Rick, Nicky and Claire in NZ

 Our friend Eleanor, who lives down the road, celebrated her 80th birthday at Caroline’s Boatshed yesterday. We had accepted her invitation to join her and many friends for lunch followed by birthday cake. It transpired that we were destined to be late arrivals. On Thursday morning I did my usual amble to the dairy to get four copies of the River City Press for Nicky. She had time to have a look at it before going off to staff the Aramoho Library and spotted a familiar name in the death notices. We needed to check that we were thinking of the correct person, the 39 year old son of friends of ours. Nicky found the funeral notice on a local undertakers website and discovered that he had been taken by cancer. His twin brother died around 10 years ago in a car accident. We were shocked an upset and let Eleanor know that we would be late for her lunch as the funeral was at 11am Saturday morning. It was a somber occasion, and the first time that I had attended a funeral of someone younge...

 We have both managed a bit of time in the garden this week, other than hanging out the laundry. Nicky weeded and planted some vegetables and I did some weeding, just enough to feel I could get back into the swing of things. With the weather having been so mild this week there are signs of spring, and I suspect the weeds have noticed this too. The oxalis certainly has. For my Monday amble I went up to Virginia Lake. The waka sculpture was looking impressive… …and the jonquils were flowering: I took a different route home and walked past a factory which intrigued me. When I got home and Googled it I discovered it was a solid wood furniture manufacturer, owned and run by a kiwi family of Danish extraction. They produce some lovely pieces using both imported and native NZ timber, but I suspect they are out of our price range. The beginning of the week was quite busy with Nicky hosting Home Group on Tuesday afternoon, and Decibelles (book club) on Wednesday morning. Both went well and ...

 For those of you reading this who don’t live in Aotearoa, we have had sufficiently cold weather this week for it to be the lead story on the evening news three days in a row. It has been colder than it has for some years, but interestingly for us in Whanganui, not as frosty as it was last week. The folks in Dunedin who pay their rates were gifted some snow and ice, but not really snowman quantities. Winter has been relatively dry I feel, which doesn’t bode well for spring. We have been keeping warm inside most of the time so have done another jigsaw. The picture was whimsically interesting, but we didn’t bother tackling the almost monochrome sky: Nicky hosted her Home Group on Tuesday and it went well. I had invited Mark and his dad Brian over for dinner as Krystyna was away at a conference. Brian is convalescing with them after his second knee operation and I don’t think either Mark or Brian enjoy cooking. Mark isn’t home from his new job until early evening, so we planned dinner...

 Just in case you hadn’t noticed, August started yesterday. Officially, August is the last of the three months of winter, and usually our coldest. However, July wasn’t going out un-noticed. Tuesday morning presented us with a very frosty start. I took the photo below before the sun had properly risen. Some of our back garden grass was still a little crunchy underfoot mid-afternoon. Our neighbour’s car, which is parked on his section but without cover, was covered in frost, as was his deck and the top part of his garden, which is shaded by his Tiny House. Our little Luna, parked under the car port, was completely frost free. I was again surprised what a difference the car port makes. At the beginning of the week we had lovely sunny, crisp, winter days. The air was cold outside, but we were lovely and warm inside. Thursday was a little overcast and Friday was sunshine and showers, some quite heavy. We have watched a very good documentary series this week about the terrorist bombings ...