Monthly Archives: June 2019

Spent quite some time trying to find childhood photos for Anna who last week suddenly asked if we had any. Found several and scanned some of them and sent them off.

Hard frost this morning. Sheep still glad to be let onto the lawn for the day. Morning tea on the cottage kitchen verandah was delightful.

Karola edited a short memorandum I’d drafted describing the major things Karola had done in maintaining the homestead over the last 40 or so years; she also located a big file of receipts for much of the work done and so is able to check her memory of what was done when.

I started an online course re-learning a new programming language – which means not finishing the stack of computer tasks I’ve started but nothing crucial since I did the backups a couple of days ago.

First Decent Frost This Season

Oak Avenue Weather:-3℃—15℃ 0.1mm rain [76.25] IKBOrchard

Really rather cold this morning, a good frost. Hardly poked our noses outside all day, in fact, after Country Life on the radio and breakfast I slept most of the morning. Karola continued typing up historical notes about the homestead.

The cold weather leads me to eat more and more often than in summer so I had several breakfasts in the morning and a delicious lamb roast in the evening. There’s always tomorrow for diets.

Sitting on the cottage kitchen verandah was very pleasant once the sun got up and warmed things up.

A sporty evening tonight with a big rugby match and then, after midnight, more Black Caps excitement – though even Karola, who insists on seeing almost everything ‘live’, is prepared to see a replay tomorrow morning.

Oak Avenue Weather:-2℃—12℃ 0.1mm rain [76.27] IBOrchard

SwimGym then weekend shopping.

Again for much of the day Karola and I worked on stuff related to Ruth’s discussions with Heritage NZ.

I did find and fix the problem with Gill’s weblog backup program that kept on failing with some gobbledy-gook (to those not in the know) SIGTERM error. I have had four emails from HostPapa technical support, all completely useless, unhelpful. Not that they were un-civil, but just didn’t know what they were talking about. The last conversation the HostPapa guru “kindly” changed some of my settings saying that’d surely fix the problem. As it happened he made the situation worse as I already had set the most beneficial settings before he tried to help.

Luckily, with a fresh head, I looked again at the problem and had a bit of a lateral thought as to how to get round it – which worked. So none of us know why the problem was happening but we’ve side-stepped it.

It was cold, there was a frost this morning. Zoe was so cold she would only charge to 95% of a tankful, and on the way to SwimGym she lit an indicator saying the tyres were under-inflated. Of course I ignored that and later in the morning the error display went away – thank goodness.

It warmed up and mid afternoon I continued mowing the Goose paddock, finishing just as Henare arrived wanting me to pay his electricity bill online. He gives me cash, he chats to Karola, I pay using online banking. It was almost dark by the time I put away the machines and took Bangle round the orchard.

Goose Paddock Once Again Free Of Leaves (Which Shade And Kill The Grass)

Quite A Mountain Range Of Leaves

Oak Avenue Weather:-2℃—14℃ 0.2mm rain [75.99] IBOrchard

Karola and I spent much of the day working on information for Heritage new Zealand. I also took some photos of the lean-to inside and out, as Ruth requested, but my photos were sufficiently awful that Karola will try to do better herself tomorrow.

Did a bit of mowing in the Goose paddock, more mountains of leaves picked up.

The Effects Of The Grillo

The Lean-To Under Discussion

Oak Avenue Weather:0℃—15℃ 0.2mm rain [76.02]  IKBOrchard

SwimGym with Karola, quite a late start.

Late morning off to a luncheon at Off The Track, a pleasant rural restaurant on the road between Hastings and Havelock North. It was a lunch for the local Friendship Club, previously known as Probus, and our main ereason for going was to support Peter Offenberger, who is the club secretary, and see Margery and Brian Cobbe, old friends of Karola’s family – Margery taught Karola at Mount Biggs primary school and Brian was their family solicitor.

Coffee from Fuse after SwimGym, and from Artisan after the lunch.

Karola, despite a cold wind and weak winter sun, raked leaves which had piled up along the paddock side of the western cottage railings. I did a little mowing (actually leaf-gathering) in the Goose enclosure – the paddock I mowed clean just a couple of weeks ago which is now heavily covered with grass-wilting leaves. Ran out of petrol so trolled off to the local Caltex and got more diesel and petrol.

Oak Avenue Weather:0℃—15℃ no rain [76.16] IBOrchard

Despite the forecast it wasn’t raining and there was even a weak winter sun as we set off for the hockey grounds for the final two games.

As far as I could tell, apart from the first game, grand-daughter Natalie spent most of the time as goalie, swaddled in an amazing array of protective clothing, reminiscent of Canadian ice hockey clothes.

Between the games, both being played in the morning so everyone could get home in good time in the afternoon, Karola & I toddled off to Taradale and had brunch in Bay Espresso – two Eggs Benedicts and coffees. Diet, what diet!

