Monthly Archives: May 2015

Sunday chores including mowing the cottage and other small lawns.

Karola worked hard outside today despite the cool temperatures. She put electric fence round part of the main lawn and let her ewes in. Later she planted a tall (2½ metre) tall Chinese Pistachio tree.

Car battery was low so we went for a late afternoon drive to Bridge Pa and back.

Four pairs of German shoes – the Riekers all pointing north. My new ones top left, Karola’s new ones bottom right

Oak Avenue Weather:1℃—17℃ 0.1mm rain [82.7]

A hard frost this morning and despite the cloudless skies it was cold all morning,

Apart from a walk round the orchard with Bramble I hardly stirred all day – programming away. Karola went out with Bramble in the car for a while and took a couple of short walks but otherwise she too spent much of the day indoors.

Thats A Proper Frost

Oak Avenue Weather:0℃—14℃ no rain [82.4]

SwimGym

We were saddened today to hear that Cilla Heymer, who helped Mary a great deal over the years and especially the last two, has died after quite a long illness.

Clear sunny day. An Airnet (aka “Now”) man arrived around 9:00am and just changed the broken power supply to the little connector that injects power onto the ethernet cable which feeds the transceiver dish on the eastern end of the homestead garage. All OK after that.

I took Bramble for a long walk round the orchard. We saw a truck full of gravel using the orchard drives as a shortcut. The foundations of the Cope’s new house are gradually emerging from the ground – there seem to be just three builders on site.

Karola did the weekend shopping and also spent a lot of time on emails and the like.

Another lovely warm wood fire in the evening.

The Organic Orchard In Winter

Maybe Some Apples Next Season

Oak Avenue Weather:-3℃—14℃ 0.1mm rain [83.6]

Much milder today.

ChemWash man came and cleaned the outside of the homestead – almost finished but he has an hour or so more he’ll do in about a week.

Strung thin garden wires, two of them, across the north-facing entrance to the cottage sun porch. Welcome swallows are no longer welcome to make a mess roosting there.

Karola continued laying out her office – she’s looking forward to the many-years overdue filing of loose papers and boxes and files.

Internet connection failed mid afternoon so I’m using my cell phone as a local hot spot till its fixed. Airnet (aka “Now”) are expected tomorrow to locate and fix. All our local network devices are accessible – it’s just the gateway to the Internet that’s not working.

After The ChemWash – Sparkling Again

From A Different Angle

Swallows-Be-Gone, It Seems To Be Working

Oak Avenue Weather:-2℃—14℃ no rain [82.7]

SwimGym on a very cold morning, then I had dental appointment for a couple of $300+ fillings – mighty expensive and not even gold. Programming in the afternoon

Karola was busy much of the day in her office unwrapping the five new filing cabinets and generally continuing with outfitting.

Bridget rang to say they’d sold the old house and that was indeed a cause for celebration because they actually made over $100,000 on the deal – which will help with the long and thorough programme of refurbishment needed at the new house.

We’ve been watching subtitled “Borgen” (“Government” in Danish) on DVD – 3 episodes in – and it is very enjoyable. Made by the director who made the “nordic noir” The Killing. Lots more episodes and another couple of series to go. Ideal for these dark evenings by the fire.

Oak Avenue Weather:3℃—12℃ no rain [82.7]

Very cold start to the day – a serious frost. However the heating came on as expected and took the edge off it inside. Gave Bramble a stroll round the orchard mid morning while there was a patch of sun.

Karola took me to Taradale to a shoe shop there where she’d found some suitable new shoes and I ended up buying a new pair of Rieker shoes – to last me for the next decade or so.

Aaron came round and exchanged our ImmerSUN controller for one with a firmware upgrade which might prevent further occurrences of the problem we had a few days ago whereby the unit thought the hot water cylinder element was faulty.

Oak Avenue Weather:-1℃—13℃ 0.1mm rain [83.0]

SwimGym – very cold

Inside most of the day – me programming, Karola doing emails and the like.

I did pop down to Stortford Lodge to post some parcels and get some milk and the papers (for Karola). Karola went out before lunch with Bramble and wasn’t seen again till late afternoon.

ChemWash man came mid-day and spent about three hours washing the outside of the cottage.

Not Your Usual Mushroom – In Mulched Bay Tree Hedge Outside Cottage Bathroom Window

Oak Avenue Weather:-3℃—11℃ 0.1mm rain [83.0]

We packed up and got on our way before 11:00am – a good start.

