Sister, Sorrow and Spring

September proved an eventful month. My sister Jan stayed with us for a long weekend in the middle of a business trip. It was funny seeing her again, it seemed like she was out of context…a bit like unpacking familiar household items on the other side of the world. It was nice to show her places we talk about, like the wharf. We also took the chance to go and explore somewhere new, so we went on a 3 hour drive to French Pass.

Not long after she left (but was still in NZ), we got the news from Diane that Aunt Mable had passed away. It was a call I knew I was going to get as she was 94. My Dad had told me a few days earlier that she had a chest infection and he didn’t think she would last more than a week. She didn’t. Jan and I had talked about her when she was here, that was good as no one else here knew her. I mourned her death with a sense of relief as she hadn’t wanted to be alive for the last 11 years. I had said my goodbyes to her before I left. I mentioned it to a couple of people but they had no idea what she meant to me. When you mourn on the other side of the world it seems to be quite a solitary experience. It is also an odd experience waking up in the middle of the night, knowing that a funeral is taking place a long way away. Lisa had met her a couple of times, but my memories of her stem from the huge amount of time my sisters and I spent at ‘the bungalow’. Our aunties were a very big part of our childhood. I will plant a tree in her memory and the memories of our aunties.

The growth and vibrancy of Spring is evident everywhere you look. The garden has burst into life. A beautiful and odd looking tall flower has sprouted up.



The weeds are on turbo charge as well!

Spring also feels like the calm before the storm, in terms of our business. We have lots of bookings and we are starting to get more tourists turning up at the wharf. We have introduced new tours and they are proving popular. We are waiting to get the final go ahead to put a shed on our site at the wharf. That will make a huge difference to our day to day wharf operations. I hope it is going to be there by early December.

Early December also marks the end of the school year. This is my first end of school year at school and it is just like all the others I experienced, except I am not in charge and don’t have to worry about all the admin stuff that goes on. I only had one set of reports to write and there are no school exams for juniors. The end of term staff function will be a lunch and wine tasting, held at a winery and starting at 11.30am. It also which happens to be across the road from where I live! I will also be returning to school next year to teach 3 classes which is almost half of a full time-table!

Out and About

September 1^st  marked the start of spring. New Zealand has had its warmest winter on record and it has felt a bit spring like some time ago. However a cold snap is forecast so we are not packing away our winter clothes just yet. Last week we went for a short break to Wellington. Unfortunately the weather  was wet and windy as we left Nelson airport at 7am. We flew with sounds air whos planes only carry 11 passengers. We set off a bit late and then we had to fly around a bit longer as wellington airport had a technical problem. It was a bumpy ride and I was sick (first time I have been sick on a plane). We should have been ther in 30 mins but it took twice as long. When we eventually arrived we were greeted with rain wind and a chill factor that reminded us of Portrush.  Within a hour of arriving Lisa had bought a hat and we both bought a thermal t-shirt. Windy Welly lived up to its reputation for most of our trip until saturady morning when the sun shone, the wind dropped and Wellingtonians came out to play. The waterfront was buzzing with activity and we sat in the sun and watched a rowing regatta, while listening to a busker. The flight home was with Air New Zealand ( a bigger plane). There were clear skies all the way and we were back at Nelson in less than 30 mins.

A couple of weeks ago I went on a school camp with almost 80 16 year olds. We had had a spell of lovely weather until we went on camp. It rained all the time except for the last morning. On day one I went with the group into Abel Tasman national park. We got a water taxi into the park. There was a huge swell and it was more like a roller coaster ride. 40 mins later we  were dropped off and then started a 3 and a half hour walk back to get collected at a pick up point. It rained the whole time, but there were no complaints and everyone had no choice but to keep walking. The next day they had the choice of doing mountain biking, coasteering, raft building and waka racing (traditional Maori team canoe). I went in the waka and we soon warmed up even though it rained constantly. There was a morning and afternoon session. We went back to camp at lunchtime and  6 boys took the opportunity to hide somewhere and avoid the afternoon session. They were found out, then sent home, then suspended from school for a couple of days!!  On the last morning the sun came out and we got to see how lovely the camp site was. Thankfully the camp was not under canvas. We stayed in cabins and we didn’t have to do our own catering. The food was superb so no one went hungry.