My photos are pretty abysmal, partly because the action was mostly far away and my proper camera, with telephoto lens, had a flat battery after 3-4 shots. I had charged it up all last night so I guess its rechargeable battery isn’t any more.

Back for the final game and then home to unfreeze in front of a log fire.

In the evening I polished off Karola’s GST return for April/May.

The Marsden Huddle

Grandparents & Mums On The Bleachers

Natalie (Marsden #8, on the left, in light blue) Gives Chase

Natalie – Eye Firmly On The Ball

Well They Missed That One, Whew

Natalie, Marking Her Oppo, Ngatawa #16

Natalie Was Marsden Goalie For Most Of The Time – Here Defending Another “Corner”

Oak Avenue Weather:4℃—13℃ 0.7mm rain [76.04] IKBOrchard

SwimGym then off to see Natalie play with the Marsden school hockey team in “Pent”, a five-school competition between: Marsden, St Matthews (Masterton), Ngatawa (Marton), Woodford (Hastings) and Iona (Hastings) – all posh girls schools in the North Island. The competition was played on astro-turf grounds at the Park Island Recreation Ground in Napier.

Karola & I watched the first game then went home. I did the start-of-week shopping while Karola had lunch and then she went to watch game 2 while I waited for Meticulous Maids.

Morning game: Marsden v Ngatawa, one all draw. Afternoon game: Marsden v Woodford, 0 – 4 loss.

Meticulous Maids came late afternoon and cleaned the cottage. Talking with one of the cleaners she let out that she, and several other Maori cleaners in Sally Pearce’s gang, are superstitious and the homestead gives them the creeps – especially the old Apple Room. No ghosts in the cottage though.

I thought a list of all the bird species spotted or heard over the past few years would be instructive; Karola and I are amazed at the variety. In fact on his visit last week alone Ben tells me her identified 26 species. I’ve asterisked the 16 I have seen or heard myself recently – we are blessed with birds though not a lizard nor frog to be seen.

Ben’s Most Recent List

• California quail *
• Pheasant *
• White-faced heron
• Swamp harrier *
• Pukeko *
• Spur-winged plover *
• Black-backed gull *
• Rock (feral) pigeon *
• Barbary dove *
• Kingfisher
• Grey warbler
• Bellbird *
• Tui *
• Australian magpie *
• North Island fantail *
• Silvereye
• Welcome swallow *
• Blackbird *
• Song thrush *
• Starling
• Myna *
• House sparrow *
• Dunnock
• Chaffinch
• Greenfinch
• Yellowhammer

The species numbers & status are taken from The Field Guide to the Birds of New Zealand by Heather & Robertson (revised 2015 edition).

Oak Avenue Weather:3℃—13℃ no rain [75.79] IKBOrchard

Cold night and an unusually sad and overcast day. I let the ewes back onto the lawns and even they took a while to get enthusiastic.

We’ve had a spate (well, four) of dead rabbits recently, three of them close to the cottage so I don’t think it was shooting. I spied a large hawk (Ben may say :Harrier”) feeding on one about 30 metres away from the cottage. Repeatedly we had to scold Bangle into “leave”-ing the corpses – which we’ve now put in the rubbish for collection tomorrow morning early.

I counted 23 Pukekos in the Totara paddock this morning, thats about 22 Pukekos too many.

Karola went off to Hastings for a few things we’d run out of and found New World quite crowded. Going mid morning on week days we miss most of that usually.

Karola worked on her historical tale of Karamu; I did some consultancy work for Gill on her website https://gill.brackenbury.nz – it’s coming on very quickly.

Late afternoon I spent an hour or so mowing up leaves to try and save the grass underneath.

… When The Leaves Lay Round About, Deep and Crisp and Even.

The Mighty Grillo

Oak Avenue Weather:6℃—12℃ 0.5mm rain [76.00] IKBOrchard

I finished putting up the elctric fence and let the sheep in. They were very happy fossicking around for fresh weeds and old acorns. The sheep are now in the Front paddock, having switched from the Middle paddock – and the ewe hoggets taking their place. We plan to let the ewes onto the lawn during the day and pop them back in the Front paddock at night.

Karola spent much of the day outside clearing away palm fronds and sticks and leaves – using one of her small trailers and the Subaru.

Ewes Grubbing For Old Acorns

Oak Avenue Weather:5℃—15℃ no rain [76.18] IBOrchard

SwimGym with Karola, and Bangle dozing in the Zoe.

Karola wrote up some history of the homestead, part of our assignment for Ruth in her negotiations with Heritage New Zealand. The focus is on the area of the homestead that we propose to modify – the primitive kitchen and the bathrooms, and verandahs along the west side.

I did the weekend shopping and got grilled fish for our mid-day dinner.

Janet Scott called in from next door with more local news.

I got about half way putting up electric fence round the homestead lawn so that the (hopefully pregnant) ewes can have some new grass.

Later I drafted a short memorandum for Ruth, a story describing how Karola has, for decades, looked after the old homestead with essential and expensive maintenance even though she was living overseas.

