February 2012

At the beginning of February, most of the houseplants were still in the breezeway and other clutter had started to appear, most noticeably the covers from the wood piles. This was not good so it was time for a tidy up.

We had already begun to accessorise our new deck with a rolls royce shoe rack and a rather trendy seat.

Then we received a rather lovely artwork from Aunty Diana for xmas which was the perfect colour.

And in a weak moment, Dave agreed to make the planters that had so far been rather a long way down the to-do list. They cleverly matched both the cladding and the decking and were soon filled with the excess houseplants and their own irrigation system.


And talking of irrigation, we had been having trouble getting our computerised timer and water distributor to work. It was meant to allow 6 circuits to run off the one tap. Of course we have 6 beds in the veggie patch, plus the border, strawberry bed and the soft fruit just outside. Either it didnt like working on our slightly intermitttent bore pump, or it didn't like the number of dribblers on each circuit, or it just didn't like! Anyway, after weeks of testing the system and talking to the distributor manufacturer, along with drawing up designs for his own waterwheel, he was finally given a set of 4 taps and timers to complement the distributor which at last seemed to work consistently. So the new device got its own little house and hopefully will be reliable - as long as we remember to check the batteries.

The weather was good most of the time and showed off my amazing new lion's mane sunflower. I had been tempted by the seeds as they claimed that if you planted them as a hedge, it would be completely covered in yellow. Our plants were rather hurriedly planted out in the vege patch before we went away so a hedge of yellow was not possible but my, they were impressive.

The nursery of natives was doing well, although our original 73 baby wharangi had now become about 50. Still, plenty for the job hopefully.

The poly tunnel was amazing! Three melons to date and about 3kg of tomatoes every other day. Added to the strawberry glut, it was all pretty hard work just to keep pace!

We had a little help from the horses in the field next door ...

... which the pumpkin patch ...

... and the kumaras seemed to appreciate.

The comfrey and the self-seeded manuka in the soft fruit patch seemed to be doing much better than the berries themselves, but next year hopefully, we'll get some fruit.

Ah yes, sunflowers, and tomatoes and more tomatoes. And of course tomato sauce and tomato puree and lots and lots of fresh tomatoes.

And 16 pears and 3 melons ...

... and of course the dreaded marrows.

We planted gum trees around the border of our new section when we first bought it almost 3 years ago now. Some of them had grown very well ...

... some of them reasonably well ...

... and some of them almost not at all!

And some of them had attracted rather a lot of rather large gum caterpillars which were stripping the top leaves off the plants.


We also decided to progress the pony paddock. We had been mulling over various possibilities before Dave finally agreed to let me have my long-wanted lambs. For this we needed fencing and fortunately we discovered one of the neighbours had recently got rid of their sheep (as they were a 'waste of space') and had the old fencing ready to go on trade-me. So we bought that from them, plus a bit more.


And then set about the quality of the grass - or rather the gorse and bracken. It looked quite good from a distance ...

... but close up was often more gorse than grass.

And then of course there were the bunny holes!

Anyway, in desperation and against all my principles, I attacked the problem with some very nasty chemicals, which took a day and a half.

But at least the blackberries didn't like it very much.

And then in the middle of all the pondering about the fencing, Dave came across even more wood by the river and collected it.

Of course all our wood stands were full from last month's efforts so he decided to build a new shed from old unwanted pallets. He spotted some waste treated wood piles on the building site across the road which would make good foundations but they are rather intermittent builders so, while we wait for them to return, we have to live with rather a lot of old pallets.

And we had a lovely visit from Alice who managed to fill our freezer with a huge variety of cakes, many of which had marrow in them! There were a few disasters including the caramel cake which she successfully managed not to burn, due to my constant nagging, but then forgot to get out of the tin in time. It required Dave and some heavy tools to remove it.

And then there was the traditional caramel slice that was awesome on the third attempt and left the chooks with gummed together beaks by the time they had worked through the first 2 attempts.

January 2012

We returned to our new section on 4th January and this times things were not so good. Bold Wally had died - she had not been looking so well before we left - and one of the other chooks was being pecked and had bald and bloodied wings.

