Category Archives: General

Rosie, Bangle, and I went off to Hastings for the week’s shopping and a short walk in Tainui Reserve. Really quite warm at 31℃. Rest of the day quite quiet; Dyson fan keeps me cool inside catching up on my reading. Pavla postponed until tomorrow.

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Short walk with Bangle in regional park. I had coffee and pie on a bench in the shade while Bangle enjoyed snuffling around in the leaves. Quite warm but going to be warmer tomorrow. To my delight this summer there’s plenty of fruit growing on Karola’s micro-orchard outside the cottage bedroom window, green growing fruit on: Cox’s Orange pippin eating apple, Ballarat cooking apple, WBC pear (aka Bartlett pear), Winter Nellis pear, Santa Rosa plum, and, smaller and younger Hawera plum, (replacement for Black Doris that was frost damaged).

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After lunch took Bangle to Clive estuary path and had a coffee and pie on the seat just before the turn into the wetlands. Just a short walk so when, upon my return, Chrissie offered to take Bangle with her dogs for another walk I agreed and Bangle was delighted.

Gulls At Mouth Of Clive Estuary

Triptych Embroidery Needs mending – 17 Nov 24

SpoonBill – Clive Wetlands – 17 Nov 24

Five Spoonbills – Clive Estuary – 17 Nov 24

Clive – Goats – 17 Nov 24

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Shopping with Rosie, walk with Bangle along edge of Tainui reserve in Havelock North.

Black Poplar & Cottonwood Pollen – Also In Paper On Saturday As So Striking

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Very quiet Monday. Beautiful long walk with Bangle, but avoiding the stop bank, obviously.

District Council Cleanly Removed Fallen Branch (see 21 November)

Council Reducing The Stop Bank Fire Risk – 18 Nov 24

Regional Park Massive Pollen Drop From Black Poplar (Mostly) – 18 Nov 24

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Wierd day for me, dozing most of the day and feeling decidedly un-energetic. One of my new chooks was chased by a dog visiting the Ormonds and the dig took out most of her tail feathers although she seem’s unworried by it an hour after the tail-plucking. The dog’s owner of course said the dog was well trained and wouldn’t chase or hurt a fly.

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Bangle in a good mood today, no sign of a limp. Went the long walk in the dog park.

On the way I got a coffe from BP as usual but instead of the familiar apple turnover I tried a potato-topped mince pie. The apple turnovers are getting to be more pastry and less apple so I’ll check out the nutritional comparison to see whether the mince pie is significant;y worse for me than the apple turnover.

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Pleasant walk with Bangle at Regional Dog Park and on the way home I looked with approval the tree work done by the Hastings Council just outside the cattle stop.

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Rosie took me to get MYLK meals for rest of the week plus we walked with Bangle along the edge of Tainui Reserve at the top of Joll Road.

Quite a big branch was broken by strong winds overnight and I’ve asked council to fix as, (observed by Marcus), the tree is outside our road boundary fence.

Dinner for eight at Allessandro’s: Jeyy & Noel, Peter & Charlotte, Marcus, Chrissie, Rosie, and me, Good food, not too loud, warm as we were inside.

Quite Large Plane Tree Branch Broke Last Night

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Bit quiet except for discussing sheep troughs and water reticulation with Marcus. Mid afternoon walk with Bangle in the dog park.

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Some too-ing and froing with Allessandro’s Pizza Restaurant in Havelock North. Marcus needs to go to EWellington on Wednesday so we moved the meal to Thursday and, a late change, we need to start at 5:00pm because they’ve overbooked a couple of tables at 7:00pm. Marcus has decided not to bring Minty either – she can stay with her cousins in Hastings. So the final number is 8 at 5:00pm, Allessandro’s.