Oak Avenue Weather:0℃—21℃ no rain [76.56] IBOrchard

As planned Ruth came round at 9:00am. We were up and about in the nick of time.

The issue is that because we didn’t actively involve Heritage NZ before making our plans they’ve assumed the worst about our plans and need serious TLC to get them supporting what we want to do. I, and Ruth, understood that Heritage NZ (used to be Historic Places Trust) was “running on empty” having been starved of funding by the previous government. While this is true, it hasn’t diminished their desire to execute their brief, protecting NZ’s heritage sites and buildings from the rapacious uncaring destruction of property developers, some farmers, and the occasional private residential owner.

So, we have to build bridges with Heritage NZ or face denial of building consent by the Hastings Council – they are legally required to get Heritage NZ sign-off on any buildings and site listed in the country register of heritage assets before 1984-ish.

Alerted by Anna * grandson Felix, who went to Birmingham to watch the game live, Karola spent several hours watching the entire NZ (Black Caps) vs South Africa cricket match – part of the England & Wales World Cup 2019. It was a thrilling match where the South African team did rather badly in their batting, so commentators thought it was “New Zealand’s to lose”, only to be followed by New Zealand seemingly doing just that. It came down to the last four bowls of the last over and the New Zealand captain, Kane Williamson, hit a six, winning the game for New Zealand.

Leafy Lawns – Before Grillo

Leafy Lawns – After Grillo

Oak Avenue Weather:2℃—15℃ 1.0mm rain [77.30] IKBOrchard

Got to SwimGym at lunchtime due to sleeping through the morning after breakfast – I expect it was the two hours mowing yesterday.

Spent the afternoon with Gill upstairs in the cottage working on her website. Mucked about with a very popular SEO (search engine optimisation) extension to the WordPress CMS (content management system) called Yoast. Impenetrable jargon and oodles of irrelevant function so we switched to SOE “All In One” alternative and hey presto we found exactly the keywords and metadata entry fields we were after so that each of Gill’s pages has a chance to be listed in searches for the keywords she provides and will, with luck, display a short paragraph under each listing based on what Gill writes as the page’s summary.

Ben did a survey of birds seen at Karamu which surprised us with its variety.He had also walked round the Ahuriri estuary (aka the lagoon) and seen lots of bird species enjoying the brackish, calm waters.

Had less fortune with getting Beaver Builder (web page building extension to WordPress) to do what we want until I eventually caved and bought a $160 year’s license to the minimum paid version. Then suddenly the stuff we were seeking and not finding in the free version became visible.

By then it was time to go out to the new Indian restaurant in Napier, Rasio on Marine Parade, me, Karola, Gill, Ben, Charlotte, and birthday boy Peter.

Cricket – England & Wales, World Cup, 2019 – in Edgbaston, Birmingham

Anna & Felix (Pictured) Attended In Person – The NZ – SA Match

New Zealand Won – Apples All Round

More on this tomorrow …

Oak Avenue Weather:-1℃—13℃ no rain [76.69] IKBOrchard

Some excitement on the Building Consent front as, although Hastings District Council think it looks good, Heritage NZ want to review it all and have their say. Ruth is coming here on Thursday morning to discuss it.

Gill & Ben came over in the morning, Gill and I worked on her website, Ben had peace and quiet in the homestead sunporch, working on one of his academic frog papers. They went off for lunch with the Offenbergers and spent the resrt of the day with them.

Karoal and I had lunch at Lappuccinos, again. It’s nice on these cold days to have a hearty lunch – but terrible for the weight-loss programme.

I spent a couple of hours, until it was dark, mowing lawns on the Grillo the cottage lawn and curtilage, the perimeter of the homestead lawn (path of the electric fence when sheep graze that lawn), and the driveways. A great many leaves and very little grass.

Bangle & Karola Brave The Chilly Breeze – Winter At Karamu

Grandson Felix – Summer – Norway Coastal Adventure – Best Part, He Says, Meeting The Huskies

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SwimGym this morning with Karola (and Bangle in the back).

Later I did the Monday shopping – including an extended list in honour of Gill & Ben’s Hawkes Bay visit. Must remember that the Rush Munro ice-cream shop isn’t open on Monday or Tuesday. Luckily I recalled that Karola had got some of the delicious, small, and expensive Rush Munro tubs from Greta’s vege shop, a kilometre past our turnoff on Omahu road, and her fridge had plenty of the flavours we really like: Chocolate & Orange, and Salted Caramel.

There has been a bright picture of a spanner alight in the Zoe since yesterday, which I have been trying to ignore. I was relieved when Karola read the manual and assured me it only meant that it considered it was overdue for a service.

So I called the Hawkes Bay Renault dealer, Bayswater European in Napier and, after some telephone tag and a very frustrating conversation while their service department added our particulars into their database, we now have a date for Zoe’s first service, 2nd July.

