Monthly Archives: February 2015

Cliff Hanger Cricket

This morning I picked the rest of the damsons, another 5 – 6 kg, and trimmed the tree so it is easier to manage next year – no climbing up ladders. As we are all “damsons out” we offered them to Charlotte to give to Hohepa, where she works. They said they’d love to have them to make jam so later Karola, Bramble and I went over to Clive and dropped them off.


The rest of the morning I spent with the chain saw, chopping up wind falls into firewood and mulchable branches. It got very hot so I stopped after doing the wind falls under the big swamp cyprus, himalayan cedar, and zelkova. There are more branches to process fallen from one of the larger oaks down near the Scott’s boundary.


Karola raked up acorns in front of the homestead garage, there’s always a large crop falling there, and fed them to her sheep. Karola also took the recycling to the transfer station off Omahu road. Later, while watching the grudge cricket match between Australia and New Zealand she baked a cake, full of sugar so not for me. Karola also washed Bramble. Last night I picked grass seeds out of her coat and must have taken out 20 or more, none actually doing any harm though.




Karola’s Quince Trees Laden With Quince – Nearly Ready To Pick






Gill’s Brand New Polo – Bit Of A Wind Blowing




Oak Avenue Weather:9℃—24℃ 0.1mm rain [82.4]

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Input For The Tax Accountant Finished At Last

SwimGym

Then it was “hunt the missing 2012-2013 tax package” in the homestead, the office, the store room, and in the cottage, all to no avail.

Mid morning Pam Morrison, the accountant, sent me online copies of 2012-2013 returns and I was able to fill in almost all the blanks from that.

After a couple of unrewarding hours searching for the missing package I bashed out the rest of the tax input and we rushed into town to hand it in and have lunch – in my case a gluten-free pan-fried tarakihi with mashed potato and salad – buy some hardware and get the weekly gluten-free bread. While at Cornucopia, the organics shop, I also got a just-ripe avocado for Karola and a cob each of sweet corn for supper, both grown organically. The hardware comprised 15 metres of garden hose plus adapters and a gun nozzle. I plan to use this as a permanent hose for the sheep yards.

I helped Karola take down the electric fence along the 121 driveway then took a pallet piled high with offcuts from the weatherboard cladding the cottage along the road, up the 145 drive, and into the big shed. Pieces fell off several times as the tractor ride was rather bumpy.

Later I connected up the mulcher to the tractor, giving the mulcher a mini-service, an oil & grease, and opening it up to ensure the internal bolts were still tight and the blades not in need of sharpening. I then mulched a small pile Karola had prepared behind the homestead garage.

Meanwhile Karola spent the afternoon putting up multiple electric fences carving up the Middle paddock into three.

Later I picked another 10kg of damsons from Gill’s tree – and there are still more to pick – I’m guessing probably 40kg in all from a small tree.

Bridget rang late afternoon to say they’d bought the house they were looking at, 34A Izard Road in Khandallah, for over $1,000,000. This just after their successful sale of Bridget’s small house in Brooklyn earlier this week. Very exciting. Izard Road is a very good address and 34A is tucked in behind other houses down a hedged drive from the roadway, private and safe. Bridget says it’s basically very sound and with the room sizes and positions as she and Chris wanted, but it is in need of lots of non-structural refurbishment. In other words it’s in a shabby condition and needs, and will get, lots of TLC.

In the photo below the annotation was done within the email program – a new capability provided by Yosemite’s Apple Mail program.

A Pukeko Was Nesting In The Taupata Hedge – The One Almost Killed By Frost Last Winter

The Third 10kg Bucket Of Damsons Alongside Belladonna Lily (Amaryllis belladonna)

Oak Avenue Weather:9℃—24℃ no rain [83.7]

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Almost Autumn Already

Working on preparing the tax stuff to go to the accountants in next day or so. Very frustrating, especially the Australian investments because they report on a financial year that begins in July, not April like us.

Karola put electric fence along the 121 driveway and let her sheep graze there today.

Oak Avenue Weather:10℃—19℃ 0.5mm rain [84.3]

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Last Barbecue For Graduate Women?

