It was bound to happen

This week has been much quieter than last week, due mainly to the country going into Covid Level 4 Lockdown at midnight on Tuesday. For those of you who don’t live here in Aotearoa, that means stay at home, get to work on those Covid kilos, and wear a mask (now mandatory) when visiting the essential services which are operating (supermarkets, medical facilities, and the like). This all came about because of a case of Delta variant Covid in Auckland on the North Shore who returned a positive test last Tuesday. He had been self isolating since visiting his GP towards the end of last week, but had been infectious prior to then. At the time of writing, we now know of over 8,600 close contacts and the number is rising every hour (a close contact is someone who has come into contact with an infectious carrier, I think). Most of the current cases (72 to date) are in Auckland, but 6 are in Wellington and related. It all seems to have started from a case in managed isolation who arrived from Oz earlier in the month and passed three people in a bridge walkway whilst changing Managed Isolation Facilities. I think we all knew Delta would get here sometime, it was just a question of when.

As a result, Nicky’s medical appointments for Wednesday and Friday (x-ray, optician and dental hygienist) have all been cancelled. The weather on Wednesday was a mixture of showers and heavy showers (but at least no rain in-between), and the forecast for the next couple of days was similar (and about right), so I broke out a jigsaw. I had resisted the urge to go and panic-buy more jigsaws as we still have three from the Jigsaw Exchange we haven’t done.

Monday and Tuesday had been busy days, but not hectic. We had two visits from reps following enquiries at the Home Show so we now have quotes for a ventilation system (similar to the one we lived with at Exminster Street) and gutter protection (to stop leaves clogging the gutters and to keep birds and rodents out). As my “plugging the gaps under the fence” experiment had gone well, we had a major shop in Mitre 10 so that I could buy a power saw and portable workbench. Somehow, Nicky also slipped some plants onto the trolley. Must watch out for that next time. She keeps getting them from the bargain bin (sometimes $1 each) but this seems to mean that they take a lot more work to plant. Still, I haven’t noticed any of the more expensive ones ($5!!!) being self-planters either. We also bought a new garden waste FlexiBin which was handy as the full one was collected on Tuesday.

Nicky also had Life Group on Tuesday afternoon, and then Alpha in the evening for which she had produced 60 portions of Alzheimer’s Curry. We knew before she departed that the Delta variant was in the community, so as I watched the briefing on TV I texted her with the salient points.

I have done some MacOnSite remote support work during the week, and also discovered that the sheeplets are just as poor conversationalists as their mother ewes, but they are much more entertaining. When I start talking to them some of them will wander over, but then on realising that I don’t have a bucket of feed in my hand decide they will go back to gamboling. There is a pile of earth, perhaps a metre high, with some lillies on it that can been seen from the haha, and the sheeplets like playing their version of “king-of-the-castle” on it. The boring old ewes don’t do that.

We have been visited by the kingfisher again (it may come more often and I just don’t spot it), and I managed a better photo this time while it sat in our elm tree:

The weather yesterday was absolutely gorgeous, so in between bouts of sitting in the Barlow Recliners on the northern patio I cleaned the windows inside and out and Nicky did a little gardening (the plants were only small). We also did some laundry for the first time in a few days, and have continued on that theme today.

On rising yesterday morning and making the first pot of tea of the day, the temperature was only a little above zero. I noticed that both ewes and sheeplets seem to like eating frozen grass, that our hours of daylight are increasing, and that the fence at the front was steaming again. The already warm morning sun strikes it, and the overnight dew evaporates. This video doesn’t really do it justice, but it might give you an insight:

Take care, Rick