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Aaron the electrician came to fix the generator and complete the installation of the electricuity supply from the control box on the outside garage wall.He sent ahead two apprentices to complete the wiring job. General consensus is that ants are a problem both in the genertor controls themselves and in the separate controller on the wall that switches the generator on and off when the grid goes down and comes back up again. Campbell Watt in Christchurch is sending up a replacement part for the up/down control box. Marcus is gung ho to defeat the ants using RipCord – the chemical that Mr Hills, across the road, was cavalier in spraying the wood surrounding the gutters and wqs disabled for the rest of his life, decades.

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Well the birthday present to myself, it has arrived and is up and running with some basic apps. Quite snappy, my Apple Mac mini ProI’m quite pleased with the three Samsung monitors too.

Quick run to do shopping and take Bangle for a walk along the edge of Tainui Reserve in Havelock North. Rebuilding my system on my brand new Mac Mini M4 is proving to take lots of time and fiddling.

I did need to buy a couple of little hubs to allow me to attach external discs etc when the cables mostly have USB-A connectors. The Mac Mini has five USB-C sockets and no USB-A ones. It’s been five years since I started hearing about USB-C standards and only now that the tide is turning against USB-A connectors.

Interesting fact: Here in Hastings little hubs which attach up to four devices are half the price of one Lightening to  USB-C cable.

Three 27-Inch Samsung Monitors

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Walk with Bangle in dog park. Communicated with Jodi and she said probably too much for Karola to come to evening meal this week.

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Went to Transfer Station but my bin lid has gone. I left one lid behind on Wednesday.

Picked up a repeat set of meds – a paper bag the size of a small cabbage, eight or nine different meds. Bangle and I did a long walk at the dog park. Gentle rain so we kept under the trees.

My three new automated mice traps arrived from GoodNature today – gave one to Marcus to see what he thinks of it.

Marcus has been washing down all the sheds and unblocking gutters.

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The movers for Bridget’s stuff came at 10:00am; they’d driven up from Wellington with a household move to Hawkes Bay and were now going to take Bridget’s stuff for her Cockayne Road property back to Wellington today. Marcus supervised while they man handled a heavy wooden dresser, an oak table, and Karola’s piano onto their truck. Just a few other cardboard boxes of treasures and they were off back to Wellington.

Rosie is ill with either a heavy cold or whooping cough – time will tell. SO Marcus kindly offered to take me over to see Karola instead. Jodi jad asked, via Bridget, if I could take over some more body wash for Karola’s shower so we began our jaunt by getting coffee at BP and getting the bath wash and some more vitamin D pills from the Stortford Lodge pharmacy. After that we dropped off a dozen eggs at Nourish For Nil before beetling over to Summerset Palms. We took Karola over to Miss Brown’s in Ahuriri and had coffees plus a bit to eat.

On the way home, after dropping Karola off, we went to MYLK where I picked up my week’s supply of MYLK meals. Back at the cottage we found TW electricians on site – Jakob and his apprentice. Tonight the septic tank is gong again, no alarm sounding. The pump has been temporarily replaced while they check out my old one back at the workshop.

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Recycling run with Marcus. Bangle and I walked in the regional dog park, taking the long way round.

Earlier in the day I spied an electrician’s van over by the homestead. Transpired that while hosing down one of the trailers the power in the cottage stopped dead in its tracks. After some investigation and some noodling the fault was traced to the power socket on the wall of the farm shed lean-to. Confirmed rather convincingly when I shook water out of the plug. We’ll leave it for a few days to dry out then see if it works.

As part of this project the electrician found that the cottage switchboard fuse labelled ’septic tank’ had triggered, was off. When re-energised the septic tank alarm in the cottage coat cupboard it started buzzing. The fuse must have tripped several days ago. As soon as power was cut to the septic tank of course the alarm was inactive, there was no electricity going to the buzzer. So I had no warning that the septic tank was without power. Now, signalling that the septic tank had overflowed, the buzzer went continuously – except I turned it off manually so we could get some sleep overnight.

Regional Dog Park – Dappled Light Alongside Sparkling Stream – Ideal Walking Weather

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Rosie and I dropped off Bangle at Emma’s grooming salon at 9:30 this morning. There wasn’t a lot of shopping to do so we were all done and waiting outside at 11:00 so had a 20 minute wait for Bangle to be finished.

