September 2020

                              

Spring is even more of a blessing because it follows winter.  Winter can be beautiful, but spring, with its promise of fresh energy, is always most welcome.  The land is waking up and celebrating those first flushes of youth and the spring winds are blowing away all the cobwebs.  It's a precious privilege to live among the seasons, though it's been a very strange year.  After a few weeks at level 2, we're now back to level 1 Covid restrictions, which means that normal life has pretty much resumed.

                                                      

                        

The highlight of the last few weeks has been the arrival of the adorable 5-day old calf babies.  Karyn and me collected them from a dairy farm near Rai Valley, and it's been a steep learning curve ever since.  Each of our sons was offered the opportunity of making an investment purchase, and each of them went ahead, leaving me and Peter to share calf number 4.  Lucas and Laura named theirs 'Apollo', Sam and Molly's is 'Attis', Billy has Nike and we have Pandora.  The girls are white and the boys black and white.  They have milk feeds twice a day, and have recently started to nibble on grass, hay and pellets.  Apollo drinks his milk way slower than the others (oddly very much like Lucas there!), so feed time is a juggling act to make sure that he gets his share.  They are big enough to knock me over, usually butting me like they would their mothers to get milk let-down. They are delightfully cute though, and mostly feeding time is a happy chore.  We've just allowed the big cattle access to an adjacent paddock, and uncle Poseidon is taking a particular interest in welcoming them. 

                                                 

The sheep aren't showing any particular signs that the patter of tiny hooves is imminent, but they did lamb late last year and we didn't really know until they popped out.  They seem to be hanging around closer to the calves (and therefore the house) more often.  They've had several doses of selenium in the last few months, so really hoping this will contribute to their fertility and lamb health.   

The green manure has been dug over, hopefully in enough time to break down before this year's crops go in.  The beds that will lay fallow have yet to get their pea straw blanket, but it'll happen soon.  The seed catalogues have been perused, but unfortunately, there are plenty of vege and flower seeds left over from last year, so a new seed order cannot be justified.  Well, not yet anyway.  I have all the components of seedling compost, and seed planting will start in earnest this weekend.  Yahoo, one of my favouritest pastimes.

                                                      

The 5 blueberry plants have been transplanted into one of the raised horse arena beds, and it looks like they're surviving their probably-too-late-in-the-season ordeal. There was space for 2 more, so a garden centre trip sorted that out.  The bed was well poo-nourished and weed mat has been applied.  It will also be protected from birds later in the season, so assuming that the transplant-shock isn't too bad, come summer there should be fruit on them thar bushes.

Madame Cholet has been cleared and composted, so is good-to-go for seed germination and planting (early tomatoes).  The half barrels that hopefully have live ginger and turmeric tubers are being watered.  The cuttings that were over-wintering within are now hardening up outside.  The majority of Orange Blossom, Tea, currant, hebe, teuchrium and escallonia hedging cuttings have survived. The main casualties are the Daphnes, that have suddenly taken a nose-dive.  Hopefully, some will survive.

                                                 

The non-sprouting purple-sprouting broccoli plants, that were awaiting their certain fate of being fed to the cattle, totally took me by surprise and sprouted zillions of delicious shoots.  They must have been waiting for warmer temperatures to trigger the mass production.  There are far too many to eat, even though every day has been a purple sprouting day and they are snacked on frequently when I'm out working in the vege garden.  It's lovely to have fresh and glorious homegrown vegetables in quantity at this time of year. 

                The orchard is really enjoying the balmier temperatures.  We'll have to get the sheep back in there again to keep the grass down as it's growing profusely (as is the bloomin lawn).  The big plum tree has avoided losing it's central trunk because it flowered so beautifully and someone couldn't bring herself to chop down that blossom.  After it's fruited will be the next opportunity, and I'm sure Karyn won't let me procrastinate again.  The pink ballerina crab apple in the vege garden is in stunning blossom - such a pleasure to look out on.

                                                  The flower gardens are coming alive, and most of the residual dead matter from winter has been cleared.  Some of the plants are coming away, and others are just focusing on fattening their buds.  Weeds are already in top gear.  The peas that grew from the peastraw have mostly been finished off by the frost, except for those in the little herb garden alongside the garage, which must stay warmer than everywhere else.  Those pea plants are gorgeously flowering and I'm struggling to make myself pull them up for mulch.     

                                             The giant compost bin is completely overflowing, and I've jumped up on top of it a few times to squash it down.  Unfortunately, that damaged its back wall, also the sidewall of the calf shelter, though it is still holding up.  There's another huge heap of composting materials that I'd like to add, but that can only happen when the current pile has broken down enough.  Might take a while.     

                                            

The new studio is complete, including the decking and another small shed alongside that replaces the old shed that housed the garden equipment and various crap. Just the inside 'styling' left to do.  Peter has installed a brand new all-singing all-dancing flashy fish tank with LED lights that he can control from a phone app.  He can change the colour and even create a light storm.  A rug and some seating are next on the list, but even without them, it's a beautiful space.  I'll add an extra blog with photos of the whole construction process.

                                                 7 of 9 hypnotherapy modules are complete.  The remaining two might have to wait until next year unless I can get cheaper flights.  I'll probably drive to Christchurch for them as that's the cheapest option, but does mean a delay until those particular modules are run in 2021.  That's probably not a problem because the course work that'll have to be completed in the meantime is pretty extensive.  I have started it, but it's feeling quite overwhelming right now.  Support from fellow students is definitely helping.  Vida (who runs Calmbirth sessions in Lower Hutt) has set up a Wix site and some zoom sessions so we can all connect.  She's also kindly accommodated and spoilt me in Wellington.  We breakfasted at the 'Larder', just down the road from Weta Workshop (and hence the orc photo op).

Normal working life has resumed, though lately there have been fewer extra shifts than usual, and no recent trips to the West Coast.  I'm quite enjoying this little lull, and it means that there have been no 'who's gonna feed the calves' crises.  Conversely Peter and Billy have had a few ridiculously busy weeks, including this week when they're working x5 12 hour night shifts.  They're both looking pretty knackered in the precious time they have between sleeping and working.  Sam and Molly came over for a weekend when Sam played at a concert with his old band (Marlborough District Brass Band), and they had fun playing with the calves.  Lucas and Laura are happily resigned to spending a few more months in Seoul, and we're guessing that sadly means they won't be with us at Christmas.  And with tighter UK lockdown measures just announced, it's not looking likely that we'll have any British visitors for the foreseeable either.  Guess we'll just focus on enjoying the natural pleasures of spring.