If you want a bit of a chuckle have a look at this, which was kindly brought to my attention by the Forbearing Husband. It’s quite delightful.
https://thespinoff.co.nz/media/28-05-2017/a-family-spat-is-playing-out-via-the-dom-post-letters-page-and-it-is-kind-of-wonderful/
Here we are in autumn again. The nights are getting nippier and the ponies are getting fluffier. Summer grows a coat that is plush like a teddy bear. Bonnie just goes all Hairy Maclary on us.
Teddy Bear pony…
and the Hairy One. She was too hungry to pose nicely
In the garden our summer veggie and fruit crops are winding down. Because it was so dry neither the strawberries nor the tomatoes took off until March. It’s a lovely compensation having a few fruits still ripening up.
One of my most important jobs over winter and spring will be building the soil in that veggie garden. The more horse poo and compost I can pile in there now, the more drought-resistant it will be next summer.
The last of the strawberries
Sweet 100 cherry tomatoes. You can see how sad the poor plant looks, but it’s still fruiting
As the warm weather goodies disappear, here come some ingredients we’ll be using in the winter kitchen. Pretty soon I need to get onto planting out the vampire harvest.
Self sown rocket kale seedlings. My mistake, the brassicas all look so similar as babies.
This year’s oranges starting to ripen
More garden news; when we left our old house I took some rose cuttings. Not all of them sprouted, but ‘Duchess de Brabant’ did me proud. I planted her out last month and she is enthusiastically producing a few late-season blooms.
Duchess de Brabant
Finally, I know you are all just itching to hear what I’ll be wearing with my cowboy boots this winter. So far my favorite outfit is a pair of tan coloured Workshop cords which I picked up for 50c (I know! Calm down!), a cerulean blue merino, and this orange scarf — all from the Whangarei Hospice Shop. The denim jacket, like my boots, is an old classic that just keeps on giving.
Tangerine scarf, Whangarei Hospice Shop $1.
What autumn things are happening around your place? Are you hairier than usual? Have you found any exciting additions to your cold weather wardrobe at the op shop? The comment box is open.
It’s been a bit harder than usual to come up with blog posts recently. Especially posts that are lighthearted and entertaining. Maybe you’ve noticed the change. The reason is a couple of scary and sad events that happened in April and which have occupied my thoughts. I guess it’s time I talk about them.
First it was the old dog. The Forbearing Husband and I arrived home close to midnight on the day we returned from the Big City Experience. Ella was happy to see us, but wildly disorientated. She kept staggering around in circles and falling over, looking for all the world as if she’d been on a whiskey bender. Favorite Stepson was vague about details, but we gathered she’d woken up from a nap earlier in the day and been off balance since. There was nothing to be done until we could get her to the vet the following morning, but I don’t think either the Forbearing Husband or I got much sleep that night.
The old dog.
The vet concluded that Ella’s brain had been compromised. She had impaired motor function on her left side, and was unable to control her eyes (this was what was causing the drunken gait). Most likely diagnosis: a stroke. He prescribed prednisone and said he’d review her in a week. Even as he talked about the gains some dogs can make post-stroke, we could both tell he was preparing us for the worst.
The second thing was staggeringly more awful.
A family friend died suddenly and unexpectedly. This was a kid our children had grown up with, battled in multiple games of Buzz, and eaten those ‘all you can eat’ Pizza Hut meals alongside. He was the boy who took extreme close up photographs of his nose with our family’s first digital camera, and whose growth is recorded on our family height chart alongside the measurements of his siblings and our own children. He was 20 when he checked out. The sadness of his death, and grief for his parents and brothers has coloured my thinking over the past few weeks. I want to say more, but there’s really nothing else I can find to tell you that doesn’t sound like a cliché.
Damn neighbourhood kids, January 2006.
