March 2025

                                        

Rachel and Geoff flew into NZ from Australia, where they'd had a ball holidaying in Melbourne and Tasmania.  They were staying with friends in Auckland when I flew up to meet them.  I'd hired a car from Budget Rentals, and it's fair to say this vehicle was at Budget Rentals' budget end.  It had a huge dent in the boot and had more than 300,000 kms on the clock, which made the extra bodywork insurance I'd taken out seem quite unnecessary.  However, it was perfectly reliable and probably a security advantage to be a real old dunger.

  

        

We were booked into a motel in Paeroa for 3 nights.  It's the home of NZ's iconic soft drink L&P (Lemon & Paeroa) and is also renowned for its numerous antique/second-hand stores.  We spent the first relaxing day wandering around and exploring the shops.  On the 2nd day, we went to the small town of Te Aroha.  Geoff hired a bike and cycled along a stretch of the Hauraki Rail Trail, while me and Rach drove over.  Te Aroha has hot pools and mineral spas and it'd have been rude not to partake of the waters.  After a decent bubbling soak we had a wander around the town's sculpture trail, created by artist Adrian Worsley from recycled, reused and reclaimed scrap materials.  

                                                                        The next day we headed out to the Karangahake Gorge and did the Window Walk - beautiful scenery and spectacular mining remnants including disused gold mining tunnels.  Torches were needed for parts of the route.

From here we headed to the small town of Opoutere on the east coast at the base of the the Coromandel.  Geoff's friend Brian has a sweet little bach with a fantastic sea view, sometimes rented with AirBnb, but ours for another few nights.  Wow! How lucky were we?  We swam in the sea twice a day and did a local walk up Maungaruawahine Pa hill for an elevated view of the sandspit, harbour and outlying islands, and across the harbour to the sister Pa.  The spit is a breeding ground for several endangered species of native sea birds, including the NZ Dotterel.  A fantastic slice of unspoilt kiwi heaven.  Our last trip out was to Whangamata and a final dip in the sea at Onemana Beach.  This stunning beach has magnificent waves and is frequented by surfers.  As non-surfers, our only option was to 'body-surf' those waves, and much joy was had.  Then, as Geoff would say: "It's all fun and games until someone loses an eye".  On this occasion the 'someone' was me and I cracked my clavicle.  A particularly phenomenal wave upended me and dumped me down on my head and right shoulder onto the sandy sea bed.  The fracture wasn't identified until I went to ED a couple of days later.  It's complex and distal and I've also stuffed my AC joint, but I'll probably get away without surgery.  I've been signed off work for 2 months and will start physio next week.  It's the first bone I've ever broken, and though it's sore and activity-restricting (no beekeeping😬) it could have been way worse.  

                                                                  Meanwhile, time waits for no tomato, and the first batch has been converted into loads of jars of tomato sauce using my (Annabel Langbein's) usual recipe.  I've since picked another batch, some of which will be made into tomato chutney and the rest gifted.  I've also harvested the 6 silverbeet plants - note to self, that's at least a year's supply.  I blanched the stalks and sliced the leaves before freezing them in several bags.  Those leaves can be added to smoothies and all cuts can go into soups.

Madame Cholet is like a jungle, and hidden within were massive aubergines.  What treasure!  Plenty to eat, freeze and gift.  I'll make a few batches of ratatouille with the next harvest, as there are also plenty of courgettes and peppers.  There are a million more tomatoes, heaps of basil and numerous Carolina Reaper chillis to fully ripen before I can even think about wintering down the tunnel house.

Feijoas are fattening up, as are figs and persimmons.  The orchard trees will all need a serious prune in winter, and hopefully, there'll be a better crop of stone fruit next season.  The fruit cage project also needs attention but will have to wait until my shoulder heals.  The same for hedge trimming.  I can do some gardening - like one-armed weeding and raking up debris - just not too much at once.  

                                                                     We've recently returned from a trip to Christchurch for Sam's graduation.  It was Bracken's first long trip and the poor little mite was sick 3 times on the way there.  It was also a challenging test for driving the EV.  A temporary lack of EV charging facilities in Kaikoura meant we had to plan carefully.  The weather conditions weren't in our favour, using up more kms of available power than predicted, and I had to drive like a nana to get us as far as Cheviot to recharge.  There were more challenges on the way home - all in all, a steep EV learning curve.

