Monthly Archives: March 2019

… Are Condemned To Repeat It

Long lie-in after another late night at computer. Then continued with my programming. I have the same major flaw as a programmer that I’ve had since working for Dept Statistics in 1960s – I will keep on fiddling, making what I think are little improvements but which in the wider scheme of things are unnecessary and irrelevant. And even the self-knowledge, the years and years of knowing I should cut and run when first the program works, doesn’t stop me. The last 3 – 4 days programming were quite unnecessary except for a tiny glow of satisfaction that things are now named better, more rationally, and the common routines are a little bit better separated out. Bah, humbug.

Meanwhile Karola is getting on well beavering away at her mother’s war-time writings and typing copious notes into emails she then sends to herself. It’s lovely to see her so absorbed.

Small pool of oil under the tractor bodes ill. I took it out onto the lawn and disconnected the mowing attachment. I suspect the joint where the mower attaches to the PTO power train. Intend to take it in to Power Farming tomorrow.

Commissioned the new air compressor, obeyed the running-in instructions and then used it to blow the dirt off the Grillo. Works quite well, the blast of air is strong and effective.

Oak Avenue Weather:14℃—23℃ no rain [74.50] IBOrchard

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Josephine Rangooni’s 80th Birthday

The big item today was going to Jo Rangooni’s birthday lunch over at River Lodges on the banks of the Tuki Tuki river, #1 Riverside Lodges, 1308 Tuki Tuki road, Hawkes Bay to be precise. The development is an Andy Colthart creation and has that feel – very spacious, muted colours & lots of wood, and decorated pleasantly but inexpensively, with imagination.

Josephine & Rauf Rangooni live in Bulls and Josephine, nee Nichols, spent much of her childhood growing up at Burleigh, Karola’s other family home where her brother Harry & Chloe and their extended families live now – have done for decades.

Jo Nichols has sister Sue Nichols – Sue gave the lunch for her older sister, inviting brother Geoff and his wife Margaret, also from Bulls. Other relations included Sue’s husband Kevin, Jana Rangooni, Jo & Rauf’s daughter, and Sue’s son, Byron (who is 6’5”” tall), his partner Adina and their baby Zafara.

In addition to the Nichols & Rangooni’s, Brian & Margery Cobbe were there – long-time friends and Margery taught Karola at Mt Biggs primary school when she was five, Brian was Karola’s family’s lawyer in Feilding. Oh and a waifling having a break from school at Woodford House, Rose Robertson – the great-granddaughter of Hilary Haylock (Jo & Hilary were friends until Hilary’s death a year or so ago). Hilary’s daughter Justine Pickering (she of the exciting exploits in Poland) had a daughter Kate who died while quite young, Rose is Kate’s daughter.

Andrea Pickering, Justine’s sister, who stayed with us for a while in England and made me lots of meringue buiscuits and went/goes by the email address of “blondienz@yahoo.com”, has adopted Kate’s family, and so Rose’s mother is now Andrea.

“Oh what a tangled web we weave …”

This is set down as aide memoire for us – it will be of ridiculously little interest to anyone else.

On the way home we got Rush Munro’s ice-creams, delicious, if not very compatible with someone on a diet. Karola retired early and read the penultimate Donna Leon, The Temptation of Forgiveness. We’ve just finished the latest Leon novel, Unto Us A Son Is Given, and it wasn’t until mate Dave Mitchell in the UK commented that I found out we’d missed one out and quickly ordered it from bookdepository.com (so much cheaper than Amazon) – we have all the rest, I checked. I cracked on with writing and re-writing my little bit of code for the intelligent weighing scales.

Sheep get a new tranche of the crop today. after five days on the first strip.

Ewes Enjoying Fresh Section Of The Lucerne Paddock (aka One Acre)

Matriarch #209 – Always On The Lookout For Sheep Nuts

…. the following photos kindly provided by Sue Nichols

Jo Rangooni 80th At River Lodges On Banks Of The Tuki Tuki River

Josephine Rangooni & Her Cake

L-R: Jo, Karola, Rauf, Ian, Margery Cobbe, Brian Cobbe, Margaret Nichols, Jana Rangooni, Geoff Nichols

L-R: Jo, Karola, Rauf, Ian, Geoff Nichols, Margaret Nichols, Brian Cobbe, Jana Rangooni, Margery Cobbe

Oak Avenue Weather:9℃—21℃ no rain [74.06] IBOrchard

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Another Week Drifts Past

SwimGym with Karola. Later we both went into town for the weekend shopping.

Karola spent the afternoon on emails and discussions about the UK trip itinerary; I continued with my prettying up the weight-graphing web application that uses the network-connected weighing scales – I, Dave in the UK and Bridget in Wellington have the same sort of scales.

The sheep have made short work of the first strip of crop. All that’s left is stringy stalks.

Although the rain hasn’t been very useful, combined with my irrigation I think the plants probably have had enough to take them to the next decent rain due next week. So I turned off the irrigation.

Oak Avenue Weather:15℃—21℃ 0.2mm rain [73.61] IKBOrchard

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Rain, Glorious Rain – But Not A Lot

It’s still bone dry under the trees so the occasional showers have cooled things down and wet the grass but not given the real soaking we need. So the irrigation of the Lime trees and Bay tree & Manuka hedges continues.

Appointment with the eye doctor early afternoon – regular scheduled checkup – nothing changed, which is good news. In celebration got a couple of coffees from Fuse in Stortford Lodge.

Rest of day spent on computer – in fact me upstairs in the cottage surrounded by computers and Karola, engrossed in her re-reading of her mother Cynthia’s war-time letters and typing away furiously on her iPad downstairs.