The weather had been extremely wet and windy so everything was well watered, especially the willow house. The clockwork timer on the hose for this had stuck and so the dribblers had been on the whole 10 days we were away. No wonder the grass around the hut was waist high. It was all rather ironic as we had employed another worker, Sleepy Bunny, to monitor our water pump activity and she sits patiently on the bookcase above our fridge and her head torch lights up every time the pump comes on. Dave had spent hours designing this system and the very time she was being useful, we were not there to listen her!!

Sleepy Bunny

Anyway, everything else was fine if very overgrown and our electricity bill was way higher than when we there. There was produce aplenty though...

... and flowers that just made you smile (even despite that electricity bill).

And Dave was soon back in the swing of things, literally, as we noticed a new pile of wood down by the river. It was about 350m away from the nearest road access, with one hill in between, but with Dave and his wheelbarrow, me with the carrier on the back of my bike, and lots of helpful comments from passers-by, we soon got the wood home. So the wood drying on the stands was moved into the wood shed ...

... and he set to chopping up the rest.

December 2011

Everything had been ticking over nicely with our new section in November (except of course for the bronze beetles) until we suddenly got the offer of a trip to an island way down south as volunteers for the Dept of Conservation, which of course we could not refuse. We had just 2 weeks to sort everything out so that we could be away for about a month (including our already planned xmas trip) and so it was quite full on.

We had to hurriedly harvest the remaining crops in the last 2 beds as they would not wait till we returned, so we processed and stored what we could. We had already frozen about 30kg of broad beans but bed 6 was completely planted with the wretched things which we just couldn't face, so we took them by the wheelbarrow-full (literally) to Pam, the organiser of our lagoon restoration group who seems to know everyone around here, and they were apparently very well received.

I had grown all the seedlings for the first 4 beds from seed but the last of these were still in the greenhouse and would need to be looked after while we were away and there seemed little point in planting seeds for the final rotations at this stage. In addition, watering had to be automated as much as possible, the chooks food and water had to be made as easy as possible, and everything had to be mown or weeded or tied up so that it would survive a month without us, whatever the weather.

But after some very long days, it was all rather neat and tidy and we had a succession of lovely friends and neighbours organised to help out.

All the house plants were shifted to the breezeway and a trough that could easily be refilled.

The plants around the house and the trellis were weeded and watered.



The magnolia grandiflora was watered and mulched and looked quite healthy.

The willow hedge could have grown a bit more but was still alive.

The climbers on the pergola were tied up.


The pumpkin patch was in its infancy but looking good.

There were lots of flowers on the feijoa ...

... and about 50 apricots on a very healthy looking tree. Let's hope they don't ripen in the next month.


Some rather sad looking kumara plants had arrived just in time to be planted. Not sure about their chances.


The vege patch was looking good. Bed 1.
Bed 2.

Bed 3 - sweetcorn

Bed 4 - just mulched as no time to plant it out.

Bed 5 - some very lucky chooks with quite a lot to eat.
And bed 6, recently stripped of its broad beans.

The strawberries were just coming into in full production and it was sad to leave them.

The greenhouse was all planted up and looking good.


The new path looked good, from a distance.


The grass had been cut around the natives, as the bulbs had died back, and were looking good with their new mulch.


The willow house was alive and well and developing a Sonny Bill Williams haircut!

There were the first signs of comfrey around the fruit trees in the orchard.


And the natives and the surrounding kikuyu grass on the soak field were thriving.

And then on December 7th we were up and away. Let's hope they don't miss us too much!

.... So, we were due to have 2 days back from our volunteering before our Xmas trip but the plane broke and couldn't collect us from the island so we only had one day. In addition, our camera had broken while we were away, so no more photos for a while.

The weather had been mixed, or even wet, while we were away, so everything had survived. Our helpers had done a great job and we just had some frantic tidying, mowing and picking to do in our 1 day back.

We also discovered that we had had an aerial photo taken of our new section on December 2nd and we thought it was rather interesting. Our new section includes the strip of bush to the right (west) of the section which is bounded on the other 3 sides by the almost visible gum trees. Our pony paddock is to the left of the main section and only partly visible.