreaming that Karola can prevent if she comes along too. Not a problem this time as I have probably 3 planks too few but can use what I’ve bought. It’s to replace the edging on the final piece of the bay tree planting are which got baked so hard in the sun that it warped and the edging curved up out of the ground. Next time I’ll use much longer pegs as well as tamping down the soil along the edging.

On Sunday one of the hoses off the goose paddock tap broke loose; yesterday I fixed that and turned the tap on again – it feeds a sheep trough and the leaky pipe along the flax lining the driveway up to the cottage. This morning the hose leading to the leaky pipe had come off – a different break but causing large puddles overnight. I fixed that and so far today there’s been no problem.

Just as the day was warming up I chopped a small number of thistles in the Totara paddock and happened to go near Karola’s old concrete water trough. The connection had come adrift. I heated up the farming kettle and went out and fixed that leak – it seems to be the day for leaks. Unfortunately it seems that I left the little gate into the planting area open – the gate to the tap controlling water to the concrete trough. A couple of hours later the sheep set up a huge commotion and, when I went to investigate, they’d found their way into the planting area and were having a wonderful time. Luckily they seemed to know they were in forbidden land and it wasn’t hard to get them back out, but not soon enough to avoid Karola seeing this error. At Karola’s request I put all the sheep (bar the ram) into the Island paddock for the day.

Meanwhile I had relaid the leaky pipe along the Taupata hedge stretching from the cottage across to the ha-ha.

Karola and Bramble put the sheep in the yards and Karola counted and inspected them. Bramble, ever the stock dog, scrambled up and over the highest side of the yards – well over a metre high. I don’t know how she does it.

Oak Avenue Weather:14℃—25℃ no rain [83.3]

SwimGym

Karola let ewes on the homestead lawn. I did Karola’s GST (like VAT), a week late, tsk, tsk.

We moved the ram from the Orchard paddock to the Goose paddock, slowly and without incident though I did wonder whether the ram was herding Karola (and Bramble) or the other way round for a while. He’s quite feisty.

This photo was sent in by Anna showing her garden in Ealing yesterday. Quite a contrast.

Oak Avenue Weather:14℃—25℃ no rain [82.8]

Slow start to the sunny day. Mowed the cottage lawn and the homestead garage lawn before it got too hot – it was hot anyway. Karola put up electric fence and then put her sheep in under the big oak.

Early afternoon we, Karola, Bramble and I, went to see the final of the polo at the Hastings polo grounds. I gathered from the commentary over the loud speakers that it was boisterous, exciting play but most of it was so far away across the field it was rather indistinct as to what was happening.

Mick Ormond, one of the Arthur, Ast, Mick sons of Wal Ormond, recognised Karola and came over with three grandsons in tow.

The sheep got two hours before we went to the polo and another hour or so once we returned. They made short shrift of the grass under the big oak.

Polo Action

Sheep Under The Big Oak

Oak Avenue Weather:13℃—25℃ no rain [82.0]

Sunny Saturday with a cool start. I went shopping again – to get the things I missed yesterday – and got some grass seed for the patches on the cottage lawn. I’d tried with some of Karola’s ancient grass seed – some old “bush mix” from years ago – but non of it germinated so I’ll try again.

Karola put sheep on the 121 driveway for a couple of hours. She also went to the Polo again but without me or Bramble this time. Her hometown team, Rangitikei, won this time, having lost the two previous games.

Trivial, but I finished our Shopping Check List for this year – groceries etc. Anna’s penchant for making lists is catching. And I’m still fine tuning our email system.

Karola is still spending much of the evening watching the Australian Open on TV.

Oak Avenue Weather:12℃—23℃ no rain [82.7]

SwimGym

Cold day – 12 degrees instead of 20 degrees as we went off to SwimGym this morning. Showers brought some much needed rain although forecasts are for a dry Hawkes bay for the next 6 – 8 weeks.

I pottered and, in the afternoon, shopped. On the way home I, as arranged, dropped in on Laurie and Enid McDermott and he gave us some silver beet fresh from his garden. He said that the beans were not producing this year because there were hardly any honey bees to pollinate them.

Old family friends of Karola’s, Jeff Nichols and his wife, dropped in on their way to Gisborne from Bulls and chatted with Karola and looked round the homestead. Jeff and family used to live at Burleigh as Karola’s mum’s (Cynthia’s) tenants and ran the farm. This was before harry left University and set up there to farm and invent.

Henare and Scott also dropped by at the same time and we chatted for a while.

Oak Avenue Weather:4℃—20℃ 6.3mm rain [82.8]

Good day began with Karola and I fixing a leaking hose going to her concrete “heritage” water trough and then fixing two of the little gates that let into the planting area up by the big shed.

Karola also took down her miles of electric fence from the Front paddock as she plans her next lot of fencing.

“Tricky Trees” came wit a surplus load of mulch they thought we would like – we had them put it with the pile of Casurina mulch, that being our freshest pile.

My eMail settings are driving me mad.

In the afternoon Karola took Bramble and me to see some polo. There were a few brief showers but on the whole it was pretty relaxing and laid back. Karola enjoyed it. Bramble enjoyed lying in the back of the Subaru with her two pack members sitting either side of her.

Oak Avenue Weather:6℃—24℃ 1.8mm rain [82.5]

SwimGym

Karola went off to watch polo with Bramble late morning – they both had a wonderful time.

I pottered in the cottage garden.