Oak Avenue Weather:13℃—20℃ 6.7mm rain [74.08] IBOrchard

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Sainthood Beckons (Yeah Right!)

SwimGym after mending two breaks in the irrigation pipes – where joints had just come apart. These only needed re-clipping.

Later Karola & I went into town in the Landrover – Landrover because we took the old green lawnmower in for a servic,e given that neither Henare nor I can start it. We also dropped in to Mitre-10 where I bought an air compressor, something I’d been meaning to do for ages.

Earlier today, at Karola’s insistence, I’d looked up ‘compressors’ on the Internet and done a quick course in what would best suit us – it’s for cleaning the Grillo and the chainsaw; it’s recommended for cleaning chainsaws and mowers by the experts, instead of using water under pressure. Of course since Bridget’s famiy’s last visit we have a water blaster as well.

While at Mitre-10 I bought a couple of 10 litre red plastic petrol cans as my old existing 5 litre ones just don’t hold enough for the Grillo’s cavernous tank. And I saw that the colour coding for flammable liquids has extended to “two-stroke” containers.

Although I’ve written “Two Stroke” on the little red plastic can I use for this mixture of petrol and oil, needed for the chainsaw, it could so easily be used for the wrong engines by anyone unfamiliar with my setup. So the bright green colour of the 2-stroke can is probably a wise decision.

Sue Hill, widow from over the road at HillWell orchard, came over to discuss the shocking state of the Oak Avenue verge, weeds including ivy shinning up one of the big plane trees. Sue was the author of the disturbing letter to the editor of the Hakes Bay Today newspaper about our weedy frontage. It’s a council responsibility but, unsurprisingly, they don’t have it as high priority.

While Sue and Karola put that bit of the world to rights I took secateurs and Vigilant woody plant killer across the road and cut and poisoned the offending two ivy stems. I also came back onto our side and poisoned/cut a whole lot of “Old Mans Beard” climbing up trees outside our fence-line. Have been purring in self-congratulation ever since.

Karola is spending most waking hours reading old letters written by her mother, Cynthia, and documenting the places she stayed at while in the armed forces during WWII. Karola is conveying this to Anna who will help set up our Scotland itinerary when we go over in August.

Oak Avenue Weather:16℃—26℃ 0.8mm rain [74.28]

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Apples “One More Thing”

I watched the Apple Computer keynote presentations from California; we’ve been expecting it for a while, a new vigorous push into media services. Apple has marked out several huge new marketplaces for its new services. It hopes to dominate in:

  • Online curated news – the trusted and ubiquitous provider on all things Apple – Apple News+
  • Virtual magazines – hundreds of “quality” magazines available online on all things Apple
  • The virtual credit card to die for – and a real credit card as well if you want it – building on Apple Pay
  • New games, in particular some specially procured for Apple and available in a smorgasbord called Apple Arcade
  • TV streaming from a vast array of sources – all the movies and shows that are fit to print – on all things Apple and integrated into your smart TV – the Apple TV+ app
  • Apple-sourced video content – deliberately sourced very high quality drama, documentaries, humour available only from Apple

Apple stress ease of use, privacy, safety, family sharing, and everything available on every kind of Apple device, even when not connected to the Internet.

So Apple are declaring war on the barons of News, of Consumer Credit & Banking, and NetFlix. Going to be some battle.

Late morning Karola & I drove down to Stortford Lodge and did something we’ve been intending to do for many weeks – we closed Karola’s account with the bank in Stortford Lodge, a branch of the ANZ. Karola already has an account with KiwiBank and our main bank, BNZ, is the one that Bridget works for in Wellington, and having been with BNZ for over 45 years we’re sort of used to them – though they couldn’t care less of course.

In celebration of finally closing the account we went next door to Fuse and bought coffees. Then, as I initially had in mind, we dropped into the local Caltex garage and I purchased 25L of diesel for the tractor, 10L of petrol for the Grillo, and untold gallons and gallons for the car.

Then back to the computer.

Late afternoon, when a bit cooler, I finished mowing the cottage lawn, still exhilarated by the easy dumping of the grass catcher – up, up, up, and over, onto Karola’s “bund” – the long narrow compost heap extending about 200 metres from the homestead garage to the 121 entrance.

Henare arranged to come and pick up the little old green lawn mower but returned it soon afterwards as even he couldn’t get it to start.

Karola has had the sheep in the Long Acre for the acorns for a day, now she’s let them back into the Middle paddock and tomorrow they’ll be back in the One Acre with a swathe of the lucerne.

I’ve had the water on for a couple of days already for the micro-orchard – the seven fruit trees – and for the fancy Manuka bushes. Today I inspected the 16 Lime trees (Tilia) and they are looking very thirsty so I turned their water on too. The forecast has promised some rain time and time again and we’ve missed out pretty much every time. I hadn’t realised how very dry our ground is so I do hope that I’m not too late for the Lime trees.

Meanwhile on the TV we see huge deluges of rain hitting the west coast of the south island – forecasts of up to 700mm overnight – can that be real?

Walking Bangle round the orchard after dark we were surprised to see a vehicle with headlights blazing sitting in the orchard driveway, about 50 metres from the road. By the time I’d walked home and driven Zoe round to investigate, they’d gone.

Oak Avenue Weather:15℃—27℃ no rain [75.22] IKBOrchard

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Ewes Drenched

SwimGym

Then Monday shop.