SwimGym

Then just a day of crouching over computers grappling slowly with the almost-overdue tax returns – well, getting all the documentation printed up and assembled for the accountants. One extra annoyance was that, in upgrading to the latest (although hardly new) operating system, Yosemite, my spreadsheets all need updating. This is done without fuss for spreadsheets created or updated in the last 8 years but older ones need earlier versions of the spreadsheet program to first upgrade them a few notches. Including the copies on backups I have 428 spreadsheets at present, obviously many are duplicates, and many of them need the update treatment. Twenty or so need two levels of updating, first from their pre-2007 state to one current in 2011, then from 2007 to 2014. This boring task is not terribly satisfying.

Karola let her ewes in one more time under the big oak and then tidied up all that electric fence.

Later Karola went out for a barbecue wit the Hawkes Bay chapter of the New Zealand Federation of Graduate Women. Due to increasing age and dwindling enthusiasm it seems likely that the group will fold shortly.

Bridget sold her small 3-bedroom house in Brooklyn, Wellington today for about what she’d hoped. This clears the way for Chris and Bridget to go after 34A Izard Road in Khandallah (see below).

34A Izard Road

Oak Avenue Weather:15℃—24℃ no rain [84.0]

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The Website Takes Shape

There had been some rain in the night so Bramble got rather a wet undercarriage during our morning walk.

I spent the day struggling with creation of the website for Mary – amazing how much you forget in a few months and how much the software platforms move on.

Karola’s ewes were let under the big oak after she put up an electric fence.

Karola went out in the afternoon visiting friends.

Oak Avenue Weather:13℃—22℃ no rain [83.2]

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More Cricket

SwimGym under a threatening sky. Cloudburst just as we finished but it didn’t last long. Karola did 40 lengths today, one kilometre, up from her usual 30.

I started work on the web site for Mary’s funeral today but it’s mid evening and I’m still trying to tidy up the existing site before I begin the creation of the add-in site, alongside the other Brackenbury web journals.

Karola watched cricket all afternoon and evening. Henare dropped in with some windfall peaches just before dinner.

Oak Avenue Weather:16℃—22℃ 1.9mm rain [83.1]

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Bits and Bobs – After All It’s Sunday

Messy sort of day; pretty warm outside. Nice cool start and a heavy dew.


The normal Sunday chores took me most of the day. We did reply to the letters and cards of condolence for Mary’s death. And I chose the readings I plan to give at Amy’s wedding in March.


Bree – the young woman fronting for a team of wood cutters – the ones who came a few days ago and sawed up the fallen beech tree limb – came and talked to Karola for a long time this afternoon, attempting to get Karola to give them more tree work.


Driza-Bone



Oak Avenue Weather:17℃—25℃ 10.3mm rain [83.3]

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Karola’s Busy Day

I again spent most of the day at computer. But Karola was very busy outside. She put up electric fence for the sheep enclosing the old goose paddock and moved them there from the Front paddock. Karola took down the electric fence from round the lawn. She picked up windfall sticks from around the lawn and the homestead. And Karola also moved all the spare weatherboard from the homestead east verandah up to the big shed in the orchard, a major project.


In the early evening I picked a few plums and over half of the damsons, about 20kg of them. I took about 4kg to Charlotte & Peter in Havelock North. In return Charlotte gave me some more runner beans and some more scallopini and a rose flower for Karola. I picked two 10 kilo buckets of damsons and estimate there’s another bucket to go.


Damsons Ready To Pick





Twenty Kilos Of Damsons



Oak Avenue Weather:11℃—29℃ no rain [82.7]

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Didn’t They Do Well (Cricket)

SwimGym – a little late because the car battery was dead – a door left ajar overnight. We took the Landrover.

After breakfast we suddenly decided that we’d go and buy some pea straw for the sheep. An insurance against a mini drought over the next few weeks. We bought 20 bales and, because we had to drive past Scott’s fruit and berry farm on the way, Karola bought raspberries for supper.

Later I went into town for the weekend shopping.

After lunch Karola settled down to watch the England-New Zealand cricket match on TV. The game was in Wellington in superb summer weather. The game reminded me of a match I saw in Auckland many years ago when Viv Richards for the Windies hit the New Zealand out of the arena all over the place, but today it was Brendon McCullum doing the hitting for New Zealand.

