Settled weather

 Autumn seems to be trying to compensate for where summer failed. The weather has been lovely this week, so we have been able to spend lots of time in the garden drinking tea. One of us has also been thinking about scones. And chocolate brownies. And pikelets. And the resulting Event Waistline, which is like an Event Horizon but more localised and troublesome.

Nicky didn’t do any church cleaning on Monday because before she left Dale had texted to say that she had done the little that there was to do. This enabled her to spend most of the day working in the garden. I washed the windows inside and out. This took me until afternoon tea time and the cuppa and rest were very welcome. After dinner we watched two more episodes of Murder Trial: The Jury. Two juries, unaware of each other, see a real trial re-enacted by actors, and their conversations and deliberations are filmed. We spent quite a bit of time discussing it afterwards and so were late to bed.

I did my usual supermarket shopping on Tuesday morning, and then trimmed some of the flax to remove the leaves that make cutting the grass difficult. Nicky worked in the garden before going to Home Group in the afternoon at Dale’s. I cut the back garden grass, then after dinner we played Rummy-O and watched the last episode of Murder Trail: The Jury. It was very interesting, particularly how each came to their decision.

Wednesday morning’s mist was quickly burnt off by the sun, and to brighten our day further Shane came and fitted the replacement element in our instant hot water tap. It’s good to have it back in working order. I have also been interested to see the insides of the device and observe the lack of lime scale in the reservoir. Hurrah for our water softening unit. The five leaders in Nicky’s Home Group came round mid-morning for a meeting with Tabea, who is the German lass responsible for all Home Groups, which went well. Nicky then went to the dentist to get her chipped front teeth repaired and I cut the berm. In the afternoon we both worked in the garden until we stopped for a cuppa and the crossword in the sunshine. Our Wednesday evening quiz is now starting 15 minutes earlier which is good, and even better, we came 3rd this week with 88 points. The question format has also been redesigned with new graphics, but a smaller font size, which Nicky finds difficult.

I walked down to the diary on Thursday morning to get copies of the River City Press for Nicky to distribute on her way to the Aramoho Library. I got a couple of loads of washing done along with some weeding. Nicky came home with the new bus timetables, very exciting! The revised service starts mid-April. We will have a bus into town (and the hospital) every 20 minutes six days a week, and every hour on a Sunday. Currently we have no Sunday service. Also, the times that we can travel for free with our Super Gold Cards has been expanded to include the evenings and the whole of the weekends. We are very pleased about the changes, especially in light of the current oil/petrol situation with US military action with Iran. We haven’t had to buy petrol yet since the price started going up dramatically, but I feel that restricted availability will be more of a problematic issue. It might not come to that but the prospects of the oil supply returning to normal any time soon look slim.

While Nicky did her regular household linen washing on Friday, I started work on setting up a new irrigation system for the Edible Crescent. The soak hose which I installed a few years ago and has developed a number of leaks, and finally burst at the “top” end this week. This meant that no water at all was getting down to the vegetables. I had been preparing to replace it at the end of last year, as we had some irrigation pipe left over from when I installed a multi-tap system to give us easier water access in the back garden about three years ago. 

Things went reasonably well with the new irrigation pipe until I turned the water on, and the stop bung at the far end of the pipe flew open. I realised that I had bought the wrong type. We went into town on Friday afternoon to deliver vegetables and herbs to Unity Foods, to sign our new wills and afterwards popped over to Mitre 10 to get the correct bung. This enabled me to get the new system up and running yesterday. Getting our new wills organised and held by a local solicitor has been on our to do list since we moved here, so it is good to finally have it done.

Yesterday Nicky went to Christ Church for a Working Bee and cleaned many of the insides of the hall kitchen cupboards and drawers. She dropped me at the railway bridge on her way into town, so that I could repeat the walk that I did last week but in much better weather. It was cool, clear and the river was looking lovely:

I had some coffee at Jolt, and a wander round town and then met up with Nicky again at church. We both had a bit of repose after lunch.

I ambled in the sunshine again this morning after the mist cleared. Nicky went to church and stayed for the Pastoral Care training lunch. She gave Heather a lift home in East Whanganui, then called in to see Laurie to  deliver a meal. Laurie had come out of hospital on Friday and we saw her briefly.

We have gained more naked ladies during the week:

Take care, Rick and Nicky.