Back on the home front, the gardening continues. Lisa has become addicted to chainsaw work, which is just as well as we had two tress cut down, so there are an awful lot of logs to be cut. As the temperatures  increase the grass has started to grow. The daylight is extending into the evening so it gives us a chance to get out cycling after work and possibly even before work.

 

Lambs and Daylight

The days are starting to get longer and lambs are becoming more common in the fields, so it would seem that Spring is on the way. Some days in the last 2 weeks have certainly felt like spring. It feels like we haven’t had a full winter yet, so there could be a sting before spring!

We have had a fatality in the llama herd. The mum of Rafa, took herself away from the herd. Rafa stayed with her for a bit and then left her alone. She stayed on her own for 2 days and then Lisa found her dead at the edge of the pond. The owner said she was quite old and they tend to die in winter. We then had to get her out of the pond and get her up to the yard. Lisa and I were helped by Margaret, with her tractor. About 4 hours later (including a long tea-break) we had managed to get her wrapped up in tarpaulin and tied onto the grass cutter behind the tractor. We now know how to move a 150kg animal with long legs and a long neck. Let’s hope we don’t have to do it again for quite a while. The owner came and took her away to be buried, so at least we didn’t have to do that.

We continue to do a lot of gardening. We also have a guy coming to cut down a couple of trees, so that should be all the firewood sorted for next winter. Once the trees are cut we will then hire a log splitter and get the wood to fire size pieces. We also want to plant out some areas with coloured grasses. This needs to be done before mid- spring.

The extended daylight (to approx. 6 o’clock) means that we can get out on our bikes after work. We have been enjoying some good cycling weather, we just need to find the time to do it. I plan to cycle to and from work more often this term. I am now going to work at school until the end of the school year (mid-december). We are now teaching geography in the social studies classes this term. We are studying natural disasters, which is very appropriate as we have had a series of some earthquakes not far from here. A couple of weeks ago, a 6.5 earthquake occurred east of here. Wellington had a little bit of damage. We were at home when it happened. We heard the rumble coming across the land and we knew that we would feel it. The house made a few noises and we went outside, where we watched the silk trees shake and the large windows wobbled. As we stood there you could feel  a wave pass underneath your feet. Lots of aftershocks have happened, but they are too small to feel here. Wellington has felt quite a few.

Hopefully the shaking has settled down as we are planning to go to Wellington for a mini break. We went into Abel Tasman national park last week. We are only a 30 min drive to it. We walked to one of the many beaches, had our picnic and walked back again. We will try to use some Fridays when we are both off work to explore some other places we can go to in a day.

BIG NEWS; this blog has now been read more than 2000 times, in fact as I post this it has been read 2058 times. I guess I will keep posting for a bit longer

Shorts Tee Shirts and Snow

The shortest day is rapidly approaching and winter hasn’t settled down yet. Last week we had a couple of days that felt like spring and then they were followed by a cold snap for a few days.  One morning I had to scrape ice off the car windscreen before going to work. We have now had several days of rain, with more on the way, but the forecast for next week is continuous sunshine. That will mean the temperatures drop at night. I have just watched the weather forecast on TV and they have issued a warning for parts of the south island (not our part) as they think they could have the most snow in 20 years in some places, with gale force winds at the same time. When we get southerly winds they come from the Antarctic so the temperatures always drop. This is another difference to the northern hemisphere, where southerlies were always warm.

 I have a 3 hour per week teaching job at Garin College for a couple of terms. It means I go in and out of school 3 times a week, for a yr 10 social studies class. The class are very nice and we have been studying the theme of ‘The 70’s’. The down side of this is lack of hours means lack of pay, however there are several bonuses. The big bonus is that I can cycle to and from work if the weather is OK. It is a nice feeling when I leave while school continues for the rest of the day. This is especially good every other Wednesday, when I teach for the first period starting at 8.35 and finish at 9.25. I also have the satisfaction of deleting a lot of internal emails as nearly all of them have nothing to do with me! I have had to write reports this week and I have a parent meeting to go to before the end of term.