Late afternoon we drenched all the ewes but not the ram and ram lamb. Cydectin (rather ancient) – meat withholding of 10 days. As we heard on the Country Life programme on Saturday morning, there’s an explosion of parasitic worms due to the weather in Hawkes Bay. Last time it happened we lost seven hoggets within a week from chronic , nay fatal anemia caused by worms. It may also help with the lung worm that #511 and #439 have – and I think there are a couple of the hoggets as well.

In New Zealand “hogget” means a lamb between weaning and first shearing. In other places like the UK it means a yearling sheep. Of course Wikipedia thinks it is definitive.

This years hoggets (ie born last year) are:

  • #801
  • #802
  • #803 (no tag)
  • #805
  • #811
  • #813
  • #814 – triplet of #209
  • #815 – triplet of #209 (no tag)
  • #816 – triplet of #209
  • #817
  • #820 (no tag)
  • #824

And then I did some Grillo mowing; the cottage curtilage, round the perimeter of the rough grass under the big oak, the little lawn in front of the homestead garage, behind the homestwead garage, and down the 121 driveway. After dinner I just began the cottage lawn when I ran out of petrol – need to get some more tomorrow.

Behind The Homestead Garage

Cottage Curtilage – Looking North

Cottage Curtilage – Looking South

121 Driveway

Oak Avenue Weather:10℃—27℃ no rain [75.00] IBOrchard

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Sheep Banquet

I think the hurly-burly of the visitors has finally caught up with me and I slept and slept. Between dozes I did put up the electric fence along the breaks in the One Acre and let the sheep into the first one, a strip running north-south from which they will, in time, get access to three equal tranches running east-west.

Karola, meanwhile, is plotting the Scottish Quest for September. Anna prompted us to start planning and Karola sent an email to Vitek, Karola’s half-son (that doesn’t sound right, sounds like something out of Harry Potter) in Warsaw, asking when we could visit for a couple of days.

Oak Avenue Weather:10℃—24℃ no rain [74.43] IKBOrchard

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At Last, The Online Journal Is Running On The New Server

More struggling with the final pieces of the move to the new server, from AceWebHosting to HostPapa. It seems that every little step has included its own mis-step – files too large or timeouts, and on and on and on. But at last the weblogs are working as well as before on the new server, and on the local NAS too.

For a break I did go out and mow the pathways for the electric fence in the One Acre. It is so thick that I had to mow each strip six times – with the tractor, not the Grillo, it wouldn’t haver stood a chance.

Paths Mown For Electric Fence Partitioning Of The One Acre Crop

Looking North (below), Looking South (above)

Shot Rabbit Corpses On Our Verge – There Are A Lot Of Rabbits, Someone’s Taking Action

Oak Avenue Weather:11℃—21℃ no rain [74.50] IBOrchard

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Over A Week To Move The Weblogs – Still Not Done

SwimGym

Later a quick spin into town for the weekend shopping. Still wrestling with moving the weblogs to the new provider. File transfers time out, the free plug-in tools give up part-way through because of the size of our blog, started in 2005. At least the version of the web site stored on the local “network attached storage” (NAS) works as expected.

Got an email from DashLane – the password manager I use – saying that more than 20 of my passwords are at risk because of the recent FaceBook mistakes.

Karola was caught up in the solemn remembrance of last weeks Christchurch massacres.We both watched the climax on TV early afternoon.

Made some real progress on the weblog front and the previous hosting service, AceWebHosting, is still letting me use the old site for now. I may be able to get one more digest out on the old site later this evening.

Oak Avenue Weather:12℃—22℃ no rain [74.02] IKBOrchard

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Toothypegs – Pegs Is Right

In the morning I had an appointment to see my dentist, Tracey, who expertly worked on teeth and wallet in equal proportions. I feel less like a pirate now. The two large fillings fell out at almost the same time several weeks ago and as my next appointment wasn’t until August which being in the middle of our overseas trip, had to be rescheduled anyway, I decided to get on with it and have the damage repaired.

Late morning Tobias Taylor, our “reserve” financial advisor came to tell us that he’s quit the firm, “Advice First”, and due to some unpleasantness over the severing he won’t be available for fianancial advice and management until the middle of next year. Meanwhile I’d concluded that, in addition to having much lower returns than our main man, Chris Day of Forsyth-Barr, his firm’s basket of managed funds weren’t really giving us any additional reduced risk, so we might as well just amalgamate the funds. Tobias, by his body language, although he “couldn’t possibly comment”, approved.

In the afternoon Karola had her hair coiffured by Kim and it looks lovely.

I spent most of the day going round in circles trying to find a simple way to transfer my weblogs from the old platform to the new. I shall persevere.

Not For The Faint Hearted

Replaced & Good As New – $150 Each Though

Oak Avenue Weather:15℃—23℃ no rain [73.24] IKBOrchard

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What?, No Wednesday Trip To Town

SwimGym – but didn’t shop today; we had plenty of food left from the visit of Joan & Ruth.

I worked on the weblog transfer & Karola read multiple Economists and so the day just whizzed by.

Oak Avenue Weather:14℃—22℃ 0.9mm rain [73.69] IKBOrchard

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Time To Inspect The Pest Traps

Ratty (photo attached) is the friendly chappie that was living by the homestead garage. The trap by the water tanks showed another four rats dispatched – but corpses dragged off for lunch by other rats I presume. The GoodNature site has a video (infra-red camera) showing a trap set alongside a house and rat after rat being dispatched. Each time another rat or rats drags the carcass away. Even though the GoodNature possum trap was resighted and refreshed when I did the rat traps, no possums have been caught yet.