Gill & Ben came over late morning and we all traipsed off to Lappuccino’s (was Bay Espresso) for lunch. I succumbed to a very pleasant GF fried terakihi on rice dish – the others also had coffee/tea and light lunches.

In the afternoon Gill and I worked upstairs in the cottage on creating her first web page using a tool called Beaver Builder. It makes assembling quite complicated web pages very easy and by this evening Gill was delighted with her progress.

We four had a rich meal, prepared over the weekend by Karola, of Bostock organic chicken casserole followed by Bostock-owned Rush Munro ice creams. “High on the hog” living, I’d say.

I was still busy helping Gill so as dusk fell Karola took Bangle round the orchard – initially rebuffed by Bangle but when Bangle finally decided I was not coming she relented and they went round amiably enough together.

Back in England Geoff & Edwina Robinson and Edwina’s aging mum are on a narrow oat holiday in Lancashire, in what claims to be summer – though mostly rain and cloudy days so far.

Through Lancashire By Narrow Boat – Robinson’s Holiday

Edwina and Her Mum – Toiling Hard

Oak Avenue Weather:2℃—16℃ 0.2mm rain [75.90] KBOrchard

A heavy mist this morning, burning off by mid-morning to a lovely sunny day.

I spent the morning setting up a piece of my web space as a web site for Gill. She plans to put her book, Eve’s Journey, about our paternal grandmother, online as an eBook, complementing the hardcopy publication. Got the program WordPress installed and set up the security and domain names so that her site can be found at: https://gill.brackenbury.nz.

Gill & Ben arrived late afternoon and we all went off to Westshore in Napier where they’re booked into a motel overlooking the estuary (aka the lagoon). We intended to go to the Westshore Fish Cafe only to find that it’s closed for renovations and not expected to reopen until next summer. So we had takeaway F&C instead, took it back to their motel, and it was most mediocre – but we were all so tired it probably didn’t matter that much.

Meanwhile, Dave, Anna’s partner, tries his hand at a bit of UK in-house building. Progress so far in putting in an new internal wall looks impressive. Dave & Bridget have much in common so when we’re over in UK together in August/September they’ll be able to compare notes. I do think that Dave is doing even more himself than Bridget has time for, but then she has two daughters at school and a job so, like Anna, she’s very very busy.

Dave’s House, The New Internal Partition – Framework

Dave’s House, The New Internal Partition – Cladding

Oak Avenue Weather:5℃—15℃ no rain [75.72] IKBOrchard

Quiet day.

TXTs from Anna and talked/emailed Bridget as we settled arrangements for the overall plan for our UK trip in August. Too wet underfoot, and occasional showers, for anything outside. Did make some progress with my programming, mainly backing off being too ambitious. Got to grips with one of the pieces of pre-written software I’m using and eventually the pennies dropped.

Ian & Karola’s 2019 UK Summer OE

• Wed 21st Aug: Bangle goes to winter camp
• Thu 22nd Aug: fly from Napier to UK
• Fri 23 Aug arrive in London
• Tue 27th – Thu 29th August – trip to Warsaw
• Tue 3rd Sep: Bridget flies from Wellington
• Wed 4th Sep: Bridget stays overnight with us at Anna’s
• Thu 5th – Fri 13th September Bridget with Tobi 
• Sat 7th – Mon 9th September Anna takes us to Boulogne
• Fri 13th Sep: Bridget back to Anna’s for the night
• Sat 14th Sep: Ian, Karola, Anna, Bridget off to Scotland
• Tue 17th Sep: Bridget train to London & flight back to NZ
• Tue 17th Sep: we fly out of Edinburgh, back to NZ
• Thu 19th Sep: arrive in Napier
• Fri 20th Sep: pick up Bangle from winter camp

Oak Avenue Weather:_4℃—15℃ 1.7mm rain [75.77] IBOrchard

SwimGym, very late because the gentle rain outside and the warmth and comfort of the attic bed in the cottage meant a delightful long lie-in. But I went, eventually.

Later we all went shopping, Karola, Bangle, and me. The usual Friday routine: Cornucopia, supermarkerts, and coffee shop.

Janet Scott called by in the afternoon for a catch-up. Apparently she does like persimmons although we’d concluded she didn’t because last year Karola’s gift of a few nice ones were still in Janet’s kitchen a fortnight later, untouched.

At Karola’s request I found the “missing black cat” message on Neighbourly and sent the owner a short message saying we’d seen a black cat about a month ago (when it first went missing). I saw it again a couple of days ago, running across the Middle paddock. The missing cat has not returned home so the owner will come searching in the orchards up this way, ever hopeful.

And Bridget sent a TXT message with an advertisement for a Labradoodle, an older retiree dog (bitch), that Alex found on the Internet. Alex is very keen so we agreed that if they did want to have this dog, and if it were still available, we would look after it for a while until the building work at 34A Izard Road had quietened down a bit. Bridget immediately replied that they would look after it while we are in England in August – so it looks possible. As Karola said, this is exactly the sort of dog we’d asked the Kiwi Pride kennels to find for us when last we went down tis path. I hope they don’t abuse our trust again.

