Ambling

We began the week with a public holiday for Anniversary Day. Whanganui doesn’t have its own Anniversary Day so we share Wellington’s, which is nice of them. The country also moved to the Red setting of the Covid Protection Framework, the most restrictive, but not as restrictive as previous lockdowns. This is because our vaccination rate is pretty good.

Frances (Mrs Egg, just up the road) is on the committee for organising the Anniversary Amble for Whanganui Arthritis, an event to raise funds for Arthritis NZ, which takes place in Whanganui on Wellington Anniversary Day. The Amble is around gardens, 11 in total this year, and we had volunteered to help on the gate and in the kitchen at Frances’s garden. I was on gate duty from 10-12 with Nicky. She then went onto kitchen duty for a couple of hours before doing the last couple of hours on the gate before the event finished. I had to go home to do pre-booked MacOnSite phone calls. The Arthritis Amble was very popular, and the weather was sunny for most of the day. Just a little rain as it finished. Everybody was tolerant of the mask wearing, scanning in, and vaccine pass showing requirements due to Covid. The only downside was that it was not a restful day for us.

With having had such a busy weekend and Anniversary Day, we were feeling in need of a couple of gentle days. Tuesday was a bit damp until the evening, which was lovely, so we dragged ourselves away from the jigsaw which we had started and had our pot of tea al fresco.

Wednesday was quite muggy and as the week progressed it got drier and warmer. When I checked the weather on my phone on Friday morning, this is what the forecast indicated:

I don’t recall seeing sun for everyday of the foreseeable future before.

While Nicky pottered and planted in the garden on Thursday, I spent the day working by upgrading and rebuilding a Mac remotely, and fitting in a few more pieces of the jigsaw while I waited for the Mac to complete each step of the process.

We went into town on Friday morning for Nicky to have her hair cut, and a quick supermarket shop, followed by visits to some gift shops and art studios looking for a new tile for our teapot stand, and discussing techniques for decorating the rill that we would like to build in the garden. We finished the day by finishing the jigsaw.

Saturday morning’s first pot of tea coincided with sunrise and some lovely pink tinges to the sky:

Nicky had a general pottering and planting day, along with making lovely scones, while I started my bi-annual washing of the house.

The house washing continued this morning while Nicky went off to church early at the Bason Botanic Gardens. We had the afternoon doing the Anniversary Weekend Arthritis Amble (as a thank you to the volunteers and garden owners) with the volunteers and garden owners, en mass. Even though it got very warm (29 degrees) and we got very tired, it was really good seeing the gardens and parts of Whanganui we hadn’t visited before. They ranged from small and intimate, to big and spectacular, with some whimsy and art for good measure. The range of landscaping and planting ideas gave us food for thought and discussion, and the conversations with the others garden owners were interesting and informative. A great afternoon. Here are a few pictures:

Take care, Rick and Nicky.