Our Christmas guests – Kaja and co, and Dave – arrived safely and happily and shared Christmas with us. The weather was in holiday-mode too – lots of sunshine and heat. Dave took us out to see the new Star Wars film (excellent) and travelled back to Christchurch with Lucas, to try his luck with finding work there. Kaja, Jeremy, Michael and Melissa stayed awhile with us at home, plus a few nights at Picton Top Ten camp site. Then they travelled to Kaikoura and Hanmer before flying home from Christchurch. The twins were toddlers the last time we saw them, now they’re all grown up to 8 years old! And talking of grown up, Lucas was 21 years old on January 13th. It’s hard not to dwell on being an old git. I've recently had some surgery which has curtailed my garden activities to nearly nothing for now. Hopefully that'll improve in the next few weeks while I watch everything grow and mature. And hopefully that won't be too much of a frustrating prospect. 
Weeding remains a momentous task. A break from the garden whilst we had visitors, followed by a week’s work on the West Coast has given the weeds free reign. It seems they’ve thoroughly enjoyed themselves, rampaging through the beds, hedges and paths. Despite the quantity, they haven’t got themselves too well established so are relatively easy to pull. Grass and clover are always the most tricky to get rid of, though the clover redeems itself by fixing nitrogen into the soil. Wild sorrel is also a pain in the arse as it happily leaves its roots behind. The rest I’m mostly rather fond of, even the thistles. The photo is happily a 'before' shot'.
The paddocks are dry, dry, dry. Peter’s resuscitated the grass cutter and plans to do some topping of the dry grass in the paddocks which weren’t used for hay. Underneath the dry stalks, they’re actually not too bad – lots of clover (white and red) coming through. We’re ever hopeful that we’ll get a good dousing of rain anytime soon, but that’s more optimistic than realistic. The soft fruit has come of age and produced a fabulous crop. Only the blueberries were totally stripped by the birds. They shared the remaining fruits. Raspberries, boysenberries, red, black and white currants, and amazing gooseberries are prolific and delicious.
There are 2 kinds of the latter – the usual pinky purple large desert gooseberries, and new this year, a much smaller grape-like dark purple variety which is very sweet with a tangy gooseberry after-taste. Totally yum, but no idea about the variety - perhaps they are just an ordinary desert gooseberries that have responded to the drought. It doesn't explain why there are also ordinary desert gooseberries which look like they're supposed to. A serendipitous mystery indeed.
The vege garden is magnificent, and that’s not just the weeds. Plenty of greens, beetroot and snow peas so far. Corn, carrots, onions and beans are fattening up nicely. More onions and leeks planted. The low circular hedges are coming away too, even starting to look like hedges and in need of regular trimming. The new trees in the horse arena are doing OK too. One of the olives is dead, but the rest are thriving and so are the citrus. The hedging Teuchrium and Corokia are also coming away and already flowering. More flowers for the birds and the bees!
The orchard trees are mostly heaving with fruit. It’s a glorious sight, and it’s particularly pleasant to be out there in the cool of the early evening. Some branches have had to be tied onto their stakes to support the weight of the fruit. I’ve done a bit of thinning, but have to admit that thinning fruit is a task I find difficult. It just feels so counter-intuitive and a bit unkind. The cherries have been scoffed by the birds – again. Still didn’t get round to netting them, oops. But there are loads of plums, peaches, apples and pears of many varieties. There’s a good crop of Bramley apples for pies and crumbles, and more Foxwood Broxwelp cider apples than you can shake a stick at. Must dig out a cider recipe. The pear trees that arch to make the entrance to the veg garden have fruited well for the first time. Can't wait to see what they taste like. The red pears have been most prolific, and I particularly like the way that a couple of them dangle down from on high like a pair of testicles. I'm too short to be bothered, but the extra height that the boys have has led to several complaints about being biffed on the head as they enter the veg arena!! 