Oh and this morning we dropped in at Bayswater, the people who service Karola’s Subaru, to see if they’d like to service her new electric car. Absolutely not, was the rather unexpected and curt response. So we’ll try their Napier branch who do have the Hawkes Bay Renault franchise, and failing that we’ll probably have to traipse over to Taupo to the garage we bought it from.

Oak Avenue Weather:7℃—17℃ 0.6mm rain [75.40] IBOrchard

Karola fed her sheep once the rain had stopped, sheep nuts and a little pea straw.

But before that Karola went off to see friend Lyn Sturm who had a small operation for melanoma on her lip on Monday. The rest of Karola’s day was spent looking throuhg old papers about her trip, with the daughters and her mother, along the coast of Norway in the coastal steamer. It’s the same route being taken this week by Felix.

Karola made copies of many of hte photos taken on her 1979 trip and typed up notes for Felix – he’s the one most interested in history in the family, along with Gill and Karola of course, so we’re hoping he finds this harking back to his great grandfather’s exploits in Norway during the WWII and the subsequent voyages of his mum and grandmother 40 years ago quite interesting. One doubts that many of Felix’ generation give a hoot, sadly.

Karola did, late morning, pop down to Flaxmere to post the papers & photos, and a related book.

I plodded on with my programming.

Oak Avenue Weather:13℃—16℃ 18.9mm rain [75.40]

SwimGym with Karola

Usual Wednesday shopping – including getting replacement “flow reducer” for the bathroom tap in the hope it will cure the tiny leak in the spout. The pressure provided by our pump, which means our showers are excellent, tends to spray water out of the sinks and basins if left unregulated.

Also dropped in on Kerry at Hawkes Bay Tractor Dismantlers to see how he was getting on with mending our 121 entrance gate – he said he’d get someone on to it this afternoon.

At Karola’s request, Langes came and took the clothes dryer away for attention – she was a little alarmed by the strong smell of burning coming from it last evening.

Young man, Tom Hosford (tomh@hdc.govt.nz), came from the council as part of their procedure for evaluating building consents. He got a potted history of the house from Karola and told me he didn’t expect any issues with our homestead application – it looked pretty straightforward to him.

Iain Middleton is escorting Indian celebrity Babu Gogineni to speaking venues in Wellington, Napier, and Auckland as he visits New Zealand while leaving his homeland due to persecution and oppression, relocating to the UK. I caught up with them at Karl Matthys’ house in Taradale after lunch for the second of Babu’s talks that day.

I suspect that Iain’s links with Babu came about through Iain’s long-running and effective New Zealand activism against blasphemy laws.

Babu Gogineni is currently Ambassador of the South Asian Humanist Association. Prior to that he was Director of the London-based Humanists International, UK, and in that capacity he worked with the UN (New York & Geneva), UNESCO(Paris) and the Council of Europe (Strasbourg) on Human Rights issues and on international Humanist activism. He has worked on issues related to Democracy, Freedom of Speech and Blasphemy Laws, Caste and Gender Discrimination, and Children’s Rights.

Babu is a regular commentator on Indian TV. His TV debates have attracted much attention, and some of his exposes of Astrologers and other purveyors of Superstition on live TV have additionally attracted well over 2 million views on Youtube.

His year-long weekly TV show ‘The Big Question with Babu Gogineni’ in Telugu on 10 TV is a Humanist view of Science, Culture and History, and it achieved top weekend prime time viewership ratings.

Called ‘India’s Carl Sagan’ by the Times of India, his work in science popularization, anti-superstition activism, and Human Rights became even more popular after his 60 day participation in the reality TV show BIGG BOSS, a family-viewing Indian version of Big Brother, where because of his clashes with the invisible but authoritarian and irrational BIGG BOSS, he was nicknamed BIGGER BOSS.

Babu was younger than I expected, one of my many misconceptions about India I guess, that wise men are always old. Articulate, a little world weary, with sad stories about his home country and its slide into increasingly non-rational populism. His examples of situations he has encountered and engaged with were dramatic and depressing; one admired his courage in taking them on.

As to Babu’s mixing with celebrities in reality TV, in fighting fire with fire his rhetoric, to a foreign ear, sounded as if it were appealing to emotion just as much as his opponents, albeit he, being intelligent, educated, knowledgeable, experienced, and articulate, ran rings round them.

I was taken aback in the Q&A after his talk in Napier when he reacted so vehemently when I asked how he measured his progress towards his goals. He said he did not and denigrated as time-wasters and failures the “MBAs” who want only to measure things. That is a little hard to reconcile with promotion of belief in rationality, but I expect that due to time constraints he didn’t have time to explain his more nuanced position.

There were nine of us at the Napier meeting of the Hawkes Bay Humanist Society – but it was on a week-day and not widely advertised which could explain why we all appeared to be ‘retired’ people.