Luckily we were only a few minutes late to the graduation ceremony.  Me and Molly whooped loudly when Sam was called to the stage to receive his parchment, and afterwards we celebrated with dinner at 'Smokey T's'.  He plans to follow up with a Masters degree later this year. 

Billy is working on the grape harvest again this year.  He's driving the gondolas and his hours are 3am - 3pm every day.  It'll be over soon, after less than 4 weeks.  He has plans to au pair in Italy from mid-April, so will have a bit of time off between jobs.  Lucas and Laura are still waiting for the final paperwork before they can move into their new Rolleston home.  Hopefully just a few more weeks.

We're making a big effort to sort out our worldly goods and get rid of excess 'stuff' that doesn't serve us that has been stock-piling over the last few years.  The process will be ably assisted by the few weeks off work that the universe is now insisting upon.  I'd planned to take a break anyway, but my dodgy shoulder will ensure I'm not lured back to work too soon.  On that note, I'd better at least get on with some gardening before I'm thwarted by the 5 days of rain that is forecast this week.  Onward and upward...

 

February 2025

There are signs that summer is starting to give way to hints of autumn.  We're still getting some hot days in the late 20s, but days are shorter and mornings are fresher.  The photo shows the clouds dispersing as the sun rises - such a gloriously beautiful start to the day.  

 

The two honey boxes yielded a few litres of fabulous sweet honey.  Some of the frames were still heavy when they came off the extractor.  The honey that was left was thick and I had to scrape it off the frames.  It was delicious but took ages to filter through the sieve.  I used the solar oven to warm it up to make it more runny, but it was hotter than I expected and that melted some of the wax into the honey.  The honey still tasted good but I've bottled it separately and called it 'cooking honey'.

 

There are 20+ litres of elderberry and 20+ litres of rhubarb wine in one of the fabulous demi-johns that Shona gifted me.  When I realised that the cranberry bush was fruiting its little heart out (and with no need for several kgs of cranberries to eat), it was an easy decision to make another 20-litre batch of cranberry wine.  Several kgs of Packham's pears will also be converted to wine once fully ripened.  That's quite a lot of dubious-quality wine fermenting in our airing cupboard.  Hopefully, it'll all be delish, but if not, I have a cunning plan to convert it to fruit vodka in my new bench-top air still.  The still is ordered but has yet to arrive.  I'm very excited about its potential, and also a little worried about its potential to speed up my demise.  Molly uses this kind of still to make gin, and my friend Jenn gifted me a generous sample of totally tasty vodka, distilled from some dodgy mead that her husband made with my honey years ago.  I'm gonna need plenty of wine to experiment with.

The garden is productive and I'm slightly concerned that we're approaching tomatogeddon.  There are 4 patches of tomatoes (18 plants all up).  Each plant had an egg cracked into its planting hole and they're all showing off.  I'm thrilled to have this 'problem' and delighted that I have plenty of options for dealing with the glut.  The tastiest toms will be turned into relish, and there'll be plenty of bottled tomato sauce for the freezer, even if I eat a mountain of tomatoes every day.  Can't have too many tomatoes!  

The squashes are also productive.  Several 'Baby Bear' pumpkins will turn into orange lanterns and a few butternut squashes are fattening up.  The gherkins are monstrous and the gourd plant is producing enormous cylindrical fruit that I have no idea what to do with.  Yet.  

It's been a poor season for stone fruit in the region, so not just mine.  It was delightful to find a few (5) Blackboy peaches on a tree that has looked considerably unwell for a while.  Many of its branches are dead, but those remaining are in full leaf and with spectacular peaches aboard.  It'll get a good old prune in a few weeks (along with the orchard trees) and hopefully will live to tell the tale next year.

Peter has been making steady progress with the fruit cage and self-wicking beds while I've been working.  The cage structure is concreted and secure, and the netting will be attached once we've filled the self-wicking beds.  Most of the beds have drainage and just need to be placed in their final positions before adding geotextile wicking membrane, sand and soil/compost.  Then the planting fun can begin.

