Steaming Vines

There's been a slight frost in the last couple of days - quite unusual for this far North. The days have been warm and sunny, though, so first thing this morning, as the frost melted to dew and the sun hit the vines, it was quite a pretty sight:

Sunset over the vineyard

The weather's been pretty nice over the last few days and the sun even looked good as it was sinking behind the bamboo last night:

Dog Tired

After a long day in the garden, it's nice to be able to relax:

Matauri Bay

It's mid-Winter, but Sunday seemed like a good day to go to the beach, so we went for a stroll on Matauri Bay. It's only half-an-hour from home and it's the best beach in the area. Despite there being a cool breeze elsewhere, it was pretty calm and sheltered on the beach and the sun was strong. Not many sun-bathers out, but there were a handful of people in the water seemingly collecting mussels.

Just beside the beach is a row of Norfolk Pines. We really should get some of these for our garden!

SPCA Kennels

This morning we went to the local SPCA kennels where we walk the dogs and where we found Ned. They've been doing some building work recently and today was the "opening ceremony" for the new block of kennels. Until now, dogs have been chained to trees next to wooden kennels, or kept in wire-fenced areas, so it will be nice for the lucky few to have some really good shelter during the worst of the weather.

The kennels are on privately owned land - effectively in someone's back garden, but surrounded by lemon orchards. It's sad to see so many lovely dogs without homes, but at least they are being cared for and they all seem so happy. If Ned is anything to go by, they'll all make wonderful pets for someone (hopefully soon).

Paihia

It was a really nice day yesterday so after lunch we decided to drive to Paihia and walk along the beach. We hadn’t checked the tide times and the tide was in so we couldn’t walk far along the beach but we could still walk along the path beside the beach.  

There were quite a few people on the beach and even some children building sand castles. It was 19 degrees and the sun was really warm. We still can’t get used to this being winter!

Pot of gold?

We've had some lovely weather in the last couple of days, but the sunshine is occasionally interrupted by some short, sharp showers. The positive side of this rather variable weather is nicely illustrated here:

Pruning

At this time of year, once the harvest has been taken, the vines need pruning. It's quite dramatic, with most of the plant ending up on the bonfire, but several people have reassured us that we can't kill the plants and that they grow like weeds!

Our neighbour, Bruce, from the Fat Pig Vineyard, helped with the first row, but has left us to it for the rest. We have 20 rows (of 21 plants each), but this year we're digging out 12 of those rows to replace them with Chardonnay - at the moment they're all Syrah (Chiraz). It takes around 2hrs to prune one row, so it's probably a good job that there are only 8 to do this first year!

Before

After

Chilling out...

It's winter now - can you tell?

At least we can relax indoors...

 

Kotare

...translates as Sacred Kingfisher.

A regular visitor to our garden and, thankfully, given the lack of flowing water (give or take storm water floods!), he/she seems fond of worms and other garden grubs!

Storm Damage

Kerikeri, being in the almost sub-tropical Northland region of New Zealand, has its fair share of sunny, warm weather. As we've recently discovered, though, when it rains, it sometimes really rains!

On the morning of Saturday June 18, we opened the front door to find our carport up to an inch deep in muddy silt. On further exploration, we discovered that the majority of our nice, apparently solid, metal-gravel driveway had been washed down towards our house. As the pictures show, it seems as though the stormwater drains that run alongside the road weren't able to cope with the volume of water that must have fallen overnight - certainly the two drains into one culvert situation can't have helped. Unfortunately, once the water came over the top, there was only one place for it to go - downhill, towards our house, carrying the driveway with it!

Mud in the car port - vine nets in their bags in the background next to toppled bicycles still in their packing

Centimetres from the car-port - how close the driveway/mudslide came

From the foot of the driveway

Source of the problem, two stormwater drains into one culvert under our driveway

Muddy watermarks on the walls show that the water must have been as high as four or five inches so we're really lucky that no water made it inside. In fact, apart from the driveway, no damage was done.

Not quite the Saturday morning we were expecting, it meant a quick trip to the local hardware store (Mitre 10) to buy shovels and a water-blaster - then a few hours cleaning out the mess, unblocking drains and putting in place some temporary measures in case the heavy rain falls again!

Now we just need to get the council out here to do something about the drains and hopefully help us avoid this sort of thing happening again!