Oak Avenue Weather:8℃—16℃ 54.1mm rain [75.52] IKBOrchard

“High cloud” it was, no rain, quite cold, but gentle breeze.

Anna sent us an email showing Felix on a coastal trip along Norway, much as Karola, Anna, Bridget and grandma Cynthia did back in 1979. This provoked Karola into looking out her old photo albums and reminding us of her adventures back then.

Imagine starting your trip in England by finding out at “immigration” that your two daughter’s passports were slightly out of date, and having to convince them to let the girls through. The trip, back in 1979, was pretty rugged although not, as I’d suspected, a tale of unending sea sickness. There was only one short dash across a deep bay that was particularly rough.

They, Karola and crew, found exciting links with Karola’s father (and Cynthia’s husband) Jan’s exploits in Norway in WWII – some people remembered him and the terrible times back then. Karola often reminds me that Jan’s very sad tasks was, just before evacuating from Norway, disabling a small fleet of runabouts, jeep-like vehicles, by running the engines without oil for a few days until they seized up. It offended his engineering spirit.

Karola also made good inroads on the weeds around my fancy Manuka shrubs, along the railings between the cottage and the farm shed.

Whilst taking Bangle round the orchard we met Peter Fitzpatrick in his Bostock’s ute and we chatted. Apparently it’s been a good year for apples in our orchard, both the Galaxy (a variety of Royal Gala), and Fuji strains. They’ve been taking out some dozens of trees from the thousand or so they grafted back in 2013 and Karola was worried that this meant our orchard wasn’t faring well but Peter assured us this was quite normal and always a small proportion of the grafted trees don’t perform as well. On the other hand, where Bostocks put in some rows of new trees in 2013, they are doing splendidly.

Felix’ Coastal Norway Adventure Begins – The Transport

Embarcation

Home, Well For Now

Oak Avenue Weather:3℃—18℃ 0.1mm rain [75.4] IKBOrchard

SwimGym, rather reluctantly as it was cold and overcast. Almost no-one there, as usual at this time of day.

Shopping later, including leaving one of Karola’’s wrist watches to have its battery changed at a booth in K-Mart. Changing the battery costs about the same as buying the watch in the first place, but surely it’s more desirable to fix rather than replace?

Mowed the cottage lawn and curtilage – it’s been several weeks but the grass growth has slowed down considerably as the soil temperature drops.

Karola wanted to put a fence round the pit; she thinks covering it with old gates still could catch the leg of a sheep and we do not want a repeat of the episode with the sheep that broke its leg – though I think that was entanglement with a fence, not the gates over the pit. And so today she did, (see below), using some of her metal portable yard panels.

Mid afternoon Karola had a medical examination, purely precautionary, and picked up her wrist watch with new battery on the same trip.

Karola Fences Off “The Pit” To Avoid Sheep Entrapment

Cottage Lawn – Covering Of Leaves Mown Away With “The Grillo”

Oak Avenue Weather:1℃—15℃ no rain [75.75] IBOrchard

Chilly and gloomy day and I spent the day programming and Karola was engrossed in a “real life” WWII spy book -about Christine Granville, a British femme fatale, documented in The Spy Who Loved (Clare Mulley), obviously a play on the James Bond novel, The Spy Who Loved Me.

We did get a bit of fresh air walking round outside mid-afternoon and, using the little tractor, I repositioned our very old and decrepit small trailer and it’s load of topsoil into the Middle paddock where Karola intends to use it to fill the rabbit holes.

There are many rabbits and they are a nuisance not just because of the grass they eat but they are forever digging the beginnings of a burrow then giving up – I wonder if it is the buck rabbits showing off to local does.

Also carted Karola’s portable yards from by the Damson tree down to the Stump Dump where Karola intends to use the panels to fence off the pit.

It was dark around 5:00pm.

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Good start to the day, listened to the Country Life programme at 7:00am.

Karola planted her remaining Araucaria tree, (very ancient trees, including the Kauri), another augustifolia (Araucaria augustifolia).

I spent the day indoors, re-writing bits of my program, then re-writing them again. Thank goodness I’m not working to a deadline.

Bangle knows a good place to snooze.

Bangle In Repose

Oak Avenue Weather:2℃—19℃ 0.2mm rain [75.89]

SwimGym with Karola

Late morning I did a whirlwind shop, first ordering a couple of grilled grouper fillets, “No Flour” at the TakiTimu Seafoods (as it is now renamed – it was Hawkes Bay Seafoods) fish shop before rushing round doing the other bits and pieces, picking the fish up as the last thing on the way home. Bangle not terribly impressed.

I spent much of the day quietly doing my programming.

Karola, on the other hand, read the latest Listener, it comes on a Friday, from cover to cover.

Quite cold as the sun began to set, walking with Bangle round the orchard, all bare now the leaves have fallen and the last of the apples stripped from the trees.

Oak Avenue Weather:1℃—13℃ no rain [75.59]

After an inch of rain overnight, much appreciated, the day began cold but calm and sunny. It being too wet yesterday evening for Bangle’s usual orchard walk I took her round in the morning, to her delight.