 

Peter has also been working on the firewood pile - splitting and stacking.  Several firewood piles around the property should keep us toasty for a few winters to come.  If George has anything to do with it, there'll be more on the horizon.  We've also cut up several lengths of smaller branches to fit in the char kiln when we start lighting fires.  They'll provide beautiful bio-char to nourish the planting beds.  He's also completely repaired the Womb roof that was damaged in a storm.   Instead of roofing felt, he's attached more resilient corrugated iron which has improved its aesthetics. 

The dahlias are still filling the flower gardens with happy colour.  They really are the flower that keeps giving.  In a few years, the garden will probably be wall-to-wall dahlias, but I probably won't be complaining.  They are so vibrant and it seems that everyone has a favourite.

                                     

I had to laugh when I looked closely at the 'Bug Hotel' that hangs from the Gin Palace.  I'm not sure the biodiversity was intended to include the paper wasps that managed to find a gap big enough to build a nest.  

After-dinner dog walks along the Ohinemahuta River provide a very pleasant evening stretch, and for many weeks we've been serenaded by avenues of wild carrot flowers.  Umbels are an impressive flower form and it's fab to see bees scouting for nectar and pollen, even if having a 'bumble on your umbel' sounds more like a medical condition.  There are other wildflowers too.  We've also been tracking a huge eel at various places along the river, and sometimes its smaller mate, though no sightings for a few days now.

 

Sam and Molly with friends JJ and Dan came to Blenheim for the Wine and Food Festival.  The NZ Army Band were playing - awesome!  Peter got a bit carried away and showed everyone how to do a foot-tapping dad dance that I'm sure was universally admired.  It was a seriously hot day and much ambrosia was consumed.

We all walked Bracken after dinner along the river and played our usual Pooh Sticks.  The sun's descent timed itself perfectly for the reflective photos from the bridge.

 

Auntie Sally arrived as planned, with her trademark tiny suitcase.  She got a lot of stick about wine consumption - check out the items on her grocery bill!!  We decided to have a couple of days at Hanmer Springs where we stayed in a lovely cottage, enjoying gorgeous weather and great food.  On our way home we pulled off the road to watch a big pod of dolphins playing in the sea near Kaikoura.   It was lovely to share Sally's happy energy again.

Sally's partner Keith arrived after a few days too.  He'd been staying with family in Melbourne and was keen to explore the South Island.  Peter and Billy took him fishing in the Kenepuru in Gladys where they caught snapper and snaffled green-lipped mussels.  I took them to Nelson for a day too, and we all swam in the sea at Tahunanui beach.  We also did local walks along the river and at the reserve.

I'm really looking forward to some more time at home soon.  I've resigned from work and will take a few weeks or months' break before finding work again.  I had planned to do that on my return from Aus, but that thought got waylaid so I'm resurrecting it again.  I'm feeling in need of some garden healing and want to also pick up weaving and learning the keyboard again.  Work has been taking up far too much of my emotional energy and has resulted in some neglect of my precious friends.  That definitely needs rectifying.  Maybe I'll be able to lure them with some homemade spirits...

 

January 2025

2025 peaked early with Sam and Molly's fabulous wedding on gloriously rugged Stewart Island (more later).  Back home there've been lots of work challenges (including a rescinded resignation) that have impacted on free time and head space, so I'm lucky to have land and gardens to heal my weary mind.  And it's great to have leisure plans going forward.  The vege garden is kinda manageable as long as I ignore the untidiness.  Hedges need trimming and there are seriously weedy zones, but mostly its vibrancy and productiveness are charming enough.

We've had a sheep tragedy this month.  One of our ewes separated herself from the flock and we noticed she had swollen lips - a massive trout pout and a sore on the back of her neck.  We put her in the small paddock behind the house where she was pathetic.  The vet diagnosed 'Scabby Mouth' - a very infectious viral condition that's unpleasant but not life-threatening.  Other animals like cows and dogs are also susceptible to it, so we had to move the cattle and limit where Bracken could roam.  We got some soothing spray for her sore bits but a couple of days later she sadly died.  3 of the other ewes also contracted Scabby Mouth but they have recovered.  We don't know where it came from, but there is a connection with thistles and we still have the adopted lambs who may have brought it with them (unlikely as they're all fine).