Peter has made progress on the chicken housing, and one side of the big original run is complete. It is currently housing Cornelius and 2 of his harem. The other 2 hens have been sitting on eggs for a while. So far only four gorgeous fluffy bundles have hatched, 2 of these have sadly disappeared and it’s not looking promising for any others to hatch. We don't really need more chooks, but must try and work out what's gone wrong this year. We weren't really ready for chicks, so the hen house conditions weren't ideal. Plus we suspect that rats may be responsible for some of the losses - a tricky problem to resolve.
Madame Cholet is looking after her charges admirably. The tunnel house is full of salad plants (lettuce, tomatoes, cucumber, peppers and aubergines) and some basil and a few colourful flowers to keep the beneficial insects happy. The lettuce and cucumber are harvestable, and the others are fruiting up nicely. It gets very hot in there (40°+) on some of sunniest days, so watering is at least a daily chore.
There’re also salad plantings in the newest keyhole bed. A few more tomatoes and aubergines. There were supposed to be more cucumbers there, but it seems my usually robust (haha) labelling system went awry. There are 5 very healthy plants which may or may not be butternut or crown pumpkins, or gourds. It’s quite a happy misunderstanding though, as pumpkin varieties need a lot of nourishment, and this bed was the former compost heap. I do have pumpkins elsewhere in the vege garden, so there may be a pumpkin glut ahead. There are worse things (eh Karyn??).
Leggy the lamb is looking more majestic than ever – definitely a promising contender for the flock ram. Here’s hoping he’s not a ‘jaffa’ (that’s an English ‘jaffa’ meaning a seedless orange - a Del-boy classic - rather than a derogatory term for an Aucklander) and that he has many happy years ahead of him. We also have new wildlife, this time amphibious in the form of a pair of native green bell frogs. There's a huge wetland area at Peter's work, and he's been trying to catch some for a while. This pair were inhabiting a drain before he caught them, and they seem to have settled in well. We have seen them on many occasions, though only briefly before they're aware that we're around. Their night time croaking is enough to keep us awake at times!
This year I’ve got a fantastic 24 litres of the best honey in the world. I got several litres before Christmas, and then the remainder in early January. It was extracted manually – scraping the frames and filtering and sieving the resulting honey/wax mix. The honey consistency is perfect, and the flavour is amazing. I wasn’t going to make more mead this year, but since last year's is so delish, and there is so much spare this year, I might just have to make more. Catastrophic I know, but sometimes you just have to do what you have to do. Billy hung up the bee suit and added a mask of Mr Bean inside the netting - it was uncannily spooky in the dusk light.
The bees put on a Christmas Day performance for our guests – a particularly spectacular swarm. The large swarm took a while to gather and drape themselves on a high branch of the tulip tree. Before I could decide what to do with them, they were gone. Amazing that they arrived with the sound of a spitfire, and yet left almost silently. Thankfully both hives had been varroa treated. That was late in the season for a swarm, but not as late as the next swarm on January 9th. This was a smaller swarm and settled on a delicate branch of the fig tree. It was easy to knock into a cardboard box and has gone to a new home with a novice beekeeper. The swarm was from the gentler of my hives, so hopefully a good prospect for a 'newbee'. Since then there've been more swarms, but I'm not in any position to check out what's really happening in there. Feral swarms don't have much chance of survival because of varroa. Hopefully at least they wouldn't have be carrying too great a varroa load when they swarmed.
Hokitika is a delightful arty crafty place on the West Coast – a cool little town where work was available. The beach is actually in the town – you just walk through the shops and there it is. It’s a perfect place to while away some hours, steeped in beautiful coastal and rain forest scenery. Luckily for me, the weather was completely charming – hot, sunny and barely a breeze. The usual rains came on the day I left. Unluckily for me I was on call. Many of the most gorgeous places don’t receive a cell phone signal, so I couldn’t really linger. It was enough to whet my appetite to explore this part of New Zealand without restrictions at a later date.
Roll on the end of El Nino and for a break from the heat, and roll on a quick recovery so I can get back to the gardening. Though it's a welcome break from paid work and a blessed relief from worsening health symptoms, I'm not sure how long simply 'smelling the roses' will sustain my soul. Massive thanks to those who've supported my body and spirits these last few days - you know who you are and I hope you know you're awesome.
A healthy and happy 2016 to all!
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