Lisa and I are working our way around the garden, cutting back whatever we see. Lisa has got a new tool….a chainsaw!! It was almost the smallest in the shop. A pair of kevlar chaps were also bought to avoid limb severance. We work as a team, ie, I point to what needs to be cut down and Lisa cuts it. She cut down a small tree and then declared that we should have bought a bigger chainsaw. We also got a chipper, which makes short work of all the cuttings and turns them into nice chopped up pieces that we can use for ground cover. I am also getting all the hire bikes serviced and ready for another year. The last 3 Sundays have been washouts, but hopefully I should be back at the wharf this Sunday. We still get a few bookings although some were then cancelled when it rained.  The cycle trail is developing and by spring or summer we should have another 30 km open from Mapua. This will give people many more options when they hire from us at the wharf.

The news items here still throw up a few good stories. One that caught my ear was a report of a 57 year old jockey, who rode all the winners at one race meeting near Christchurch. That was exceptional enough and it became an even better story when it was revealed that he is known as ‘Handbrake Harry’!!

Autumn Again

With a dip in temperatures the leaves have started to change colour quite dramatically and we now have a great show put on by nature, all around the countryside (sorry you will have to take my word on that as I still have problems uploading photos. Just look up last year’s blog entry, as the trees just look the same!). We have a grandstand view from our house, of the rows of vines that change colour on a daily basis. Our view is even better now as our very kind neighbour cut down some trees which had started to block out the ‘vineyard view’,  we named our house after. Autumn has still a way to go, it is still warm enough to wear shorts and we have only started to light the fire in the evening about a week ago.

 Lisa and I managed to escape over to Blenheim the other weekend to do one of the biggest bike rides in NZ (or at least in the South Island). The Graperide is in its 9th year and has 2500 participants. It starts and finishes at a winery which is the main sponsor. To mark its 10th anniversary next year, we will get a magnum of wine each as part of the goody bag.   It is a sportive type event with age group prizes etc. It also celebrates post cancer survivors as they get their entry for half price and they also have a category for prizes. We went with a group of 8 others and 3 were cancer survivors. One of them won a prize. The event takes you around the Marlborough Sounds, which is very hilly and scenic if you had time to look. I would have liked the route to have been hillier for more of the course, as I found that I passed most people when I was climbing or descending. I had set myself a target of going under 4 hours with 4 weeks of training. I finished in 3hrs 47mins. Lisa is getting faster and faster on the bike and even though she had a slight mechanical problem she finished in 3 hrs 15 mins. The older people are scary fast. An 80 yr old man finished 10 mins after the elite in 2 hrs 41 mins! It was our first taste of a big event (as participants) since we moved here and it was good to take part in something that was not just a local club race.

 There was also the option to declare yourself a graperide virgin and you would then get picked to tramp or fall into a large bin of grapes which are supposedly used for next year’s vintage. We didn’t volunteer.

We then all sat around afterwards and plotted our next event. We hope to have a Wheelie Fantastic team(s) for a few events later in the year as well as next year’s Graperide. There is also a stage race called the 40/50 tour (for over 40 and 50 year olds) which some of us may have a go at in December, but that might have just been the adrenalin talking. It would be a 'good' way to celebrate my 50th birthday which, I think, will fall on the first day of the event! I could, on the other hand, repeat my 40^th birthday bash and have a ‘Champagne Sunday’ party. Where have 10 years gone? The last two have been lived out in New Zealand. We will have been here two years as of next week. This blog has been existence for that long and is very close to its 2000th viewing (not bad for only having 3 official followers)

The day after the Graperide, I went with Garin College to Wellington on a Geography fieldtrip. I enjoyed being in Wellington and I enjoyed thinking about geographical things again. The students were also really good and it was a very well organised trip. The boat trip back to the South Island was also beautiful, as it goes through some of the Marlborough Sounds. All of this made me realise that we need to make the most of our autumns and winters and head off to other parts of the country.