Picked up Karola’s friend and self-publisher of her grandfather’s exploits, Lyn Sturm, from Frimley Village and Karola, Lyn, and I went out to lunch at Bostock’s Organic Kitchen in Kirkwood Road, off the far end of Omahu Road. Wholesome meals on metal plates – today a Morrocan lamb dish with couscous – followed by coffee and a Rush Munro ice-cream tub-let.

The staff were helpful and cheerful, the ambience pleasant, neither noisy nor dark but out on the verandah in the sun. The spice on the meal was too hot for me or Lyn, though not for “tough-as-boots” Karola, although it did bring back memories for Karola. We did eat the meat and vegetables, it was just the spice-drenched couscous that were OTT.

Memories of an evening when we were having a curry dish at her flat with her flat-mates and Roger Hughes amd maybe others. Karola got back late and we had just finished. Unbeknownst to Karola we’d had a terrible time trying to get some of the curry down, it was blisteringly hot – not intentionally. And what did Karola make of it, just ate it quietly, flushing a deep red as the spices kicked in and we smothered our grins. Full marks for finishing it without a murmur.

Took a few photos of the beginning of winter at Karamu. Mysterious things happen and we’re not sure why. Karola found the upstairs balcony doors wide open a few days ago, but we have no recollection of opening them so it must have been one of our many recent visitors and they were very probably open all the time we were in Wellington recently.

Today I found the locked pump shed – the one containing the new pump for the homestead doomestic supply and the sprinkler system – wide open although the padlock was still attached and shut, and there was no sign of forced entry. I concluded that it was caused by recent high winds because if you opened the bolt as much as the padlock would allow the doors could be sprung open despite the bolt. “Pilot error” once again, I need to site the bolt on the left-hand door closer to the right-hand door.

Karola and Henare agreed he would come round after work and pick up persimmons for his wife Denise so she harvested the remaining fruit – too much I think for Denise but perhaps she has friends who would like them too.

Rainwater Tank #3 Appears To Be On A Bit Of A Lean

Homestead Pump Shed Next To Rainwater Tank #1

The Homestead Pump & UV Filter

Early Winter Scene

Oak Avenue Weather:8℃—15℃ no rain [75.48] IBOrchard

Rain was forecast with great certainty for this morning, but none arrived. It became a storm late evening and we got an inch of rainfall overnight.

SwimGym

Lad from Copas Plumbing came as planned to service the waste disposal unit. Seeing as he came out only a month or so ago to replace a faulty pump it’s only their chaotic planning that means we get two visits so close together.

Later I did the mid-week shopping, still no sign of rain. As I picked up my coffees at The Artisan Coffee Shop I noticed the air was heavy and smelt strongly of smoke. As I remarked, I’d never experienced that before in Hastings but it would explain the high air pollution rating over Hastings. They said it used to be even worse, on a cold day like today with most people burning coal for warmth it was really quite unpleasant in central Hastings.

In the afternoon Craig Treneman, manager of orchard managers for John Bostock, dropped by so that Karola could sign her orchard lease agreement for the next three years. I knew it was imminent because we pay for half the cost of getting a fresh valuation. The valuation was up a bit on three years ago, increased by $1500 compared with the $6000 increase back then. The lease payment is around 5% per year based on the unimproved valuation, so nothing to do with how well the Bostock team manage the orchard or how the markets for apples vary. Except in so far as local land prices do depend on the fortunes of orchardists in the area generally.

Finally the forecast bad weather arrived, before we’d got our act together and gone round the orchard with Bangle – so no walk for Bangle this evening.

Oak Avenue Weather:7℃—15℃ 24.5mm rain [75.20]

The beginning of a short week due to Queen’s Birthday Monday holiday.

Karola went shopping to plug the gap from yesterday’s commercial break.

A highlight of the day was Karola finding Bangle’s lead after several days of agonising over where I had dropped it or accidentally hidden it. Turned up in the pocket of one of Karola’s wind-cheaters in the cottage laundry. But that paled into insignificance compared with the following saga.

About four days ago I visited the loo around 2:00am – the one nearest to the garage, not the one off the bedroom. it was deathly quiet at that time of night and I happened to hear a repetitive low buzzing sound that seemed to be coming from within the outside wall – I couldn’t place it and ignored it.

The next night, more like 3:00am, the situation repeated. I wondered if it were the fridge turning on and off – signifying imminent motor failure I’d have thought. No, not that. Was it the adjacent large hot water cylinder, were the elements playing up, turning on and off with a cycle of around half a minute? Well, maybe, so, not tonight’s problem, so I went off back to sleep.

The next night I just ignored the whole thing.

Then yesterday, while searching high and low for the mislaid Bangle’s lead, I happened to go past the cottage pump shed a couple of times and hear the pump running. Now this does switch on to replenish its pressure cylinder every now and then, but usually nothing like every half minute. Sometimes sheep knock a tap and water gushes until we find it and turn it off so I listened and sure enough the pump was repeatedly turning on and off with about a half minute cycle.