After 5 weeks Ella is on what we think of as her ‘bonus round’. She has regained most of her motor and ocular function and, more importantly to us, seems happy. She has a plethora of daily medications now. So many in fact that I bought a pill organiser to keep it all straight. Pills are administered in half squares of Whittakers peanut butter chocolate. Both chocolate and peanut butter are poisonous to dogs, but at this stage we figure what the hell. One pill specifies it is to be ‘taken with a snack at bedtime’. A snack at bedtime! We assume this instruction is due to that old dog briefly but efficiently hyponotising her vet, Jules.
Our friend is still dead.
Why am I telling you all this? Well, because no life is all happy adventures and funny stories, and if this blog is to reflect my experiences it can’t be, either. The Forbearing Husband and I are taking more time these days to hug each other, our children and our animals. Especially that old dog. In the end it’s anticipation of death which motivates us humans to squeeze the juice out of life. We are all dying. Don’t forget it.
Off you go. Search out someone you love and hug them. Don’t wait another day.
Kitty-pop heartily endorses this instructional cartoon and has suggested I present it here for the edification of The Readership.
Study it very carefully, your kitty will be testing you on it later. You cannot afford to fail.
Cartoon by Matthew Inman at: http://theoatmeal.com/comics
It’s official. I am now financially better off keeping my money under the bed than in the bank.
The current interest rate on my account is 0%, meanwhile ASB Bank are charging me bank fees of 40 to 80 cents per transaction. That is every single transaction folks, including 40 cents each time I use internet banking to move my own money between my own accounts! Unbelievable right? Fees for last month came to $10, the previous month it was $9.20.
.
All this because my ‘relationship’ with the bank has dropped below $200,000. Relationship! Ha! Let me tell you, I’m seriously considering breaking up with them.
So what do The Readership think? Should I call it quits with ASB? Shall I start dating Kiwibank?
Air temperature 19 degrees. Water temperature 13 degrees.
Deborah lounges poolside pre-swim.
After a couple of hours painting the roof Deborah and I decided we were warm enough for a swim. On reflection this may have been delusional thinking induced by paint fumes and altitude.
Yup, that water is 13 degrees.
And there she goes. Best keep moving Deborah so as not to ice up.
I swam too, very briefly. The water was so cold that it hurt, and after two lengths I swear hypothermia had started to set in.
So, I wonder, can Deborah and I keep swimming right through winter? Plans for a rudimentary solar pool-water heating system are working their way to the top of our wish list. Any bright ideas?
For those of you who don’t live in the country, here’s a reason to feel smug. We’ve had a plague of flies.
Initially I wondered whether my rather casual attitude to cleaning had created a fly colony somewhere in the house. I was relieved to hear from little friend Amy-next-door that they also had ‘hundreds of flies’ at their place. Amy’s mum is a super efficient housekeeper, so I took that as a sign to stop worrying that my own level of domestic effort has more in common with Neil from The Young Ones than with Martha Stewart.
This is Doris the spider.
According to the Whangarei Leader (and who am I to argue), the real cause is warm, wet, humid weather, which has turned Northland into fly orgy central. And apparently the local nasties didn’t hold back. They’ve been breeding like… Well — flies.
There were so many of the little buzzers we resorted to fly spray, something we usually avoid for fear of poisoning ourselves and our collection of useful house spiders (including Doris who lives under the outside sill of the ranchslider). This time though the Forbearing Husband and I gave in. Four whole cans of neurotoxins were dispersed around the house over the course of a week. I feared for our health, but meanwhile the flies kept right on flying (see previous posting on the surprising virility of Northland pest populations). In desperation I resorted to the time honoured ‘bash them with a newspaper’ technique.
This is a random picture of doughnuts. It’s hard to find acceptable pictures for a post on squashing flies.
That was a week ago, and I’ve since become completely addicted to slamming flies. It’s better than any computer game, and an investment of 15 minutes or so a day keeps the house mostly pest free. Additional and unexpected benefits have been (1) a distinct improvement in my aim (anyone for tennis?), and (2) cleaner windows, since even a housekeeper of my dubious calibre can only stand so many bloodstains on the glass.