Calypso has been keeping Peter busy.  Billy noticed she was lying oddly on the ground, and that she had a massive flesh gouge on her front knee.  She'd got through the wire fence one night and we're guessing she damaged it somehow then.  The vet recommended antibiotics and painkillers which Peter collected and I injected.  She improved, but no sooner was she back on her feet, she repeated the injury on a different fence.  Today he found her stranded on her back wedged under a fallen-over willow in the wetland.  He had to chainsaw some branches to release her, and while he was preoccupied doing that, Nike and Helios thought they'd come through the hole in the fence that he'd created to enable her return.  

Peter has new pets, pre-ordered months ago.  He won't know for many years if they've decided that it's worth staying on the property, but whether they do or not, our neighbours will probably also benefit. Dung beetles are not endemic to New Zealand but they've recently been introduced.  The ones he ordered were selected for their suitability to our region, and are bred according to demand.  When the customer before us canceled their order, it was added to ours so we got double dung beetles.  Peter inserted half of them into cow pats according to the instructions.  We shared some of the remaining ones with our neighbours, Shona and Craig, and Peter set up a nursery for the last few.  

The bees have been busy and behaving as I'd expected.  I did a quick hive inspection and found 2 out of the 3 colonies had full honey boxes.  The 3rd colony is healthy and buzzing but yet to make stores.  I've added extra honey boxes and will insert escape boards soon, then extract honey in a few days.  I'm really looking forward to my own honey again!

Work has begun on the horse arena in anticipation of the eagerly awaited fruit cage.  It's been cleared and the salvaged soil is stacked on an assortment of ground sheets.  My back is still complaining about the hefty wheelbarrowing.  Peter has since been busy creating the IBC and blue barrel self-wicking beds.  Several have been placed in their positions and work is in progress to create their reservoirs and drainage.  Most of the fruit plants that were dug up will be composted.  The raspberries were wild and infiltrated with couch grass.  The blueberry roots didn't cope with being above the hardcore of the horse arena and were stunted (also explains why they didn't fruit well).  The 3 feijoa trees did root really well and were a nightmare to remove, but I don't need so many feijoas so they were never going to be replaced.   The white currants were hopefully rescued - they were dug up and re-planted in a vegetable bed along with a rogue gooseberry that popped up in the apple and raspberry bed.  

 

 Elderberries are go and it only took a couple of trips to gather 5.6kg of them, enough to make 20 litres of wine.  Some came from a tree on the other side of the orchard fence, and the fruit ladder was the perfect, solid structure to reach them from.  They're in the freezer but I'll get them started very soon.  Molly and Sam and their friends JJ and Dan are coming for the Marlborough Wine and Food Festival next weekend.  The NZ Army Band is playing so Sam will be occupied.  Molly can cast her professional eye over my amateur wine production and give me some robust feedback.  She's also going to bring her Air Still so we can make a quick batch of gin, and I can decide if I really really really need to buy myself a home still.  I think I may already know the answer to that conundrum...

Billy is contracted to work the regional grape harvest / vintage, likely starting in the 2nd week of March.  Meanwhile, our own grapes are having their most productive season yet.  At least, there's a good volume, though the quality is possibly dubious.  Peter's going to try netting them again in the hope that it doesn't prevent us from getting at the fruit whilst allowing the birds free access.  It'd be good to use our own grapes for wine one day.  

We're eating lettuce, beans, peas, tomatoes, kale, courgettes, spring onions and peppers, and I've chopped up and pickled some of the large gherkins that were hiding among their foliage.  There are several other veges that will be ready in the next few weeks - sweetcorn, silverbeet, beetroot, brassicas, pumpkins (various) and onions.  One of the watermelon plants in Madame Cholet is pretty much dead, maybe from the low night temperatures that we had a run of.  It's a long shot to actually get watermelons, but I'm trying anyway.  I've got some more young lettuce seedlings to plant in the Verdia, which has been an excellent source of greens generally, and also tomatoes and sneaky strawbs.

