Down the drain and On the shelf

It’s been mixed metaphor week at Tiramaroa. The majority of the excitement happened on Thursday afternoon. Having given up on Simon and crew (who erected the fencing) giving us a quote for a concrete patio in the garden and a path to connect it to the driveway, we contacted another contractor some weeks ago. We knew he was busy but hadn’t had any response from him, so I had come to the conclusion that we would construct said patio and path ourselves with decking. The first step would be to put some drainage down the side of the drive to manage the runoff when it rains. A quick click and collect order with Mitre 10 saw me driving home with three 3m “conduits” sticking out of the front passenger window and some flexible hose to implement the plan. While I was out, our additional kitchen shelves arrived, and then on Friday the concrete contractor phoned and is coming for a site visit on Monday!

We had ordered three additional shelves to expand the storage in two of the kitchen cupboards. It has made better use of the cupboard where we have put the Provence crockery, and enabled us to empty the glass storage unit into the shallow cupboard that we emptied a couple of weeks ago:

Is the fact that I get over-excited about new bits of shelving illustrative of the dynamic and scintillating life we live these days? Anyway, the upshot of all this is that the Salvation Army are coming next week to collect our now empty IKEA dinning room storage furniture. We have had it since we moved into Park Road 30 years ago, so it has done us very well. My parents bought it for us after we discovered on the day we moved in that there was a woefully inadequate amount of storage in the kitchen. No wonder the vendor (Mrs. Spencer) had been twitchy every time we tried to take a look at it. The IKEA furniture has been really useful over the years, but didn’t really figure in our plans for Tiramaroa, and we are looking forward to having the space. We had hoped to be able to store everything in the kitchen, and with the recent downsizing and the additional shelves we have just about got there.

We have had some lovely weather too this week, with four days of wall to wall sunshine. Nicky went to Seniors Evergreen Fellowship Lunch at the Central Baptist Church and Life Group. We had a gorgeous sunset on Monday:

The black birds that had adopted our front garden seem to have been elbowed out by the tui, who are really enjoying the flax nectar:

On Saturday morning we enjoyed listening to an interview with our Mayor (Hamish) due to Whanganui being recognised as Aotearoa’s only UNESCO International city of Design - which is nothing to do with our lovely house by the way! In the afternoon Nicky went to an ordination service which she greatly enjoyed.

Today has been overcast. After church Nicky called into the library and a local plant seller, and I have got the three drain conduits in place. Another little step in the right direction.

Take care, Rick and Nicky.