In the long break half-way through the match we drove over to Napier where Karola’s friend Rowena had some huge chunks of wild pork her family had sent down from the Mahia yesterday.

I heard later that Gill and Ben went out to buy a car today; Ben negotiated a keen price that includes trading in Gill’s old car. It’s a red VW Polo and Gill expects delivery in a couple of weeks.

The One Without The Hole In The Middle

Oak Avenue Weather:10℃—25℃ no rain [82.9]

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Much Sighing And Squinting

Cool start to the day so Bramble and I enjoyed our after-breakfast walk, although she did get a wet tummy from the heavy dew.

Sheep on part of the lawn during the day; they’ve pretty much finished there as well as the Front paddock and One Acre.

Karola went out visiting friends after her mid-morning hair cut.

I spent the entire day mucking about with the software upgrade to Yosemite. I expected it would take a while to reload the applications and set things up but it is still pretty tedious. Hence the sighing and squinting.

The paddock best door that was in long ryegrass had been cut a few days ago and today it was baled – regular sized bales.

Alex now has her lower arm in plaster – signed of course

Oak Avenue Weather:12℃—27℃ no rain [82.8]

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It’s Getting Pretty Dry

SwimGym

Karola went shopping mid morning.

I toiled with Yosemite upgrade to my ageing Macbook Pro.

Karola’s replacement hand bag arrived today. Karola’s old one has come to the end of its life, the zips don’t work and so on. The choice of designs were mostly very angular and bright; this was the only one with pastel colours and some friendly pattern.

Oak Avenue Weather:9℃—22℃ no rain [82.8]

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Yosemite Installed, Eventually

The latest version of the Apple Mac operating system, Yosemite, installed very gradually overnight. I spent all day today, and expect to spend several more days, rebuilding the system to include all the things I used to have, minus the rubbish that accumulated over the years.

Karola cleaned and swept and washed but mainly kept inside out of the sun. She also bottled the peaches Henare brought round yesterday and some plums I picked off our old plum tree.

Telephone conversations with Gill and with Holly the lawyer concerning Mary’s estate. Gill and I are trustees.

It was a warm, muggy day. We had lunch at Bay Expresso and Karola cooked a very pleasant leg of lamb roast this evening.

Oak Avenue Weather:9℃—22℃ no rain [82.8]

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Bottled Black Doris

SwimGym

Karola and I reviewed the emails sent and received concerning our roundup of 2014 including several newsy and interesting replies.

I began the installation of Yosemite, the latest version of the Mac operating system software.

Bridget called to say Alex had fractured her wrist at school. At first it was thought to be a bad sprain but tomorrow the hospital called Bridget to say upon reexamination of the x-ray, it was fractured. Earlier Alex caught a little trout which Bridget then cooked so they could each have a taste at dinner time.

I mowed the cottage lawn, under the washing line, and the homestead garage lawn. Karola swept up volumes of acorns from in front of the homestead garage and fed them to her sheep.

Karola bottled endless Black Doris plums which will be very welcome in the depths of winter.

Oak Avenue Weather:14℃—19℃ no rain [82.7]

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Sous Chef, Moi?

Smell of rain but no actual rain. Watered the 5 Swamp Cyprus saplings and the vegetable garden. Karola has set the leaky pipe irrigation going for the bay trees round the cottage garden railings.

Sunday chores and then I spent the day reading up about how to install the latest version of the Mac operating system, OSX. It was available last October and I haven’t caught up yet.

Promoted briefly to Sous Chef as I chopped vegetables for tonight’s pork stir fry.

Gill & Ben – August 2014 – Karamu Cottage Garden

Oak Avenue Weather:8℃—20℃ no rain [82.7]

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Peaceful, Restful Day

Breakfast and I took Bramble for a quick walk round the orchard, as I try to do each day that isn’t a SwimGym day.

Restful day, no flights, no visitors, so I settled down and finished sending out the 2014 Christmas letters – a total of 83 sent over many weeks.

Henare came round for a cup of coffee and to give us more peach windfalls.