Watched the Economist panel discussing the outcome of the USA presidential election. They think the consequences will generally be less extreme than the pre-election words might suggest. For example they didn’t think we’d see any bold and immediate action to shut down the Ukraine/Russia war which is disappointing. They pointed out that the aggressive anti-immigrant rhetoric was impractical to implement and in addition the majority of “illegal immigrants” have been in the USA for over ten years and many have USA-born families.

Right at the end they did mention what I believe is the most significant message from this election, that deep mistrust of government is widespread and deepening. This ties in with Gabriel Gatehouse’s The Coming Storm from the BBC where he charts the conspiracy focus from QAnon to a cabal of the immensely rich manipulating government institutions to their own ends.

On the way home I asked Rosie to stop at the cattlestop so I could release a young cabbage tree from choking tendrils of convolvulus. Postie drew up with a small package for me, quite heavy and I couldn’t think what it might be. I chatted with postie explaining that tomorrow I expect to receive a new computer, very new, very fast Apple computer.

When I got to the cottage and we’d unloaded the shopping I took a closer look at my small, heavy parcel. It is the new computer.

My New Apple Mac Mini Pro M4 Arrived Today

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Still ruminating on the USA presidential elections- what with the afternoon yesterday talking with the Free Thinkers then Harry – who isn’t really interested and thinks most actions of world leaders are stupid so tends to switch off. Then today had good conversation with Gill followed u[ by more enthusiastic commenting with Chrissie and Marcus over the dinner table. Chrissie made a mince lasagne, gluten-free which was delicious.

Bangle and I had a medium length walk in the dog park. The weather was perfect.

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I went over to Karl’s place in Taradale for the monthly meeting of his Free Thinkers group. Much of the time was spent, as planned. on reactions to the USA presidential election. As expected the women were appalled that any woman would even consider voting for Donald Trump, regardless of any other considerations. But apparently for the women in America, especially the working class women, having more money to put food on the table outweighed the women’s rights issue. We all agreed that if Trump were able to stop the war between Ukraine and Russia it would be a very very good thing. Also for Israel/Gaza too of course but Trump may find it a lot more difficult to stop Israel going to war with Iran.

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Bangle didn’t want a long walk at the dog park today so we had a very short walk.

It was quite hot all day.

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Warm day and sunny. In the afternoon I took Bangle to the dog park for a walk in the shade. Otherwise quite a peaceful day.

Two Chooks Each With A Chick

Neat Work Of Mending The End Of The Ha-Ha Wall Post Gabrielle

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Around 12:30pm Rosie drove me over to pick up Karola and we went to Miss Browns for an omlette and coffee. Later we drove around the bluff and spent some time at the lookout. Karola enjoyed her outing.

Chrissie took Bangle with the rest of her dogs for a walk round the orchard late afternoon. That was a success so I’m hoping Chrissie can do this again. Now Bridget is back in Wellington Bangle misses her morning walk and some of her evening ones too.

Bridget was staying with Cecilia, her cousin, in Pukerua Bay for a coiple of nights while her builders finished off the renovations of her Cockayne Road house – but they’ve still not finished. Bridget has to camp in her own house tomorrow as Cecilia’s children are due to visit later this week. Bridget had agreement from the builders that they’d be finished in time for her to move straight back in when she returned from the Olympics in September.

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Today was consumed by the news of the USA elections. The serious pundits I listened to before the election all seemed to think Donald Trump was likely to win. Whether it was the blackness or woman of Kamarla Harris, or the blokeness of Donald Trump, despite all the evil things Donald Trump said about them, women and people of colour voted overwhelmingly for Trump.

