Last day of summer

 With yesterday being the 28th of February, it was the last meteorological day of summer, and it was a corker. Warm, sunny, little breeze, blue skies and white fluffy clouds. Summer couldn’t have ended on an a better note. However, as many people here are commenting, summer has just not managed to get into its stride. It has not been like a conventional summer. We have had no periods where the grass in our garden has turned brown and stopped growing. There has been too much rain for that. Combined with some warm to hot temperatures, some of our plants seem to have doubled in size since July last year. The weeds of course, have followed suit.

The growth in the garden prompted me to request professional help from Frances (Mrs. Egg). You may recall Dear Reader, that in the stormy weather around the turn of the year a couple of our trees suffered. This was, in my view, partially because of their size and because they hadn’t thought about the future implications of sticking branches out here, there and everywhere. Many of our trees seem to have put much effort into growing upwards, and not consolidating. Frances called on Wednesday bringing her pruning tools with her. After two and a half hours there was much improvement in the state and shape of our trees, and we both felt better equipped to deal with the remaining issues, once the right tools had been purchased.

Unfortunately it turned into a very warm day which did neither of us any good, so we needed quite a bit of afternoon R&R before dinner and evening quizzing. We came 4th with 86 points, but we later found out there had been a scoring error in another team’s results and we should have been 5th. On the upside, I won $25 for the team in the coin tossing competition. This was added to our winnings which we spent most of on Friday evening having dinner at Mimoji, a Japanese restaurant in town. Mel wasn’t well so Danny came alone and there were just seven of us, but it was an enjoyable evening. Nicky ordered steamed broccoli with a sesame seed sauce followed by teriyaki salmon salad. I had vegetable spring rolls followed by stone dine surf and turf (a sizzling hot stone for me to cook the meat on). It was all very good.

Nicky had signed up for the Lent Retreat on Saturday which was at Christ Church. I dropped her just before 9am, so was foot loose and fancy free, with the car to boot! My first stop was Mitre 10 to buy the tools and equipment that Frances had suggested on Wednesday. I did a quick trip into the supermarket, followed by the Jigsaw Exchange. Three jigsaws returns and three collected. I had some time before the Repair Cafe opened so had a coffee at The Villa. Unfortunately there is no longer an electrician at the Repair Cafe so I was unable to get our old iron looked at, but I did have a good chat with Frances. I dropped the shopping at home and returned to town to have a wander round the market. I had a chat with some of the crew of the Waimarie and watched her depart:

More chatting with other folks who I met developed my appetite for lunch, so I bought a very nice ham roll from the market and had a coffee at Article. Next door there were people enjoying a Workshop Experience day at the Glassworks, so I also watched them for a while. I planned to stay in town to watch and support Mario and Mel from the quiz team perform their singing duo at an event in the park, but I was getting hot and tired so returned home, having throughly enjoyed myself. Nicky was given a lift home from Christ Church by Marie, so we shared a pot of tea before walking down to Krystyna and Mark’s home for dinner. It was good to catch up with them and hear how Mark is getting on in his new job working at New World. As much as anything he is pleased to just have some work after being made redundant at the end of last year.

The rest of the week has been more routine. The weather has enabled us to spend quite a bit of time in the garden. The weather forecast is for a cooler couple of days to begin the week and autumn. We shall see what the season brings us.

Take care, Rick and Nicky.