We decided to take the financial plunge and install a fast charger for the car.  As there was no outside socket, the only way to charge it had been to park in the porch and stretch the cable from the lounge.  The was pretty inconvenient and painfully slow, and meant that the front door had to stay open and the house filled with flies.  We got the electrician to install an outside socket too, so we're feeling quite upmarket.  We had to chop down the large Hebe next to the porch and decided to dig up and re-route the hedge so that we no longer have to clamber over shrubs to reach the charger or outside hose.  Whether the hedge plants survive remains to be seen, but so far so good.

January 6th was the Wedding Day.  We arrived the evening before on the same flight and they met with their celebrant, Sue.  We'd met Molly's friend JJ at Invercargill Airport and she was on a slightly later flight.  Sue took us for a drive so they could select their wedding location, and they were very happy with the first beach (Butterfield Beach) we came to.  We had fabulous Fish and Chips from the Kai Kart - also run by Sue - and spent the evening playing cards (Scrub). 

 

 

On the morning of the nuptials, we donned our wedding attire.  Molly looked absolutely gorgeous making a grand entrance from their Motel bedroom.  We piled into Sue's car and headed to Butterfield Beach.  The ceremony was short and extremely sweet and celebrated with champagne and Chinese spirit from Molly's parents.  I nearly forgot to shower the happy couple with the confetti I'd made by drying rose petals.  Shortly afterwards, we all changed into our hiking gear, loaded the rucksacks and set off for the Rakiura Track.  

 

We were joined by another of Molly's friends, Aviva, and took the road out of the small township of Oban, heading west as we were walking clockwise around the track.  The weather was glorious for the wedding and the sun continued to shine that day.  We hiked to our first camping spot near North Arm Hut.  We pitched the tents and walked to the nearby bay.  It was spectacular and Sam even nearly landed the decent Kawahai he hooked.  JJ had her dad's fishing rod but had never fished before - Peter showed her the ropes.  We learned from other campers that kiwis were often spotted in the area.  We heard them in the night but collapsed to sleep too early to catch a glimpse of them.

                                              

The next day it mostly rained though it remained fairly mild.  It was hard walking - lots of up and down, clambering over roots and heaps of bogs.  The landscape is so unspoiled and much of the route is sheltered by trees and ferns and other bush.  It was a big relief to reach our next campsite at Maori Bay.  When we finally dried out, Peter finally managed to light the fire despite dampish wood.  It was another amazing location with a beautiful sunset and there was happy camaraderie among campers.

The next morning Sam, Molly and JJ tapped on our tent to say goodbye around 5:30am.  They were on the 9:30am flight (another wedding to get to) so had to get moving.  Aviva and us had the relative luxury of a 7am lie-in before making tracks back to Oban.  The walk took us along the coast for much of the way, eventually reaching the road into town.  We trekked along  Butterfield Beach and found our way to the Kai Kart in enough time for another feed of those fantastic fish 'n chips before the flight back.  We'd flown to Invercargill via Auckland (!) but via Wellington on the route home.

                                                            

Bracken is growing fast and keeps Peter on his feet.  He's growing out of his bitey phase and still has his mad monster moments, but generally he's getting easier to manage.  He's a delightful bundle of energetic fun and is totally charming when visitors come.  It's good to have a dog in the house again.  

Lucas had his 30th birthday on 13th January, so now we can tease him about being old, though can't hide the fact that that makes us truly ancient. 

Sally arrives next weekend, and I've managed to get a few extra days off work to spend with her.  We'll be heading to the Christchurch Dramfest in early March, and soon after up to Auckland and Coromandel to meet Rachel and Geoff and catch up with Shena and Doug.  And we've booked Rarotonga flights for my special birthday in August - really looking forward to getting back into a bit of snorkeling again, among many other delights the island offers.

It's been a weird summer so far - not much sun but not much rain either.  Hoping there's an Indian summer around the corner for Sally to enjoy 🌞