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!
Monday, 11 July 2011
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.
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:
Sunday, 10 July 2011
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!
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!
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| Before |
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| After |
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!
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!
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!
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!
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| Mud in the car port - vine nets in their bags in the background next to toppled bicycles still in their packing |
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| Centimetres from the car-port - how close the driveway/mudslide came |
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| From the foot of the driveway |
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| 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!
Sunday, 5 June 2011
After months at sea...
At last! After four months (mostly at sea), our UK belongings have been delivered! It's surprising the things we're most glad to receive. It's not the big things, but things like:
So, with supervision from Milly and Ned, we've been hard at work today, emptying around half of our 90+ boxes. The kitchen is now fully stocked, the wardrobes full of our clothes and our newly fitted-out office is now also kitted-out with all our gadgets and gizmos.
Tomorrow it's time for us to find homes for books, DVDs and maybe a few CDs and then we can finally put all our furniture in the rooms for which they were intended.
- Wellington boots (referred to as gum boots over here) which will make walking the dogs and tending the vines during these harsh Winter months a lot more bearable!
- Photos, pictures and even the occasional ornament, which really make this home feel like our home.
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