Karola gorged on back issues of local newspapers all day, by nightfall she’d had quite enough of the sadness, pain, despair, and evil in the world for one week.

I worked on the weblog transfer.

The Rat That Was Living Outside Karola’s Office In The Homestead Garage Block

Barbary (Ringed) Dove – Mother (Or Father) & Child

Too Trusting By Half – Photo Taken From Two Metres Away

Oak Avenue Weather:15℃—24℃ no rain [73.61] KBOrchard

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Joan Phillips & Sister Ruth Woodward Leave For Home

After breakfast Joan & Ruth set off for Hamilton, going home. It was a most pleasant weekend, they were good company.

SwimGym in the late morning, Meticulous Maids to clean the cottage in the afternoon.

I got enough of the old web sites transferred onto my local “network attached storage” (NAS) that if I lost the ability to access the old server I could, with a lot of difficulty and time, reconstitute the web log without losing anything. Today is the official end of my use of the old server.

I returned a NAS device, a Western Digital “Home Cloud”, bought from Ascent in Wellington, that, while very inexpensive, turned out to be hobbled so severely that it was no use to me. Today the refund was granted, minus 10% restocking charge. Fair enough. The new NAS, an ASUSTOR system, is just what I wanted, highly programmable and with lots of the function I’d like already built-in.

Oak Avenue Weather:13℃—22℃ no rain [73.89] IKBOrchard

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Last Day Of The HOY Show

The ladies again made their way to the last day of the HOY show. Lena was made to sit on her own blanket and await further orders which she did beautifully all day – I took her and Bangle round the orchard late afternoon.

Bangle pounced on Lena’s Kong and spent hours extracting the embedded treats – Lena looked on from her blanket, somewhat miffed.

Joan Phillips & Ruth Woodward – House Guests For The Weekend – Conviviality Personified

Ruth’s Delightful 7-Year Old Golden Retriever Bitch, Lena

Bangle Steals Lena’s “Kong” With Embedded Treats

Henare & Scott – Totara Battening – Just A Little More To Do

Last Weeks Neat Work

Oak Avenue Weather:16℃—21℃ no rain [74.03] IBOrchard

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Quiet Saturday Here

The ladies trundled off the the HOY show again, the cross-country with huge jumps was the main drawcard.

I focussed on getting the weblogs moved onto the new platform – it’s a long and quite complicated business.

Ruth was out for dinner but Joan & Karola & I had a pleasant meal of venison mini-steaks & vegetables followed by more ice-cream & berries.

The saga of the domain names continues. I have to have the names registered with a hosting company somewhere and in the past there’s been no charge to transfer them from one to another – still a complicated business but no charge. Now however, it seems that there is a charge for each domain name ending in .com or .net or .org into a New Zealand hosting provider – but no charge for New Zealand domains. I should have stuck to my original plan made months ago, to transfer my domains to the same low-cost business that holds Bridget’s domain names – “Domains4Less”. I’ll have to be patient and follow up next week during business hours.

GoodNature Automatic Rat Trap – Outside The Homestead Garage

Oak Avenue Weather:18℃—27℃ no rain [73.59] IBOrchard

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HOY Cross Country aka Eventing in UK

After a leisurely breakfast the ladies decamped to the Hastings Showgrounds for another day of the Horse-of-the-Year show.

I worked on computer stuff, preparing for the web log transfer now that the last digest of weblog “posts” had gone out to my extensive readership, all nine of them. I hoped to get the transfer complete and back to normal in time for next Friday night’s digest mailing.

Lena, Ruth’s rather adorable Golden Retriever, suffered somewhat from “separation anxiety” and barked and barked until I told her to be “quiet” in a loud, rough voice. Quiet descended for an hour or so and then she started up again. Repeat scoldings did sop the barking for a while each time.

Lena had a special dog toy, a Kong, filled with treats that was supposed to keep her engaged for hours. Unfortunately Bangle commandeered it and took it under the house.

Reporting back in the evening, the ladies had an excellent day of horse-spotting marred a little by a serious accident to one young woman rider who was squashed by her horse while practicing before the show jumping – seriously hurt but alive as far as we know.

IBOrchard 73.59 18-27 no

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

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A Day To Remember In NZ – Not For Good Reasons

Joan, Ruth, and Karola went off to the Horse-of-the-Year show mid morning. I went to SwimGym leaving Layla and Bangle to guard the house.

Later I did a little weekend shopping, grabbed a coffee on the way back.

Picked up piles of weeds & sticks from the homestead septic tank and near the Octagon, panicking a little when I couldn’t find the big trailer until I eventually remembered that Henare had it up by the western boundary – for the Totara battens.

Karola’s planting round the Ginkgo tree in front of the homestead is a welcome sight, the vivd yellow blooms are perhaps Crocus flavus or more likely Sternbergia lutea. Wikipedia suggests:

Sternbergia lutea, the winter daffodil, autumn daffodil, fall daffodil, lily-of-the-field, or yellow autumn crocus, is a bulbous flowering plant in the family Amaryllidaceae, subfamily Amaryllidoideae, which is used as an ornamental plant. It has yellow flowers which appear in autumn.

While the ladies were out watching the show-jumping I decided to remove the two rat and one possum trap from the homestead attic. No sign of anything being caught which was just as well as decaying possums are not pleasant. Re-erected the three GoodNature automatic traps outside where there’s more evidence of the appropriate wildlife and the traps are much easier to check.