I drove to Te Horo and we had lunch around noon at the Red House Cafe.

Karola drove on from there and we arrived home around 3:30pm having listened to more of the Anthony Price spy novel, “Sion Crossing”, a total of 12 hours of listening and we’ve less than an hour to go. This is the 14th Anthony Price novel we’ve listened to, there are only 5 more.

From The Top Of The Zig-Zag – On Bramble’s Morning Constitutional

Looking Down Into The Bush From The Top Of The Zig-Zag

Oak Avenue Weather:3℃—15℃ 5.6mm rain [?]

Listened to the radio for a while, including Kim Hill interviewing a woman who was an editor at the New Yorker for more than 30 years and was one of the keepers of the style. I learned of the Oxford Comma – something which I’ve wanted to use but never been quite sure about for a long, long time.

In the morning we went in to see Bridget and helped a little with bagging up lots of gardening waste. First we had early brunch at Dunlea’s Deli which is near tBridget’s old house in Station Road.

We went back to Days Bay – via Eastbourne where Karola did a bit of shopping – changed and then returned to Wellington for Annemarie More’s 80th celebration. We went to Charley Noble’s – a posh and expensive restaurant off Jervois Quay in the old Union Steamship building. The food was really very good but the prices astronomical. One could feed a family for a month and that’s before anyone has any wine. Shocking, but it wasn’t our shout so we just kept quiet and enjoyed it. Chris hosted it, Bridget and the girls, Barry (Chris’ uncle) & Di and another couple, John & Claire I think, made up the party – including Karola and me and Annemarie.

Cleaning Up At Izard Road

All This Must Go

A Significant Amount Of Fresh Firewood

And The Garden’s A Lot Bigger Than First We Thought

Oak Avenue Weather:4℃—11℃ 20.5mm rain [?]

The morning started out with the heating not working – and it was quite a brisk morning to boot. A display was flashing “Short Circuit – Check Your Heater” meaning the hot water cylinder.

So, the bottom element wasn’t working – and Karola said she’d seen the flashing last night but didn’t want to distract me so close to bed time – so there was no night-time boost either. And the hot water in the taps was tepid so I checked the top element and it seemed to have tripped its thermal override so heaven knows what was happening.

I consulted with our solar installer, Aaron who admitted there had been similar incidents recently and he said try turning it off and on. That seems to have cured it for now. This entailed some reading of instruction manuals so I now know more about how to set the timers and so on.

So, currently I have the top element on 24×7 even though it takes grid power. It will only turn off when the water is hot. The radiators come on at 5:30am for 4 hours. The bottom element is fed only when there’s sunshine to feed it except for the night time where, if the water is cold, the grid is allowed to boost the element between 2:00am and 7:00am. We’ll see how that goes.

In the afternoon Karola and I drenched all the ewe lambs and ewe #043 (Scanda – withholding for meat of 10 days) – Karola put up her portable yards in the One Acre to avoid steering the nubile ones past the ram.

Oak Avenue Weather:6℃—20℃ no rain [82.4]

SwimGym

Then we packed, quickly but methodically, and drove off towards Wellington, by way of Cornucopia organics shop in Hastings to pick up my bread.

We stopped in Waipukarau for a late brunch at “Latitude 40 South” – an excellent meal.

We got down to Days Bay around 5:30pm and settled ourselves in before going back to York Bay for dinner with Felicity & Geoff Rashbrooke – Maddy was there as well. A relaxed and companionable evening.

Oak Avenue Weather:1℃—14℃ no rain [?]

SwimGym then took the Subaru for a WOF at the nearby Bayswater workshop. We went to SwimGym in two vehicles and both rode home in the Landrover.

Later, walking Bramble round the orchard, I photographed the trench going from the site of the Cope’s new house next door across to our boundary and then back north to the electricity supply on McNab Road.

Just after lunch we went in and picked up the car then I got food from New World while Karola drove separately over to Tradable to see friends and carry out errands – which included buying a very posh pair of brand new Rieker shoes.

I did my life-long bad thing of, just as it was beginning to come together, rewriting the program to make it simpler and more elegant. I can go round and round like this for months – and I used to, to the frustration of anyone wanting me to do something actually useful. Hey ho.

