Baking and Irrigation

 It has been quite a busy week by our standards. The weather, on the whole, has been lovely. Milder nights and warm days have encouraged me to stop the heat pump coming on at 6am and we can now comfortably have windows open for much of the day. The damson tree and renga-renga lilies are also enjoying it:

At home Nicky has been busy with her usual tasks of laundry, cleaning, weeding and planting. Away from home she has also been brass cleaning, staffing the community library, and attending house group. She spent most of Wednesday and Friday baking for the Parish Fair - it was wall-to-wall muffins and cakes in the kitchen. I had to eat one or two just to give her some space to work!

I have had quite a bit of MacOnSite work, mainly setting up a new laptop for a customer, but also some quicker jobs with a number of other customers. I have got the line trimmer working again this week (the part I had ordered arrived) so have been strimming the greenery back to a more manageable length. I have also set up the irrigation pipes in the back garden. This required connecting pipes being buried, but it now means we can just turn on the outside tap and do something else while much of the planting in the back garden is watered.

We had a bit of a surprise on Wednesday. We knew that Valda (our friend from Blockhouse Bay) was coming down to visit her son and daughter-in-law (Dave and Lily) who live in Whanganui, so we had arranged for them all to come over for dinner. However, it wasn’t until Nicky received a text from Valda midday on Wednesday that we realised she was visiting this week and not next week. Fortunately, I was already planning to cook a six-portion dinner for us (four would have been frozen for later use) so all we had to do was rustle up a dessert. We had a great evening catching up with them, and Nicky and Lily had a game of Scrabble - a lovely treat for Nicky.

Thursday evening was the monthly shared community meal at Te Ao Hou marae. Nicky had previously made a peach and pear flan, which we defrosted and Nicky glazed. I made a dozen individual bacon, cheese and onion quiches. Frances from up the road in Papaiti, and Eleanor from down the road in Aramoho joined us. We had another enjoyable evening. Frances, and Murray (from next door) came back for tea and coffee. Murray wanted to have a look at the tree on next door’s section which is getting close to our roof. Trimming is planned.

On Saturday morning I dropped Nicky and all her baking at the annual Parish Fair in East Whanganui. She was on the succulents stall (the fair is renowned for its plant sales) and had a busy morning, especially when prices were slashed at the end! I went off to work on the paddle steamer. The folks at Plumber Dan who organise the annual Whanganui River Duck Race, got the plastic ducks ready. The ducks were scheduled to be released from their nets at the same time as the paddle steamer Waimarie was due to depart from the wharf. So the ducks were catching the river current from the Dublin Street bridge, in the opposite direction down the river. Fortunately we didn’t hit any of the ducks on the way past as they were being well managed:

I collected Nicky from the church fair on the way home from the Waimarie sailing and we had some time in the garden in the afternoon. This enabled us to work up an appetite for cauliflower cheese, our cauliflower having been provided by Frances.

Nicky dropped me at by the Waimarie wharf this morning. After church she had a hospitality group meeting and lunch so I walked up from the wharf to meet her. They were just concluding as I arrived. Tonight we’ve had a salad from ingredients grown in the marae gardens, Piwakawaka Farm and other community meal attendees gardens.

With the change in the season we are continuing to enjoy the change in the light, and how it illuminates our home. Even though it is no longer new to us, it still brings us great joy:

Take care, Rick and Nicky.