Oak Avenue Weather:13℃—20℃ no rain [82.4]

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Norma & Claire Leave For Auckland

SwimGym

After breakfast we took Norma and Claire round the smallholding and orchard. I then went off for my scheduled doctor’s appointment and Karola took the visitors to the airport.

A quiet afternoon while we regroup and tidy up.

Claire Cherrington In Holiday Mood

Claire And Mother Norma In Town Having Morning Tea (A Couple Of Days Ago)

Oak Avenue Weather:14℃—23℃ no rain [83.0]

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Mary’s Funeral

Up at 5:30am and on a plane to Wellington by 7:00am.

We took a taxi from Wellington Airport to Aro Street and had breakfast at the AroCafe, moving across the road to Haya, another cafe, for morning tea with Bridget. Bridget came over after seeing the grand-daughters safely into Marsden School in Karori.

At 10:15 we went a few doors down to the funeral director’s premises for the service. I guess there were over 50 people there and the service went extremely well; many of our friends came in support whether or not they knew Mary personally.

Afterwards there was a reception with light refreshments and much discussion. Bridget then took us to the Sky depot in Tennyson Street where we returned Mary’s set top box, then out to Oriental Bay for lunch and on to the airport in time for our flight back to Napier.

The flight and drive home was thankfully uneventful and we found Norma and Claire and Bramble all out enjoying a warm, sunny, but not too hot, afternoon.

Light Refreshments At The Tugboat Restaurant On Oriental Parade

Ian & Bridget

Karola & Bridget And The View

Oak Avenue Weather:11℃—21℃ 0.6mm rain [82.2]

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Mary’s Funeral – Creating The Speech

SwimGym

Karola ferried Norma and Claire to Napier where they had a day of sightseeing. Karola went and picked them up again late afternoon.

Meanwhile I, with Karola’s help, created the short ten minute tribute I plan to give at Mary’s funeral tomorrow.

Oak Avenue Weather:12℃—19℃ 0.2mm rain [82.7]

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Funeral Tribute Discussions

Rained overnight a little.

Discussions with Gill & Ben concerning the funeral on Thursday.

Late morning we all went over to Clive and had a 30 minute walk, with Bramble, along the limestone walkway atop the stop bank down the estuary and along the wetlands edge.

Then we went to Clifton hoping for lunch but it is closed on Mondays and Tuesdays. So we retreated to Clear View which is a lot more swish, being a real winery restaurant. Lovely lunch.

Home for more discussions and then a fish pie supper. Henare & Scott dropped in for a chat.

Norma & Claire Cherrington, Bramble, Karola

Oak Avenue Weather:10℃—20℃ no rain [82.8]

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Hot Summers Day

SwimGym

Karola, Norma & Claire went to the beach at Waimarama then to Havelock North for lunch and shopping and afternoon tea.

Meanwhile I spent the morning quietly uncovering more information about Mary’s early life from notes she left me and others she left Gill. Gill & Ben have selected 40+ photos from some they had and the 60 I sent overnight. Yesterday evening Karola and I went through our 17,000 digital photos and found 280 that included Mary. From these Karola chose 60 which were candidates for a digital screen show at Mary’s funeral on Thursday. In the early hours of the morning I sent these in emails through to Ben.

Meticulous Maids came and cleaned the cottage early afternoon. After that I joined the others in Havelock North and we went up to the lookout on Te Mata Peak before returning to Karamu to rest.

A couple of hours later we went out to Ahuriri to the Thai restaurant for dinner.

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

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Norma & Claire’s Second Day

A busy morning compressing the usual day’s chores on a Sunday into the morning.

Then it was off to The Mission for lunch with Norma, Claire, and Peter & Charlotte. Out on the lawn, under a sunshade, a delightful setting and good food.

Karola’s sheep have breeched the electric fence once again so it was probaby a mistake to bring #328 back into the main flock. No harm done but there is a good chance others will take #328’s lead and that would be a nuisance.

Oak Avenue Weather:12℃—26℃ no rain [82.2]

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Mary Brackenbury Passed Away Last Night

My mother died at 3:00am this morning after a long illness aged 90.

The funeral will be in Wellington next Thursday. Karola & I will fly down for it.