Next Door – Electricity Trench Heading South Towards Us

Trench Turns West And Heads For McNab Road

The Cope’s New Culvert And Entrance Onto O’Kane’s Driveway And Thence Left To McNab Road

Oak Avenue Weather:0℃—15℃ 0.1mm rain [82.1]

Cold start and need to tinker a bit more with the combination of solar and grid electricity to get the best balance for keeping our hot water hot enough.

Karola is doing the things she needs to get done before we go to Wellington on Friday. I had a day of fairly uninterrupted programming and things started to go well by evening.

I took Bramble for a fast walk in the orchard and she rushed about and got herself quite exhausted.

Gill and Ben did a FaceTime session with me just now; it was good to see them both and Bramble had her moment of fame on the video but was profoundly unimpressed.

We went to Purnell’s for lunch and I had bacon and eggs, done very nicely, but there may have been some gluten on the chips. Afterwards we went to OfficeMax and bought five more steel filing cabinets – to make up for the ones I took from Karola’s office. They’ll come early next week we expect.

Willie Davis called to say things were a bit slow down in Days Bay because he and his wife have just had a new baby and there were complications.

Oak Avenue Weather:1℃—15℃ no rain [82.4]

SwimGym

A cold start but quite warm by mid day. Significant progress on the programming front. Karola spent the afternoon doing the final clearing from around the homestead in preparation for ChemWash coming and spray-cleaning the walls and roof.

Meticulous Maids came and cleaned in the cottage late afternoon.

Oak Avenue Weather:3℃—18℃ 0.1mm rain [82.6]

Cold, wintery day. Brisk walk with Bramble round the orchard.

After the chores we changed a couple of outside light bulbs – one on the cottage garage wall, one at the back door of the homestead.

I mowed the cottage lawn – just a mulching mow and I didn’t mow under the clothesline nor the homestead garage lawn today – they will keep.

Karola made lots of phone calls related to the Federation of Graduate Women, Hawkes Bay branch – which is a long way past its “best before” date. I think they plan to wind it up.

Karola also made progress on her article about Otekaieke, one of the places we visited in Oamaru on the IDS trip. I carried on programming, feeling I’m making good progress myself now.

Oak Avenue Weather:0℃—15℃ 0.1mm rain [82.4]

Programming all day except for a spell with Karola putting up shelves in her office – the one on the end of the homestead garage. We put up the uprights for the metal brackets and Karola took it from there.

Quite a drop in temperature tonight and patches of rain as well.

Pleasant evening with Jenny & Noel who seemed interested in our exploits with solar panels, electricity companies, and the like.

Oak Avenue Weather:5℃—15℃ 0.4mm rain [82.8]

SwimGym

Then we both had a meeting with a BNZ banking official, Emma Borlase (06-878-0806) a Banking Advisor at the Hastings branch. This was sparked by the recent change in the terms of our credit card supplied by BNZ, and their deal with Air New Zealand to provide “airports” on credit card purchases. We’ve been, well Karola at least, with BNZ since the 1960s and they’ve never been particularly good nor bad as banks go.

Apparently we are well thought of at the bank – we pay everything off before it’s due and have quite a bit on term deposits waiting for Karola to begin her changes to the homestead. I would have expected someone who didn’t pay everything off would be more to their liking actually.

Afterwards we picked up the bread and some food for the weekend. That was it for the rest of the day. I carried on programming and Karola pottered about – it was too wet outside to do much.

Oak Avenue Weather:10℃—20℃ 4.3mm rain [83.6]

I woke up suddenly around 5:00am and just as suddenly thought, “I’ve forgotten Karola’s birthday”. But no, I was just in time. Anna & Bridget & others called throughout the day to wish Karola well.

Haircut for me in the morning.

The ChemWash guy came round and talked to Karola – he’s going to clean the outside of the homestead and the cottage in next ten days or so.

Few spots of ran while Wellington got lashings – much more than was convenient.

We got a card in the post today suggesting it was time for Bramble to have her annual checkup. We booked her in and took her down at 2:00pm. part from bing a little overweight she was fine. Bramble weighs 15.4 kilos.

Bit more progress on the programming front.

Oak Avenue Weather:12℃—20℃ 7.8mm rain [83.8]

SwimGym – and it’s very mild. The time of year when Hawkes Bay time and again has the best temperatures in New Zealand. Cool nights and bright sunny days.

Karola heard today that her friend of many years, Rowena, died today. She had been very ill for many years and it was more sad than unexpected.