A slightly cooler summer day with a good dash of rain last night – though most traces were gone by this afternoon.

Henare dropped by in the afternoon with a crayfish for Karola. He and Scott came again early evening; they asked me to scan Scott’s school report and email it to a prospective new school in Hamilton.

Karola and I enjoyed the first of a new series of Lewis on TV.

Oak Avenue Weather:12℃—25℃ 0.2mm rain [82.3]

Karola moved her sheep into the Totara paddock today; it’s greened up a tad and they were most pleased.

Francis and Sasha, Karola and I had brunch at the local Bay Espresso. I do not learn. A large greasy “big breakfast” may be gluten free but it isn’t a good idea = slows you down for the rest of the morning for sure. Francis and Sasha, who hails from Nelson, left before lunch.

Hanare and Scott turned up for a brief chat with Karola as we were finishing our evening meal.

There was a brief shower of rain but, sadly, it soon passed.

I had another good day on computer, working at the new web journal customisation.

Oak Avenue Weather:12℃—28℃ 4,5mm rain [82.1]

SwimGym – knee fine now. We overslept by 30 mins but otherwise, apart from being seasonably warm, a good start to the week.

Karola continues with her rearranging of the garages. I continue with my web journal development – the added journal is called “Pipplings”. Don’t know if I’ll actually start it or not yet – just trying to get the software customised and running.

Francis Wierzbicki (Karola’s nephew) and his friend Sasha deBris, a novellist, came for dinner and are spending the night. They’re on holiday around the North Island.

Oak Avenue Weather:19℃—30℃ no rain [81.8]

Hot again. Karola put sheep out on the orchard drive again with good results. We moved ram #106 from the Island paddock to the Orchard paddock in preparation for giving the rest of the sheep a couple of days in the Island paddock and Goose paddock – all part of Karola’s rotational grazing plans.

I spent the day doing computer housekeeping.

Bramble retired to a cool place with a bit of a through-draught.

Oak Avenue Weather:20℃—33℃ 0.1mm rain [82.0]

Karola took recycling in to the depot.

Karola let her sheep onto the orchard drive and watched them there for a couple of hours.

She also laid out where she’d like the six raised garden beds to go, between the cottage garage and the pump shed.

Went to SkyFall at Cinema Gold in Havelock North. All good fun.

My knee is much improved.

Oak Avenue Weather:14℃—28℃ no rain [82.1]

SwimGym for Karola today but not for me – I temporarily have a bad knee – must have bumped it on a bit of the tractor or a trailer last week – they take a while to show up and gradually subside – just a nuisance,

Karola had visitors: Janet Scott from next door; Jennifer Hartley; Shane Hay.

Quite hot again – I stayed in except for a quick stroll with Bramble once it cooled down.

Karola spent the afternoon tending to her 100 or so Karamu shrubs under the oaks on the Avenue side of the drive – they are benefitting from weeding and watering.

Karola has also started work on our raised bed vegetable patch – laying out where the boxing and the pathways will be and spraying the ground to suppress weeds.

Oak Avenue Weather:12℃—29℃ no rain [82.6]

Another very hot day.

Hawkes Bay District Council rep Junior Tuakana < juniort@hdc.govt.nz> (06 871 5100 extn 5373) and summer student Lauren came to see Karola in the morning. After discussion they took photographs of the two main buildings here and their GPS coordinates.

Rowena came to see Karola and they went off and got fruit around lunch time.

After a fairly frenetic to-ing and fro-ing with friends concerning the NASA images of earth at night and the huge areas of Western Australia that were brightly lit I began work on yet another web journal to capture the conversations for posterity. What it needs is not so much a traditional web log but a set of topic-based conversations.

Karola has gone off to a local Forest & Bird chapter meeting tonight.

Oak Avenue Weather:18℃—33℃ no rain [82.9]

SwimGym

Then Jenny Hendery came for the morning, as planned, accompanied by one of her sons, Simon, and his three children, and jenny’s nephew Toby and his wife Marie. I went off for a haircut but was then inveigled into the hospitality.

A nice young ewe lamb, #252, died last night (suspected Pulpy Kidney) and in the afternoon I collected her on the tractor and buried her in our pre-prepared large sheep grave.

Oak Avenue Weather:18℃—30℃ no rain [82.5]

Another summer’s day. Apart from forays to move sprinkler and hose I was inside most of the time doing my long overdue housekeeping on my iPhone and iPad. Some of the programs were bought when I first started using an iPhone and, having lost the password beyond redemption I’ve also lost the ability to keep those programs up to date – so I repurchased or redownloaded for free those apps. Now all the programs (apps) should be registered under my current Apple ID. I’ve also simplified Karola’s iPad home pages of icons and solved the printing problem. Karola can now print on my old printers using the built-in print menus which are quite straight forward.

Karola moved her sheep and then spent much of the day out shopping and visiting.

Oak Avenue Weather:10℃—26℃ no rain [82.5]

SwimGym

Early evening Henare came round for a chat and to bring us a second-hand long-handled garden shears that he’d used to cut lots of the long grass round the western end of the homestead. He says it’s much better than bending over using normal shears.

Oak Avenue Weather:12℃—27℃ no rain [81.9]

Watered the to-be-planted Bay trees and the ones we’ve planted. Due largely to the couple of decent spells of rain while we were away the grass out of reach of sheep looks quite green.

Oak Avenue Weather:15℃—26℃ 7.8mm rain [82.0]