Took the Grillo for another spin today – it’s growing on me. After a bit of mowing and a photo-shoot (see below) I went to empty the big catcher and got into trouble. The chute from the blades to the catcher was blocked and when trying to clear it I got the catcher partway raised at which point I got the removable chute jammed and was unable to free it. The engine then refused to start – presumably because there’s a safety cut-out that won’t let you start the engine unless the catcher is fully raised or lowered, or so I thought. I mooched back inside and read some of the manual – yes, RTFM I did. No solutions but an increased respect for the Italian machinery design.

After a certain amount of cussing and kicking the penny dropped – I’d run out of petrol. End of problems.

Ruth & I accompanied by Bangle & Lena (Golden Retriever) went round the orchard and garnered a couple more wild mushrooms to have with the chicken dinner.

About this time I became aware that terrorism had hit New Zealand – down in Christchurch, radical right-wing shooting of Moslems. The country is still in shock.

Final note: this weekend I move the web log to its new home on the servers of HostPapa in Canada (allegedly). I plan to begin the move after this weeks digest has gone out, tomorrow morning. In the unlikely event that it all goes smoothly the next digest will roll out next Friday night.

Autumn Crocus & Naked Lady Lily Flowers Surround Ginkgo In Front Of The Homestead

Getting To Grips With The Grillo

Grillo Lady-In-Waiting

Oak Avenue Weather:12℃—24℃ 0.1mm rain [73.94] IBOrchard

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Joan & Ruth Arrive For The HOY Show

Spent a couple of hours removing all the electric fence from around the homestead lawn and the big oak – it looks much better for our visitors and makes walking between the cottage and homestead easier too.

The latest Donna Leon novel arrived today, “Unto Us a Son is Given”.

I used the Grillo mower to mow the cottage lawn today – the steering will need plenty of practice before I’ll feel safe against bumping into things. It’s the large plastic catcher bin and the ever so agile rear wheel steering. I was delighted to find it is just narrow enough to do the cottage lawn edges and the grass pathway between the persimmon trees so there are only a couple of small places where a smaller mower is needed. I also mowed the little D-shaped lawn in front of the homestead garage and the verges of the 121 driveway.

Later I did a little vegetative housekeeping, in particular I cut the dead heads off the flowers on the homestead septic tank which improved the look a little, but not much.

As planned, Karl & Wendy came today and crutched all the sheep – rams included, and Karl gave them each a zinc bolus to protect against facial eczema. The Hastings vet clinic has a sign out showing an increased risk right now due to the warm wet interludes – and we’re getting a few mushrooms appearing too. (Boluses are zero withholding for meat).

There were some high jinks at the end of the crutching when the rams got in with the ewes. The young ramlet didn’t seem that interested but the old fellow was hot to trot. I rushed round keeping him swiftly on the move as he tried to mount ewe after ewe. They weren’t terribly enthusiastic so between us I think we avoided any early lambs – not what we want while visiting Anna in the UK.

Joan & her sister Ruth arrived in time for dinner. I got F&C from Hawkes Bay Seafoods and this time the fish (grilled Terakihi) was delicious and the chips were OK. Last time some of us had battered fish and the batter was horrid. Ruth is accompanied by a seven-year-old golden retriever, Lena.

The three ladies and two dogs went round the orchard together – we think Bangle was a mite put out by the attention the other dog received.

Gill & Ben’s Fifth Emergence – The Monarchial Magic Of Swan Plant

Another Quite Large Oak Branch Takes A Fall

Septic Tank De-Cluttered

Small Lawn Given Grillo Treatment

Oak Avenue Weather:15℃—24℃ no rain [73.86] KBOrchard

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Zoe’s Spare

Pottered around in the morning, still enjoying the programming for our automated weighing system – from scales in London, Wellington, and Hastings ending up as a chart on a webpage on my web space in Canada – well I suspect it’s Canada.

Postie delivered the wheel that we hope will solve our Renault Zoe spare wheel problem. At $200 delivered it looks promising, and Bangle approves (see below). Still have to try fitting it, I’ll use one of my 2-tonne jacks to help.

Occasional showers today stopped any more Grillo practice – it was forecast and that’s why I wanted to do a little mowing with it yesterday.

Mid-day I finally did the Wednesday SwimGym. Early afternoon I imagined my favourite coffee shop might be closing so dashed down to Hastings – luckily it doesn’t close till 2:30pm so I got the usual couple of takeaway cups. Pleased by that I turned around and on the way towards home stopped off at the Hawkes Bay Fish Supply for some fresh-looking John Dory for dinner.

Then I remembered the other things I’d come to town for so returned back to the Hastings CBD for more cash – in case Henare & Scott come back at the weekend to finish the fence battening.

Also to see if my replacement spectacles were ready – it’s been ten days. After a bit of insisting they “found” my glasses “out the back”, they’d only just come in. It’s a relief to have the right “occupational lenses” back again, helps a lot, especially with computer screen viewing. Nice woman there, tall & thin with a mop of frizzy black hair – remembered my name, and even more surprising, remembered Karola’s name too. We’re obviously spending far too much time in the opticians.

Then on the way home I dropped into Farmlands and picked up Karola’s order of anti-facial-eczema boluses and an applicator gun for her flock. Karola is expected tomorrow to administer the preventative medicine.

Meanwhile Karola had tootled off in her Subaru to hand in three old printers and assorted extras to the electronics recycling shop and then to reconnoitre the Horse of the Year show at the Hastings Showgrounds. Joan Phillips and her sister Ruth are expected tomorrow late afternoon so that they and Karola can go to the last few days of the show.