During my endeavours I’ve noticed that some flies are definitely smarter than others. There are those that taunt me by sitting on my newly clean windows, no doubt sensing my reluctance to generate fresh smears. Some alight only on surfaces I cannot bash heartily with my folded Supercheap Auto flyer swatter — my laptop, the feijoas in the fruit bowl, the Forbearing Husband’s latest scratchings; others play dead only to reanimate; and some waste my time by arranging their dead bodies on the floor in such life like positions that try to I kill them all over again. All in all I’m a bit worried that my missed shots may be inadvertently hastening evolution of a more wily version of musca domestica. The Super Fly.
Anyone else out there with a fly swatting obsession? Don’t be shy, you’re among friends.
The Forbearing Husband and I are away from home, practicing at being big-city people for a few days. It is quite a change of pace.
City sights
The apartment we are staying in has full length windows. Opposite and about 10 metres away is another apartment block. It also has full length windows, and they look directly into ours.
On our first night the Forbearing Husband and an unsuspecting city neighbour locked eyes across that ten metre gap. As she hurriedly put her blinds down, Forbearing Husband, just out of the shower, fumbled for some underwear. He later reflected that city folks have curtains for a reason.
So far though no arrests for indecent exposure.
Messing around on trains. Fully clothed this time.
City cowboy boots.
Due to some unfortunate goings-on with my technology, this post is coming to you from a different and unfamiliar device. Let’s see how we get on shall we?
For the last couple of weeks my farm workplace has been the roof. Yup, having resolved our immediate fencing needs, started a few renovations, (and resumed riding my pony), the next stop on the aspirational to-do list for 2016 was painting the roof.
View from my rooftop workplace.
Only before I so much as pried the top off a can of Resene paint, I thought I’d better check what needed sorting out up there. When the sweep did his big repair to the flue he noticed an area near the chimney which looked like it might be starting to rust, and pointed out that some of the flashing was, well, not all that flash. We also knew from the pre-purchase building inspection that some of the roof nails needed resetting.
The lovely builder who did that pre-purchase inspection popped around to have a look and confirmed his original findings. The roof is generally in good condition. A couple of areas of surface rust were easily fixed with rust conversion primer. Apart from the flashing replacement, the main work was to replace about 200 old spring-head roof nails which had worked loose over the last 30 years.
After spending part of a day on the roof helping the builder I decided that I could take out and replace nails with the best of them. I’ve always wanted to do a building course and this seemed like a great chance to learn a few skills. So there I was for a couple of weeks, sweating, hammering, and doing a bit of pop riveting in places where there was nothing solid to nail into.
After re-nailing, before painting.
That was late last year, and since then an arm sprain (some people fall on their sword; I fell on my arm), and a busy social calendar, kept me off the roof for a while. In the end I was very grateful for the hiatus. All the water we use in this house is collected off the roof. Painting said roof requires disconnecting the guttering before applying paint, and then waiting for a couple of decent downpours to flush any nasty chemical residues before starting up collection again. Northland has had only two rain events since the end of December, so I’m thankful we’ve been able to collect all of that water. I’m sure otherwise we would have either needed to buy water to refill the tank, or taken to drinking and showering in gin.
As of last week work is back in progress. Having completed the new bridge, (bar the decorative flourishes), Deborah and I clambered up to wash down and paint the first section of roof last Thursday. Yesterday I applied the second coat. Both house roofs are to be the same colour, and after everyone squinting at paint charts we decided on a neutral mid grey. It is a practical colour from a paint longevity perspective, and fairly unobtrusive in the landscape. After two coats though I am rather wishing we’d gone for something more exciting. It might not blend so well into the countryside, but it would make the job so much more enjoyable to be slapping on bright orange or ‘the navy blue of India’*.
* I once painted the hallway at our old house lipstick pink which was quite a test for the equanimity of the Forbearing Husband. He passed with flying colours.
When it’s raining…
and the stream is high.
If you have a kayak at the ready,
why not paddle upstream?
And then back down again (Yup, AntiGene was paddling backwards in this shot after getting caught in a whirlpool!).
Be careful not to overshoot the landing.
And watch out for the grumpy kitty. She thinks the two-legs are certifiably crazy.