On a more cheerful note, we picked up Norma Cherrington and her daughter Claire from Napier airport just after 2:00pm this afternoon. They are staying with us for a week having spent a week in Christchurch and planning on a week in Auckland when they leave here.

In the morning I completed the piping for water troughs around the damson tree. Henare came as planned to mow most of the homestead lawn so that it looks less unruly for the Cherrington’s visit and he did also dig a short trench for the piping across a gateway.

Pipe From The Underground Main Along The Bottom Of The Ha-Ha

A Tap And Pipe Continuing Towards The Damson Tree


Trough Connector 1

Tap Next To The Damson Tree

Trough Connector 2

Oak Avenue Weather:8℃—22℃ no rain [81.8]

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Waitangi Day

SwimGym

Karola put up electric fence for a couple of swathes of the Front paddock and let her sheep into the first one. She combined the sheep from the Long Acre: #415R, #003, #040, #043 with the rest.

Later we continued installing the pipes for the water troughs around the Damson tree. A trench holds the pipe as it crosses each gateway. Karola also cleared the lawn of electric fence and several small branches that came down on the lawn in recent high winds, ready for the lawn to be mown now the sheep have taken their fill.

Henare called round with some fresh peaches and he may return tomorrow to help with the lawn mowing. He left us to go to the park for Waitangi day celebrations.

Oak Avenue Weather:6℃—17℃ no rain [81.4]

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Piping Permanence

Breakfast, then a walk with Bramble. Later a haircut in Hastings. And bang, there’s the morning gone.

After lunch Karola and I began making the piping for the troughs around the three-gates (One Acre, Totara, Front paddock intersection) permanent. We stopped for a while because the wind was a gale, relentless, and besides I had to go into Mitre-10 and get more saddles & screws for fastening the alkathene. The permanent piping is fastened to the base of the ha-ha and is buried across gateways and where it joins to the main water reticulation.

Oak Avenue Weather:12℃—25℃ no rain [81.7]

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Film And Meal With Charlotte & Peter

SwimGym

Mild start to another hot day.

Sheep on lawn again.

I topped the One Acre as Karola requested and the holding paddock so there’s only the Long Acre which hasn’t been tidied up this way.

Karola shopped and collected the chainsaw which has been fixed and serviced.

In the evening we went out with Peter & Charlotte to the film “The Imitation Game” at Cinema Gold in Havelock North. Quite a lot of poetic license I think and somewhat depressing but not a bad film. Afterwards we had a pleasant indian meal just across the road from the cinema.

Oak Avenue Weather:15℃—27℃ no rain [82.2]

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Charlotte Comes To Pick Fruit

Turned into a pretty hot day so plans for doing stuff outside were postponed.

Charlotte Jackman arrived as planned around 2:00pm and picked damsons and plums with Karola, and had afternoon tea.

Sheep still spending time on the lawn. Yesterday Karola deconstructed all the electric fence in the One Acre – it took until dusk. Soon I will top that paddock and again we will hope for rain.

Oak Avenue Weather:14℃—30℃ no rain [82.1]

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A Day of eMailing

SwimGym

A hot muggy day with occasional heavy showers.

I went into Stortford Lodge late morning for my quarterly blood test and to pick up some fruit and veges from Pernel World on Pakowhai road.

Otherwise we were both inside all day, except for allowing the sheep onto the lawn for short periods, writing emails or reading.

Oak Avenue Weather:19℃—27℃ no rain [81.7]

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Pleasant Sunday – A Bit Overcast

Time for the sheep to move on so I put up electric fence on the main lawn. First however we yarded up the sheep and Karola tidied up #116 and a couple of lambs – nothing new or needing treatment but old dags are best not visible.

We also trimmed the weeping willows in the Long Acre next to the Scott’s boundary – because they are overhanging the neighbour (the neighbour has cut them back once already) and because willow leaves are good for the sheep.

I mowed the cottage and homestead garage lawns.

Otherwise it was chores on Sunday as usual.

Bramble Who’d Love To Be A Sheep Dog

Another Corgi, Lucy Alexander, In Winter In Maine (The January Big Storm)

Oak Avenue Weather:18℃—24℃ 2.2mm rain [81.9]

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