Bangle Inspects The New Spare Wheel For “Zoe”

Oak Avenue Weather:16℃—29℃ 0.8mm rain [73.8] KBOrchard

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Grillo Gets An Outing

The replacement NAS drive arrived this morning and by lunchtime it was installed and humming beautifully. This is what I wanted.

Afternoon spent on the scales graphing program.

Evening I took the Grillo for a spin, cutting the cottage curtilage. Will take a bit of getting used to it – the steering is via the back wheels and the catcher bin is huge so I kept bumping into things. Indications are that it’ll be fine for larger areas of lawn and paddock but it’s really bad at the fiddly bits. So Karola’s old green mower will have a role for the foreseeable.

Oak Avenue Weather:16℃—26℃ no rain [74.7] IKBOrchard

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Horse-of-the-Year Show Begins Tomorrow

SwimGym quite late in the morning with Karola; the place was pretty much deserted.

Start of the week shopping – including coffees and a gluten-free cheesecake brownie we shared.

First I stopped off at the Stortford Lodge pharmacy and spoke to the head pharmacist. He had heard of Nytol – he said they have it in Canada too, just not in New Zealand. I latched onto Nytol when in England – got it from Boots – for Karola, so far my sleeplessness isn’t a problem.

Nytol One-A-Night is used to relieve temporary sleeping difficulties. The active ingredient is diphenhydramine hydrochloride, an antihistamine that causes sleepiness or drowsiness.

Anyway the pharmacist said there was a local alternative with the same active ingredient as Nytol and the same strength, so I got Karola some of that and some of the “Clinician’s Sleep Science” capsules which she quite likes.

Then on to the Artisan coffee shop – there was a park right outside today, and on to New World for the groceries.

Karola banged in four metal standards and popped a spare tree guard over her suckered Coral tree sapling so that the sheep couldn’t eat it, then letting the sheep out of the Front paddock into the Middle paddock. There’s been no lack of pasture for them this year but they like a change of scenery pretty often in any case.

I arranged to return the annoyingly inappropriate Western Digital MyCloud Home system – Ascent are quite happy to take it back.

And suddenly it was dinner time.

Oak Avenue Weather:12℃—23℃ no rain [75.1]

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Patrick & Lis Cooney and Sylvia Rishworth Lunch

Henare & Scott came midday and began putting the totara battens on the remaining unbattened length of fence on the west boundary, the fence they rebuilt last weekend. They stopped around 4:30pm and borrowed the landrover and a small trailer to take the firewood it contained over to his sister Aira’s place in Tamatea.

Patrick & Lis Cooney surprised us by dropping in just before lunch with their friend Sylvia Rishworth; Sylvia is very interested in Karola’s electric car thinking one like it would suit her very well as a run-around vehicle in Auckland. Sylvia asked if she could see the homestead. Karola gave Sylvia a tour of the homestead while Lis took photos of the grounds and Patrick & I mulled over the new Grillo.

Lis is taken by some of the trees and in particular liked the smell and look of the widley flung groups of Belladonna lilies(Amaryllis Belladonna).

The brand new Grillo wouldn’t start for me and after several false starts I gave up to avoid flattening the battery. Half an hour or so later I remembered we were told about the Grillo having a choke knob so I tried again, this time using the choke, and it started perfectly.

Patrick suggested we go out for lunch, to Te Awa, but it being booked out we went to one of my favourites, Black Barn bistro. A delicious and large meal was had by all and Patrick generously picked up the tab.

Lis Likes Karola’s Belladonna Lilies – “Naked Ladies”

Black Barn Bistro

Oak Avenue Weather:14℃—23℃ no rain [74.4]

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Tribulations Of Home Computing

Woke to the sound of the radio Country Life programme and I spent most of the day working on the weight-graphing mashup (ie cobbling together other peoples code to make something useful). The graphing bit is not bad. Just trying to join up the automated capture of daily weights and the graphing bit.

Much of the day – too much – spent installing a low-cost replacement for the Apple Time Capsule I use as network-attached storage (NS). That old system is making ominous noises and I fear it’ll soon just crash fatally; it must be over a decade old. It was pretty advanced for its time, the Time Capsule, holding 1000 x 1000 million characters (one terra-byte or TB).

The new device is advertised as network-attached storage, a Western Digital (WD) device called a “MyCloud Home” holding 4TB, four times as much as the old Apple Time Capsule. I have had success with WD disk drives in the past having three 600,000 megabyte drives I use for backups.

But this time the choice was a mistake from the very start:

  • I had to make an online account with WD to use the device at all – and when you are forced to create an account you know that “you are the product”, they’re capturing personal information for marketing purposes whether you like it or not.
  • A special piece of software had to be installed on my system and this needed access to the privileged parts of the system, otherwise I couldn’t access the drive. So I have to trust WD software not to include serious bugs or worse still, malicious code.
  • My usual tools which work with all the other drives on my system and network – internal to my computer, attached with a cable, or accessible over the network, will not work with this MyCloud Home box.
  • Reviews say this system is appallingly slow to read and write files.

I guess the reason for the proprietary and intrusive wrapper round some pretty standard physical equipment is to allow WD to sell a low-price consumer market system with huge capacity without cannibalising the much more expensive ordinary NAS systems they and other vendors sell.

So, I found a well reviewed and definitely industry-standard 4TB system, an Asustor AS10 Series AS1002T NAS and it will be shipped on Monday. Price, well, yes it’s more than twice the cost of the WD MyCloud Home system but the least expensive proper NAS available in New Zealand today.

Oak Avenue Weather:15℃—23℃ 4.9mm rain [73.8]

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The Grillo (Ride-On Mower) Arrives At Last

SwimGym with Karola.