Then more programming for me but a serious cleanup of her office for Karola – the office on the end of the homestead garage block. It’s made a big difference and there’s shelves to go up tomorrow before Karola can start getting her books and papers in order.

One of the ewes is limping and several ewes and several of the hogged ewes are pretty dirty so we’ll have to take action soon. Karola is calculating how long George should be kept with the ewes – trying to avoid a long drawn-out lambing.

Next door at the Copes the pile of old poplar stumps quite near our boundary and the Wellingtonians was burned today. Thank goodness the wind stayed a constant westerly towards the Avenue and away from our trees, the house next door, and the hydroponics plastic-sheet sheds. The house building next door is proceeding apace.

Autumn Leaves Blown About In The Brisk Westerly Breeze

Oak Avenue Weather:9℃—21℃ no rain [83.6]

A day of programming for me. Karola did some more on her article for the IDS people and then went out to a depressing and sad lecture on New Zealanders at Gallipoli. Bramble was bored out of her socks.

Oak Avenue Weather:9℃—19℃ 1.6mm rain [83.1]

SwimGym

I took Bramble for a short walk this morning, Karola a longer one later.

In the morning spent far too long mending a small hole in a large wooden box Karola uses for old clothes. It sits in the cottage garage and mice enjoy living in it – hence the bung for the hole.

I tackled Meridian about the shambolic bill they sent me – all jumbled up – and not only got that sorted but a link to a site that may be able to give me hourly and weekly electricity meter readings online. The price for installing the special meter to allow electricity to flow back onto the grid went up in April from $85 to $220 – they obviously saw us coming.

Later I went out to the Caltex garage in Omahu Road, our “local”, and filled the two 10 litre plastic diesel cans and the two 5 litre petrol cans, for the tractor and lawn mowers respectively.

Much progress on the programming front – a good day.

Bridget has had the chainsaw men in – whew, they do enjoy their job.

Southwards – the Back Garden Is Bigger than It Looked

Front Looking Down The Drive – Whew That Was Overgrown

At The Front – The Bank On The Left Looking Out Of The Front Door

Oak Avenue Weather:9℃—21℃ no rain [82.8]

Sunday again and I had bills to pay and emails to catch up on. Karola had an afternoon of hard work completing her clearing of the vegetation, manly wysteria, from alongside the walls of the homestead – so that the walls can be cleaned and possibly painted.

I bought two more phones from Mitre-10 and we now have four working landline phones, three are the new very basic ones, no frills, with large, clearly marked buttons and no superfluous ones. The fourth is the Dora speakerphone I bought online when my old speakerphone finally died many months ago. The Dora upstairs in the cottage and the three others in the cottage, the homestead, and the big garage respectively.

I also got four 25 watt equivalent warm-colour LED lights for the bedroom, replacing the ones I bought yesterday which Karola said were too big and too bright.

I mowed the cottage lawn – just a mulching trim, no pickup.

More programming and doing better today, actually made some good progress, mastering pieces I’d never touched before. Harry rang as usual on a Sunday and we exchanged gossip.

Karola’s Tough Job Of “Releasing” Karamu From The Wysteria Round Its Base – Todays Handiwork

Previously Cleared Areas

Oak Avenue Weather:2℃—21℃ no rain [82.6]

A delightful autumn day, cool and sunny. Not much going on outside for me although Karola did some mug-mowing of nettles daring to regrow after the dry conditions of summer.

Just more coding for me; some progress albeit more in my understanding of the enormous (and wonderful) range of APIs used to make programming the iPad so easy – eventually.

Oak Avenue Weather:2℃—20℃ no rain [83.2]

SwimGym

Unseasonably mild but a cooler snap expected in next few days.

Doctors appointment for me this morning, the quarterly diabetics checkup & winter flu jab. I also got the GF bread and a large organic chicken and some leeks for the weekend.

The bedroom dimmer seems to be faulty causing the lights to flicker abominably so today I bought a simple switch to replace it and four LED lights. The LED lights are down from $60 and even $30 to under $15 for a bulb that goes into a standard bayonet fitting.

On the way home I also got “Dents” – the car body repairers, to mend the Subaru front bumper which had detached itself on the passenger side. Only needed know-how, a bit of shoving and one replacement small button plastic fastener at it was done – no charge.

