Another birthday
Monday, as many of you will know, was Nicky’s birthday. It started quite bright, but didn’t really become sunny until early afternoon. We started the day with a pot of tea and present opening (very Harry Potter themed). The Yellow House Café was the chosen destination for breakfast. Nicky enjoyed her Turkish smoked tomato with grilled eggs and a berry smoothie, and I my eggs benedict with bacon and a cup of coffee. We nipped home to deal with the laundry and assemble a picnic lunch to eat on the beach, with some stops on the way. The first of these was the Glenlogie Rose Gardens:
We have known about these for awhile but never visited them, and even though the roses were past their best, we enjoyed the peace and serenity the gardens provided.
Next stop was the Sarjeant Gallery as the exhibition had changed since our last visit with Stella, and the shop is always an enjoyable visit. Across the road in the exhibition space the Sarjeant currently uses at the iSite Information Centre, was a glass exhibition. We also visited Katie Brown’s Glass Studio shop. There were some lovely pieces but the one which we would have been tempted to buy because it was a reasonable price had already been sold.
By the time we had done all this, the sun hadn’t really got its act together and we were starting to flag, so we headed home for our lunch of smoked fish and Philadelphia cheese on pumpkin seed bread rolls. I had made Nicky a caramel and passionfruit birthday cheesecake, and she had invited lots of people over to help eat it:
garden benches. Finally we were able to have dinner (steak and mushroom provencal) and relax. While it had been busy, it had been a lovely day which we both enjoyed.
Nicky did some housework on Tuesday morning before going to clean the brass at St Johns. I attended to the water softener and the trenching, before doing the strimming of the back garden and the berm. I also did a MacOnSite call. Nicky’s last House Group meeting of the year was at church with Advent Prayer Stations. Then after dinner as it stared to rain we watched The Secrets of Dumbledore DVD which had been a birthday gift.
On Wednesday morning, bright and early at about 9.15, the mega mulch delivery arrived from Bark and Boulders. With the money that Stella had gifted Nicky for her birthday and a little more from us, we bought three scoops, which is about a cubic metre. We had already purchased two hessian bags in which to store it and spent the rest of the very warm and sometimes sunny day, moving the mulch into the bags or onto the garden. We bought the storage bags so that Nicky can use it as she needs, we don’t have it taking up space on the drive, and can take advantage of buying it in bulk (as opposed to more expensive 20kg bags from Mitre 10).
One of the other Waimarie crew members had given me some venison to make into pies for him. This I did on Thursday morning. Nicky was volunteering at the Community Library and I had a good chat with my niece Rachel in Wanaka, before going off for my afternoon sailing. It was very warm and muggy, reaching 28ºC, which made getting the boat ready very hot work. I also collected a book from the library - Apollo Revisited. This is a selection of NASA’s 35,000 photographs which have been digitally remastered and tell the story of going to and exploring the Moon. It is an amazing book which I can highly recommend.
I had two sailings on Friday, and Nicky had an optician’s appointment (generally good news) along with doing housework and preparing a lovely chicken dinner. We started to have some rain, which has continued, sometimes heavily, throughout the weekend. It isn’t forecast to stop till the end of the week.
While I was sailing on Saturday Nicky made two Christmas cakes and some date & orange scones. I did scone deliveries to neighbours in the evening and had some good chats (even though I had seen them on Monday!).
I came home somewhat despondent on Saturday as I made some quite big errors in my helmsmanship on Friday and Saturday. I was able to correct my mistakes, but was disappointed that I had made the steering errors as I thought I was getting the hang of it. However, I was told again today that it takes time and was reminded that I am still learning.
I dropped Nicky at church this morning as today’s sailing was a Santa Special which departed a couple of hours later than our usual time. Nicky was on hospitality duty, and despise a major accident with the coffee percolators, all went well and she enjoyed the morning service.
Santa was delivered to the boat by the Coast Guard while we were underway, and I was volunteered to get him and his three sacks of presents on board. I was then volunteered to use the PA system to request the children to come and collect their gifts from Santa. It all made for quite a different experience but went well, even though my exquisite northern accent macerated a few of the more unusual children’s names.
The sailing was followed by a BBQ for staff and trustee’s of the Waimarie, and a number of spouses including my own lovely wife joined the gathering. This was the first time Nicky had met the crew that she has heard me talking about. We left after other people started to depart as Nicky wanted to attend the St John’s Nine Lessons and Carols Service which started at 7pm. This was very good, with a very different range of voices from last year, and she thoroughly enjoyed it. She returned a few minutes ago so a pot of tea is now brewing and the TV remote control is at hand.
Take care, Rick and Nicky.
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