Weekend shopping with the now customary coffees and a cake for Karola. Today’s town trip included my six-weekly haircut.

My favourite tin opener, treasured for many years, died last week – well the plastic just crumbled. As well as looking and feeling superior it detaches lid and body with no sharp edges, ideal for my collection of tins to hold small objects. Three replacements arrived today. One for me, now. One as a spare as I fear they are no longer in production. One for a gift should I find someone worthy.

Ink cartridges for the new printer arrived today; day-after delivery, they do it consistently.

Talked to Dylan the wood burner man and he says that he now has the test results for the type of fire-proof enclosure he’s building in the homestead, results that will enable the council to approve the construction and allow Dylan & team (of one) to continue.

The spare wheel for Karola’s Zoe still hasn’t arrived; turns out the Christchurch firm who sold it to me are still waiting for its tyre to arrive.

Replacement spectacles were supposed to be ready this week. Next week probably.

The new printer attachment providing duplex printing hasn’t arrived and Ascent said it was a separate and separately priced accessory. I demurred firmly, the advertisement said “automatic duplex” function. I still have to wait for a month before it arrives, it was on back-order anyway – but it’s now costing no extra. Good old Ascent, the customer was right in this instance.

After lunch the new ride-on mower arrived and we had tuition in its many levers and service points from the Outdoor Power man, not Trevor Manuel the salesman but Eddy Veerkamp, an engineer who works in the chainsaw workshop. A modern car is far less complicated.

As planned Ruth Vincent, our architectural draughtswoman, came mid afternoon and we had a very pleasant and productive meeting, reviewing her final draft drawings. Ruth will make the small number of changes we want and submit for council approval at the end of the month. When asked what aspect of the plans she would change, she promptly replied, “the car port” – and it’s not the first time she’s said this. So, after some serious mulling over the pros and cons we’ve decided to ditch it. No carport against the south/back verandah.

The Big Grillo FD450 Ride-On Mower Arrived Today, Henare looks On

Replacement ORBI Tin Opener Came Today – Tins Cut Without Any Sharp Edges

Oak Avenue Weather:10℃—25℃ 8.4mm rain [73.4]

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James & Barbie Wilson Come To Afternoon Tea

Sheep let in again under the big oak and on the homestead lawn. Very happy sheep.

I thought it’d only take an hour or so to complete the mulching of tree trimmings and chainsawing of the bigger branches for firewood but it took most of the day. I hadn’t bargained on finding another dead Pittosporum in the line along the goose paddock railings – three down, three to go, something like that and we have no idea what’s causing it. I also remembered that a sizeable branch from the Sitka Spruce near the wooden gate beyond the big Lime tree got missed last time I did a clean-up so I chopped that up too.

Just as I finished chainsawing for the day I jammed the chain in long native grass. In then fiddling around to release it I intentionally, and stupidly, removed a little circlip off the clutch and it spun out into the garage and hid. Stupid because not only was my chance of re-attaching it low but the reason the clutch was jammed was that I had the chain brake on, not because it was jammed with foreign matter. Quite distressing.

These little circlips, C-clips or E-clips are also sometimes called Jesus clips. From Wikipedia:

The term “Jesus clip” comes from the propensity of the clip’s spring action to launch the clip at a high velocity when removing or installing, leading to remarks such as, “Oh Jesus, where did it go?

Anyway, despite the imminent arrival of James & Barbie in their Barbie-Mobile (very swish but compact camper van), I dashed into Hastings and persuaded Hawkes Bay Mowers & Chainsaws to find a replacement and pop it on. After much grumbling about how unlikely it was they’d have one, that all the chainsaws seemed to have vast parts lists of items unique to the make and model, the engineer found one and I was happy again, $8.85 poorer but happy.

Had a lovely time with James & Barbie; James is still outrageous and extreme in his ideas but a little more mellow than I remember – vegans and environmentalists and retired.

What time was left I worked on my connecting of the intelligent communicating scales (Nokia “Withings” Body+ scales) to a web page that draws graphs of the weights.

A couple of nights ago Karola & I watched a BBC programme “The Truth About Obesity” (Chris Bavin) and picked up a few interesting observations.

  • The unhealthy fat is the fat round your heart and other internal organs, not your ankles.
  • We were introduced to the “string test” as a very simple, very approximate, more helpful test than BMI (the old favourite, Body Mass Index relating height to weight). Your waist measurement should be less than half your height. (“String test” because you can do the test with a piece of string.
  • Genetics are a large, 40%-60%, determinant of your propensity to over-eat, gain fat.
  • There are dramatic differences between the way the body digests food earlier in the day and in the evening. In the evening the sugar spike is more pronounced and takes much longer to subside. Lesson is that, where practical, make your breakfast and lunch your main meals.
  • Using tests on twins it’s been established beyond a reasonable doubt that the diversity of gut microbes affects the laying down of fat – affects weight gains. More variety is better. High fibre foods help create a supportive environment.
  • And regular exercise in the gym is good for health but not necessarily any better than consciously increasing the activity in your life – climbing stairs, walking to shops etc.

All That’s Left Of Three Karamu Trees

Another Pittosporum Dies – Not Sure Why

After The Mulching There’s The Picking Up Of Firewood

Oak Avenue Weather:17℃—29℃ no rain [73.2] KBOrchard

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Grayson Fixed Cottage Central Heating

SwimGym with Karola after which Karola let the sheep onto the lawn.

Midweek shopping including a blueberry tart for Karola and coffees.

