Pie key to the week

 Even though meteorological summer doesn’t start until tomorrow, the weather doesn’t seem to have received the memo. We have had mainly hot sunny days with the temperatures hitting the mid to high 20’s; 28º on Wednesday. The accompanying warm nights have not helped with sleep, but putting on the fan in the bedroom did. The flax are bursting with flowers on tall spears and the tui are enjoying them:

Continuing digging the trench for the water feature power supply has been my main task of the week, but I have finished:

Our sparky is going to come and do a site survey next week, so I’m hopeful the cable laying won’t be too far away. Having a 20+ metre trench running through the garden with various soil heaps would have a health and safety inspector shaking their heads. We bought some black paving bricks yesterday (amongst other things) to stand the Oamaru stone sculpture on and it looks really good in the half wine barrel. All we need now is power and water.

The weather has also enabled Nicky to spend more time in the garden planting and weeding. She cleaned in church on Monday, hosted the last Home Group Bible study meeting of the year on Tuesday, and staffed the Aramoho Library on Thursday. Friday morning featured a sumptuous morning tea at the Vicarage for the pastoral care team thank you and she delivered some more home grown edibles to Unity Foods while she was in town. Unity Foods is run from Christ Church lower lounge to provide a free supermarket to help provide weekend supplies. Numerous Whanganui businesses and individuals contribute to it weekly.

It has been quite a sociable week. On Monday we had dinner at Caroline’s Boatshed. Heather, who worked on the Waimarie with me for a while, had her partner visiting from the US (she is having problems getting into the US), so Heather invited a group of friends for dinner and a catch-up. Nicky had a steak and I had scallops and both were up to their usual good standard, and the service was its usual sedate pace, but we enjoyed the evening.

There was no quiz on Wednesday because Pete the Quiz Master was unwell. Partially as a result of this, John called in for a cuppa, snack and catch-up on Thursday lunchtime. While he was here he gave me a tutorial on how the refill the spools for my line trimmer with new “string”. I was able to cut the grass again on Friday.

When I got up at 5.30am Friday morning to make the first pot of tea of the day and empty the dishwasher, I was treated by a glorious pink sky that coloured all of the living room with it’s light:

Jacqui came over on Friday afternoon to deliver Nicky’s hats that she has made and resized for her. One is a birthday gift, and the other Nicky purchased for herself to match a wedding outfit I bought for her in Blockhouse Bay. They are both gorgeous and fit perfectly. In the evening Nicky prepared Key Lime pies (5 in total of three differing sizes) by combining two recipes together. She discovered that Key Lime pie is Mike’s favourite dessert and we had invited him and John for dinner on Saturday, prior to our quiz team games evening.

Saturday was a busy day. We went into town, first stop Mitre 10 where the black bricks were purchased. In addition I got a couple more things I need for our new irrigation system, a tool belt for Nicky, and some diatomaceous stone bath mats. Stella had suggested we try them as a slip resistant surface in the shower and kindly sent us some funds to get started last Christmas. It has taken us ages to find something but Nicky spotted them yesterday and they had five in a suitable shade of grey. We bought three to try them out, which went well. No slipping at all. So Nicky returned to buy the other two today. Our shower is quite large at just under 2 square metres.

Next stop was the Jigsaw Exchange to return the hot air ballon puzzle, then up to Otamatea to deliver a letter while on our way to Westmere for Art in The Garden. This is an annual event for Whanganui artists to display their work, particularly those who work with ceramics and garden sculptures. While it was interesting nothing really grabbed us that we could afford, but we enjoyed a cuppa and savoury scone and chatting to folks from church.

We returned home for lunch and preparation for the evening. We had a lovely dinner with John and Mike. Nicky prepared beef mince in gravy with Yorkshire pudding followed by the highly anticipated Key Lime pie, which didn’t disappoint. It was a lovely meal with a very jovial atmosphere. We were expecting there to be a group of eight of us, but only Danny joined the four of us for the games evening. He brought “Race to the Top” with him which is similar to Trivial Pursuit but with more strategic options for moving players pieces. It could have last for hours but both Nicky and I were tired so we stopped at 9.15 and declared John the winner. It was an enjoyable way to finish a lovely day.

This morning started a little cooler than recently, but that didn’t last long. Nicky went to church and I enjoyed coffee in the sunshine and listening to some music. Nicky was quite late back with going to Mitre 10 after church but just managed to get the watering finished of newly planted vegetables et al, before the rain came. With it being the first day of advent some decorations have been put up this afternoon. Nicky is preparing tomato soup and rye bread for tea, followed by left over Key Lime pie. Lovely.

Take care, Rick and Nicky.