My invisible friend – the one who is a qualified electrician – spent a couple of hours trying to sort out the wiring for the switch replacing the faulty dimmer. Those RCD (residual current detectors) are worth their weight in gold. My friend would otherwise be invisibly fried. Finally I “got it”, there is one hot wire coming into the switch. Two wires just carryon without being affected by the switch, one to the lights out in the sun porch, and one to the light in the wardrobe under the stairs. One final wire connects all four bedroom lights.

More programming and the rest of the day just vanished.

Oak Avenue Weather:7℃—23℃ no rain [83.0]

Very mild today and I got on with my programming while Karola went out to see Rowena and do things in Napier. I did take Bramble round the orchard and looked at the fence where Karola had noticed a broken post and wire.

Autumn Colours

Oak Avenue Weather:16℃—24℃ no rain [83.0]

SwimGym. Bramble and I walked round the orchard and looked at the progress on the new house being built next door.

Not so cold today. Karola spent the afternoon mowing nettles in the Front paddock, otherwise just pottered around.

Irritating morning in that my iPhone went into a spin and kept restating every five minutes or so while charging up. I tried all Mrs Google’s recommendations, finally succumbing to completely resetting to factory defaults and restoring from a backup. That seems to have worked for now.

But I did make pleasing progress at last with my programming for the iPad. Oh and did Karola’s GST for Feb/Mar.

Puffy Looking Mushrooms – But With Gills

Even So I Think I’ll Give Them A Miss

Brian Cope Is Building A New House

Oak Avenue Weather:11℃—22℃ no rain [82.8]

We went and retrieved Bramble as soon as we could. She didn’t seem unhappy but was very very pleased to see Karola and somewhat pleased to see me. She’s been lolling about here in her own domain all day.

Karola went to what may be the final meeting of the Hawkes Bay branch of the Federation of Graduate Women.

Meticulous Maids, well one of them, came mid afternoon and gave the cottage a good clean. It’s been a while.

I programmed all day.

Oak Avenue Weather:7℃—19℃ no rain [83.0]

Bramble went to the kennels yesterday afternoon. We rushed off to the Napier airport for the 8:10am flight which, to my surprise, took off just before 8:00am.

Breakfast in Newmarket after a $71 taxi from Auckland airport to the Eye Clinic in Remuera Road, in Remuera.

Expensive tests and 30 mins with Prof Helen Danesh-Meyer, NZ’s top expert in glaucoma, and, $860 lighter, we went to see Jane Heslop & Campbell Ewing in Onehunga ($21 taxi ride). Upshot of the second opinion is that things are as my Hawkes Bay specialist John Beaumont said, but slightly worse, and I need to “get with the programme” and take more eye drops consistently from now on.

Jane & Campbell gave us lunch and we spent the afternoon chatting enjoyably. Campbell’s family has a history of glaucoma so they were interested in our morning’s experiences.

Campbell drove us to the airport and we had a short, uneventful flight home.

Oak Avenue Weather:4℃—17℃ 0.1mm rain [83.1]

Brrrr, it does seem like winter first thing.

Karola walked round the orchard with Bramble mid morning and observed that a concrete fence post on the northern boundary had been pushed over and the bottom fence wire broken. She’d noticed other places where the fence had been bashed about a bit but not broken. I’d noticed that the bottom rail of railings had been broken in a couple of places and I think all this minor damage is done by the man mowing the grass between the trees with a very wide orchard mower.

Mowed the cottage lawn and under the washing line and between the cottage and the drive and the lawn outside the homestead garage. Henceforth called the “small lawns”.

Usual Sunday chores plus tried to fill some gaps in the web journal – we’ve been buzzing about a lot recently. Karola did some more to her article about one of the places we visited on the IDS Oamaru trip.

We took Bramble to the kennels for a couple of nights while we go on our day trip to Auckland tomorrow. Karola was more upset by this than Bramble, needless to say.

Oak Avenue Weather:1℃—18℃ 0.1mm rain [83.1]

Really not a lot to say about today – I was programming all day and Karola pottered about with Bramble.

Oak Avenue Weather:5℃—18℃ 0.1mm rain [83.2]

SwimGym

We’re both still a bit groggy from the excitements of the last month. Karola kindly did the weekend shopping and meanwhile I continued my struggles with ‘the program’. I did pop into Stortford Lodge for my quarterly diabetic’s blood test but otherwise was at home,

Gill seemed relatively calm in the afternoon as they waited to go to the airport.

Bridget working hard on unpacking and re-arranging things in her new house.

Oak Avenue Weather:3℃—19℃ no rain [?]