I wrote a short article commenting on Max Rashbrooke’s recent online feature on SpinOff.co.nz about his proposed alternative to Basic Income. Karola helped edit and improve it. Don’t know if it’ll be published.

Grayson Allen came and fixed the cottage central hearting. This time we tried it several hours after he’d gone and it’s working as well as it ever has, if not better. Combination of a faulty bottom element thermostat and airlocks in the coil inside the cylinder – nothing we did and no fix we could have done.

My replacement large-page printer (A3) arrived today (HP OfficeJet 7110) and this evening I set it up and printed off Ruth’s building plans for the homestead renovation.

Karola & I did some mulching – chipping & shredding – of the three Karamu trees I cut down next to a young Liriodendron at the weekend, at Karola’s request. We didn’t finish that pile but I did get the Coral tree pile done before dinner.

Sheep Enjoying Under The Big Oak

Karola Helping With The Mulching

The Coral Tree Piles

All That’s Left Under The Coral Tree

And More Karamu Tree Mulch Spread In the Gateway

Oak Avenue Weather:7℃—25℃ 0.1mm rain [73.0] IKBOrchard

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Putting Up Electric Fence

Spent much of the day assembling electric fence round most of the homestead garden and under the big oak.

Then a break to go and pick up eye drops from the Stortford Lodge pharmacy.

Meticulous Maids came, there are always new cleaners as if the staff turnover is very rapid but Karola is pleased with their results.

I chainsawed off some low-hanging branches of the Coral Tree at Karola’s request.

Computer stuff also went well; as part of tidying up my Photos libraries I have been merging libraries of different vintages into one single library without duplicates. On the current iMac computer this took much much less time than on the previous Macbook Pro.

Fence Up

Sheep Gratefully Re-Exploring The Homestead Lawn

Oak Avenue Weather:6℃—27℃ no rain [73.6] IKBOrchard

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Apple Picking Started In The Orchard

SwimGym after breakfast, in fact just before midday.

Got a call from Grayson’s PA that he would be round re the cottage radiators late afternoon – but he did not come. Called Rob Findlay and asked that they get moving with the homestead wood burners.

Talked to Ruth and confirmed our plan to:

  • aim for starting the homestead renovation in late September
  • for Ruth to submit plans for council approval at the end of March
  • arranged for Ruth to come on Friday for discussion and interpretation of the plans

Emailed Ruth Vincent & builder Paul Libby, Paul Weerden the sprinkler man, and Selwyn Cook the security & smoke alarms man about this change. So we should all now be “on the same page”.

Did the Monday shop including buying coffees and, for Karola, a delicious-looking tart heaped with blueberries in a fruit jelly. Deliberately gluten-laden to stop me succumbing.

Email & bills in the afternoon including buying two thrillers from BookDepository, a new Donna Leon and one recommended by Anna called Truth, set in Australia, by Peter Temple. And three of the Orbi tin openers which I really like but seem to be out of production – they somehow fold the edge of the lid and the can avoiding any sharp edges. Oh, and because our venerable Canon large-paper printer (A3) seems finally to have stopped printing properly, despite “deep cleaning” the heads after replacing all the ink cartridges, I’ve bought a new one that should be here by the end of the week.

While taking Bangle round the orchard we noticed Hickory seedlings growing under the Hickory tree that Bernard Ferguson planted in about 1965. Also the Belladona Lilies are in full bloom, always looking a bit odd as they spring out of the grass in unexpected places. That is not Deadly Nightshade (Atropa belladonna) but the Belladonna Lily, called Naked Ladies, or Belladonna Amaryllis (Amaryllis belladonna). Picking of the Galaxy apples has begun, accompanied by singing and cheerful chat from the Pacific Islanders, RSE workers (Recognised Seasonal Employer).

Hickory Seedlings Under The Tree In The Totara Paddock

Belladona Flowers In The Totara Paddock

Oak Avenue Weather:8℃—23℃ 0.2mm rain [73.9]

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Battened Down

It was really chilly this morning so I lit the fire, but the main part of the day was sunny and warm with a cool breeze.

Henare & Scott didn’t arrive until mid day and they didn’t start battening the fence until after lunch – Karola gave them another big helping of bacon and eggs. They left at 6:00pm having stapled new battens onto about ⅔ of the fence. The other ⅓ is going to use Totara battens for the part of the fence in the cottage main view west.

Two Large Pears From Karola’s WBC Tree – Her Williams’ Bon Chrétien

Reconstructed Fence – Almost Complete

Oak Avenue Weather:6℃—24℃ no rain [73.8]

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Fence Reconstruction – Wires Up

A few years ago Karola planted a Liriodendron that up near the big shed, in a triangle of railings that is the modern way for sheep farmers to end a fence-line – with a gate and then a triangle of railings to make the corner less sharp – avoid crushing & bruising. That triangle backs onto the fence we’re reconstructing. Three Karamu trees surround the Liriodendron and when they were young they provided shelter for the Liriodendron. But now they’re too big and so Karola suggested that, while the fence behind them was down it’d be good idea to cut the Karamu’s down. So I did this morning before Henare came.

Then Henare & I put up the seven new wires, strained them and crimped them. Partway through Karola gave Henare a bacon & egg lunch. I, on a diet, hid upstairs and tried hard to think about other things although the smell wafted enticingly upwards.

Later Henare stapled about half the posts. He offered that he and Scott would come tomorrow and get stuck into stapling the battens.

Galaxy Apples – Laden Branches

Reconstructed Fence – Wires Up

Henare Stapling Wires To Running Posts

Oak Avenue Weather:5℃—20℃ no rain [74.8]

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