Bribed with flowers

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 I think it was last week, not this week, that Fiona called in to give us a couple of Bird of Paradise flowers, as she knows that I like them. On Thursday Mrs. Egg called in and gave us some lovely orange Lillies which Nicky has arranged with aplomb in the same vase:


There were strings attached however: moggie feeding over the weekend. Unusually Frances didn’t stay for a coffee, as she had washing out and suspected rain was on the way. For the same reason I had brought ours in just a few minutes earlier, so because of the weather we missed out on a good chat. We will catch up another time I expect.


It has been a different sort of week for Nicky. She was summoned for jury service this week, so headed off to the Court House on Monday morning. She was back home by lunchtime having not been drawn from the ballot and with instructions to check the website in the evening to see if she should attend again on Tuesday. The information on the website was ambiguous, and differed from the Jury Service Answerphone message, so I dropped her back at the Court House on Tuesday morning just in case, and went off to do the supermarket shopping. Her presence wasn’t required at Court, so Nicky walked up to Christ Church, tidied the Vestry and collected the laundry before walking to the supermarket so that we could drive home together. Back at Court on Wednesday morning Nicky was again not selected and was home by lunchtime. On Thursday morning Nicky was selected for a short trail which concluded in the afternoon and was released from duty. As a result of all this, and her regular Ophthalmology Clinic appointment on Tuesday afternoon (little change, so all good), she hasn’t been able to attend any of her routine daytime commitments this week.


My week has involved a bit more gardening than in recent times, due to slowly improving weather and its effect on the plants. For the first time since before winter I wasn’t able to complete cutting the back garden grass and the berm on one charge of line trimmer battery. Almost, but not quite. Flax trimming, which made grass cutting quite a bit easier, and general weeding and tidying has also been done.


On Tuesday evening Brian (Mark’s, up the road Dad) and Martina (Mark and Krystyna’s up the road house sitter) came for dinner. I produced one of my favourite pies, steak and ale, and posh bread and butter pudding (croissants, custard and raspberries basically). It was quite an enjoyable evening.


We finished watching Vigil season 3 this week, and watched Thelma and Louise on Friday evening as neither of us had seen the film for years. At the quiz we came 3rd with 91 points, until the 4th place team had their score corrected and we ended up 4th - again!


Finally, Monday of this week was our 19th anniversary of arriving in New Zealand. We all still feel we did the right thing in moving. If you have been with us since the beginning Dear Reader, congratulations on making it this far and thank you. If you joined us later, thank you for coming along. Just in case you are interested, the blog gets between 18 and 20 views each week. I’m humbled and not a little surprised that you are all still out there.


Take care, Rick and Nicky.

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