As one pundit pointed out, and as was foreshadowed in series two of The Coming Storm, ordinary and poor people in the USA believe that the USA is being run by a cabal of invisible people who controlled all the major institutions of the government such as the Federal Reserve, the Health service, and so on. For all his faults, Donald Trump was the candidate that thumbed his nose at the existing institutions of government and hence is their best hope for change. Also, accentuated by Trump’s outpourings of hate and mis-information, ordinary people felt they were staying poor because of the Biden administration and were afraid of migrants. The economy and migrants were the two top issues on which Trump ran and won.

Particularly irksome was the role Elon Musk and his influencers on Twitter (X) played in Trumps campaign and the role he will now play in deconstructing regulation under the guise of making government smaller and more efficient. He doesn’t intent to be impeded in any of his technology projects by government regulation and he expects more billion-dollar contracts from the Trump administration for rockets and batteries etc.

Bad and it’s still sinking in. Robert Kennedy junior, who was standing for president but stepped down to support Trump, is to be in charge of guiding the health policies of Trump’s qadministration. He who is a vocal vaccine skeptic and well known conspiracy promoter and racist.

Hard to sleep easy with these sorts of people running the most powerful economic and military country in the world.

One Of Two Pairs Of Mother & Chick Seen Today – The Other Is Hiding Somewhere Safe

Rosie’s Pony & (left) Marcus Kaimanawa Horse In The Goose Paddock

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Awoke early, a cool start to the day. Got a call at 8:30am, Bruce and Steve had arrived to begin work on repairing the broken end of the ha-ha wooden wall, broken when the Sitka Spruce fell on it during Cycone Gabrielle over a year ago.

Rosie drove me and I did the week’s shopping before taking Bangle for a walk in Tainui Reserve. With Bridget gone I have to take advantage of the times Rosie can drive me and she has a lot of school work on right now so we’ve agreed to do my excursions on Tuesdays and Thursdays only.

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Walked with Bangle along the Clive estuary bank and round the corner to the wetlands. As usual we stopped at the sharp right corner where you can go down to the sea and checked out the Shaver chooks down in a clearing on the bottom of the inside of the stop bank and limestone path.

Chooks Still There At End Of Our Wetlands Walk

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Bit quiet without Bridget & Tux around, especially Tux.

GST, rather overdue, submitted at 11:55pm.

Long walk with Bangle in the dog park after a coffee and apple turnover at Wild Bean Café, actually their coffee machine was brken so I went after the walk and got a coffee.

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Early afternoon Bridget took off for Wellington; she’s staying with Cecilia Johnson overnight. The car was laden withstuff she’d brought up or decided to take back down plus the back seat reserved for Tux.

Bangle enjoyed playing with Tux and Tux very much enjoyed playing with fox hound Duke but now she’s alone again Bangle is a little bit relieved.

Walked in the dog park late afternoon.

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I noticed the broody hen still sitting in her coup but the door was open. Turns out that Rosie said she’d left her nest and there was one dead chick so Rosie let her out. She was still sitting when I saw her so maybe went back to the remaining eggs.

Peter Offenberger came at 5:00pm and drove me over to Tamatea East Community Centre where Mike Joy gave a lecture to the Hawkes Bay branch of the NZ Royal Society about climate change. His thesis is that most of the “good actions” being taken by our government and others in New Zealand are delusions. The actions that reduce CO2 or provide sustainable energy are overshadowed by New Zealand’s annual increase in use of fossil fuels so we are not actually reducing our CO2 emissions at all. In addition, most of the allegedly sustainable means of producing energy or reducing emissions are in practice making smaller reductions than they cost in fossil fuels to create – EV cars for example. A bleak outlook but believable.

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Rosie and I took Karola to the Boardwalk again today and we sat out on the verandah overlooking the beach and sea. A bit windy but warm.

Talked to MiMi later on because Karola was a bit grumpy when I left her back at Summerset Palms. Apparently by dinner time she was cheerful again and had a good dinner. Also my favourite penknife, which I suspected I’d left in Karola’s apartment, has been found and awaits my next visit on top of the fridge.

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Quiet day after the heater-shelter of shopping day.

Tux ended up falling in the stream at the dog park, got soaking wet but didn’t seem very put out.

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