Rick, Nicky and Claire in NZ

 With both of us being retired our home activities are often determined by the weather. Neither of us cares for gardening or working outside when it is raining, cold, windy, or any combination of those conditions. This week has been a case in point. The week began with the State of Emergency being lifted, but the passing cyclone left us with wind and rain. A southerly breeze stepped in a reduced the overnight temperatures to 3º or 4º, encouraging us to change to the winter quilt on our bed. When not needing to go out we stayed at inside and started a colourful jigsaw of vintage gardening book covers: Three pieces were missing but we enjoyed it all the same. We finished it in time to return to the Jigsaw Exchange on Saturday. We ran some errands in town on Wednesday as the weather was dryer, investigating replacement mattresses for our bed amongst other things. It isn’t often that we go into town together so it was a bit of a treat. Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone read by S...

 We rose this morning a little before 7am and as soon as we looked out of the bedroom window noticed the river was much higher than usual. A few minutes later the river and surrounding hills were shrouded in mist as the sun began to warm the air. After we had emptied the dishwasher and were drinking our first cups of tea I discovered a local State of Emergency had been declared in Ruapehu, the district up-river from us. Heavy rain had caused flash flooding. As the mist cleared we could see the river was also moving very quickly. At around 8am the council announced a local State of Emergency for Whanganui, noting particularly the low lying areas in town, along Anzac Parade, and down to Putiki. Nicky got ready for church and I set off for my amble heading for the railway bridge. The bridge pillars give a good idea of the speed of the river and also carry depth indicators: The morning was bright and sunny so I decided to take advantage of our new Sunday bus service to go into town. I ...

 For most of the week the April weather has continued where March left off. Cool beginnings and ends, glorious warm sunshine in-between. As a result we have a flower on the camilla and Dragons Gold on the kowhai. It has only changed today as Cyclone Vaianu approaches. We recored the top temperature in the country for the first three days of the week, 27º on Monday. Some of the sunrises have been very colourful. This was Tuesday: It being the Easter school holidays, Nicky’s home group had a social this week. She made date scones for her food contribution, and I was able to sample a few to make sure they passed muster. Wednesday was Nicky’s monthly book club meeting and afternoon hospital visiting. We were quizzing in the evening. Danny and John were unable to make it, but Mike, Margie, Phil, Nicky and I made a reasonable fist of it coming 9th with 80 points. The library was hot and tiring on Thursday so Nicky required a cuppa and a lie down on her return. Yet again she enjoyed the G...

 Thursday was the last day of the working week for Number 1 daughter prior to the five (!) day long Easter weekend. She kindly (?) sent me this photo of the bunny fest that was happening in the office: I could almost smell them. Fortunately we have been working our way through a half dozen ourselves, and we have another packet in the freezer incase of a bunny emergency. We have had a mainly fine and sunny week again, hitting the low 20’s in the shade most days. This has enabled more work in the garden and easy drying of the washing. The jigsaw was finally finished on Monday evening. Nicky’s Home Group was at church on Tuesday afternoon with the Holy Week prayer stations. In the evening she attended a Bible Friends Holy Communion service as her home group supports Bible Friends, which is church for intellectually disabled adults. We both had a fun time on Wednesday watching a video that Claire had sent us about Taylor’s bell foundry in Loughborough, where we used to live. It was bot...