So, problem solved – the sound in the middle of the night was in fact the pump turning on and off. Now we need to find the source of the leak. So we, Karola, Bangle, and I, went round almost all the sheep troughs and outside taps looking for gushing water. We also looked at all the places where my home-assembled alkathene pipes had joins. Sometimes in the cold weather these can come adrift. Nothing found, and then darkness fell.

Karola helpfully suggested it was probably a break somewhere in the several hundred metres of deeply buried 2” (50mm) alkathene laid by Mr Bishop when he put in the original 12 outside taps and 8 sheep trough connections. My pipes run from four of those sheep trough connector points and add another 13 taps and 10 trough connection points.

So I lay that night pondering the worst and working out a plan to locate the problem. It might be a faulty pump, annoying and expensive but not a big problem. Worse, the behaviour is consistent with the aquifer, 30 metres down, or the bore pipe itself, somehow not delivering the water needed. Now that would be a big problem.

So, in the interests of untroubled sleep, at 1:30am, I got up and went out in the frost with a torch and completed my search for a leaking trough or tap – no joy.

Next day, that is today, I woke with an obvious approach that any normal person would have done straight away. There are two pipes providing water under pressure from the pump, one to the cottage and one to the outside taps and troughs. if turning off either of those stopped the pump then that would be a big help in finding the fault.

Sure enough, it was the pipe to the external taps and troughs. That set of pipes, not the cottage supply nor the pump itself, nor the bore pipe or aquifer – that held the leak.

The next obvious step, in the cold light of day, was to isolate sections of the outside pipework and pin it down to one of those. There are four places where my over-land pipes join the original underground system. So we tried turning them all off and again the pump stopped. Whew, so, not the bore, not the pump, not the cottage piping, and now not any part of the underground system.

And we turned them on one at a time waiting for the pump to come on. Got it, my over-land pipes supplying only two troughs and three taps. This should be easy. Just listen for the torrent of gushing water.

As I checked the taps nearest the farm shed and the sunken bath used by the geese I realised with chagrin where the leak was.

One convenient way to clean a sunken bath is to drop a hose in it, turn the hose on full, and leave for a couple of hours. As the hose is under water there’s no tell-tale gushing sound. And a week ago I had done just that – up to the part where you come back in two hours and turn it off.

Oops.

Oak Avenue Weather:-1℃—16℃ no rain [75.33] IBKOrchard

Monday – Public Holiday

Up in good time, very bracing, had breakfast and then intended to go the SwimGym but there was some discussion then as to whether SwimGym would be open. I finally remembered that the gym section, unlike the pool, was open to me 24×7, so off I went.

We’ve mislaid Bangle’s leash so Karpla went round the orchard in case we’d dropped it there on the way round at dusk in the last couple of days. No joy.

Karola reported that the ram was limping and had been limping for a few days so she got all the ewes and the ram into the yards where I took a look at his feet. He was remarkably docile, possibly is tired out, poor thing. I trimmed his feet and felt his leg for swelling and hot spots but could see and feel nothing serious enough to occasion a limp. Sprayed all four feet with anti-footrot disinfectant and got him back on his feet.

I thought I heard the water pump going almost continuously this afternoon so imagined there must be a broken pipe somewhere, prompting a methodical round of all the joins and taps and troughs – where alkathene pipes might have parted ways – but found nothing. Sometimes the sheep bump taps and unknowingly turn them on, but we couldn’t find one this afternoon.

Delicious meal tonight, and not too calorific, of the remains of last night’s delicious roast pork. Followed by yet another episode of The Irish RM, the entire series on DVD having been lent to us by Gill

Oak Avenue Weather:__℃—__℃ no rain [75.14]

It’s a long weekend this weekend; bitter cold wind and overcast so not a lot of fun outside and I lit the fire mid afternoon to make the place more cheerful and warm.

Karola decided that as, in her memory, nothing would be open on Monday, we should go shopping – so off we set, me, Karola, and Bangle. Quite busy in town as others had the same idea.

Oak Avenue Weather:3℃—12℃ no rain [75.17]

Got up in good time, time enough to hear most of the Country Life programme on the radio.

Bright but with a biting wind outside so we stayed indoors almost all day.

Karola mislaid and then we found a small, old, red pamphlet about General Sikorski, a Polish war hero who was given an honorary degree by St Andrews before dying dramatically in a British Air Force plane near Gibralta in 1943. Some speculate that it was an assassination by the British or as part of internal rivalries within the Polish underground.

I toiled enjoyably at my programming.

Evening news showed deep snow down south, as befitted the first day of winter, June 1st. Alex’s birthday is on 4th June but Bridget’s family celebrated at Taste restaurant in Khandallah last night.

Oak Avenue Weather:9℃—16℃ no rain [75.58] IKBOrchard