In this beautiful country we also have the harsh realities of life. Lisa and I attended our first funeral, since our arrival. A local guy, who was an estate agent and who had shown us quite a few houses when we arrived here, died last week of cancer. He was mid 50s and leaves a partner and two young daughters. He was also a keen cyclist and we had got to know him and shared cyclist chat. His order of service finished with this quote;

‘When spirits are low, when the day appears dark…when hope hardly seems worth having, just mount a bicycle and go out for a spin on the road, without thought on anything but the ride you are on.’ (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

I was also given a poem that was written by a local man who also passed away recently, after a battle with cancer. I didn’t know him, but he wrote the poem last year when he was healthy, fit and active. The poem is called Autumn and this is the last verse;

‘And it’s O.K. that Autumn’s here.

It is the nature of all things.

So let’s enjoy these fruits of life,

And face that Winter when it comes. (Doug Simpson 2012)

 

Today I managed to get out on my bike for a couple of hours. I have not managed that for almost 2 weeks due to work, weather and shorter days. I had been thinking about the shorter days of winter over the last few weeks. I then realised that the winter here is good and not as depressing as a winter on a latitude of 55 degrees north! I also realised that I should enjoy Autumn for what it is and not fast forward to winter before it happens. Today I cycled and enjoyed the show that nature puts on at this time of year.

Summer continues unofficially

1st of March is the official start of autumn.  The early mornings certainly have an autumnal look and feel about them, but by 8.30am, normal service has resumed and summer continues. The day temps are still in the mid 20s and it has been declared the sunniest summer on record for the whole country. We have had about 2 days of rain in 3 months, and today we ordered a delivery of water. This became inevitable when Lisa’s mum and dad arrived and the washing machine got a lot more use then it normally does. We have one of the newest washing machines on the market, with a 5 star rating for water economy, but even the shortest wash, uses over 60 litres of water.

The good weather is great for our business as the sunny days encourage people to go for a bike ride.

I have parted company with job number 11 (tutor in Alt Ed) and gone back to full-time wheelie work. This has proved to be a good move so far. I have also been booked by the geography department of Garin College to go on a fieldtrip to Wellington in early April. I hope to pick up more relief work in the winter, when our bike business goes quiet. We have a few groups doing cycling holidays in March, so I hope the good weather continues.

Lisa and I decided we needed something to make us focus and do some structured bike training. We have had a summer of snatching an hour or so here or there, to do some exercise. We have entered a local event called the Graperide. It starts and finishes at a winery near Blenheim and follows a 101km route,  taking in Queen Charlotte drive (scenic but very hilly). It has done the trick, as each ride now has a purpose. We only have 4 weeks before the event so we won’t be setting any speed records; just completing the course will be an achievement.

At home, the chooks and llamas seem happy enough. Our supply of grass in the padocks had come to an end due to the dry and hot weather, so our neighbours kindly opened the fence between their paddocks and ours, so the llamas now graze their paddocks also. This also helps them as they don’t have animals to graze their fields, since one of their alpacas tragically died and they decided not to keep any more livestock.

Bonnie continues to enjoy life, roaming around in her little piece of heaven………….just the same as her owners!

November & December

November in NZ means longer days, warmer sunshine and rapidly growing grass. Shorts and t-shirts are workwear! As the weather settles a bit more I am cycling to work more often. A great way to start the day and beautiful still mornings are replaced by afternoon sea breezes which generally give me a tailwind on the way home. It’s also a nice feeling to know you have done a couple of hours exercise by the time you have returned home.

 Wheelie Fantastic work and gardening keep us busy and now Lisa has added to her workload by getting chickens. The chooks arrived yesterday. Lisa got a call to go to go to a drop off point to collect them. They seem a bit traumatised at the minute and are slowly being introduced to their surroundings. When we eventually get some eggs, they will work out as the most costly known to man. Chook house, feeder, feed, water holder, fence and chooks (6) all add up to a four figure sum. Their names are not yet finalised, but they are going to follow a theme (scrambled, poached, mayonnaise, Florentine….2 more needed). I was given the job of locking them in to their house on the first night. Lisa was at work, so Bonnie and I waited to dusk and went to the pen to lock them in. Unfortunately they haven’t got the hang of going in to perch, so they wouldn’t co-operate and go ‘upstairs’. As I am not so keen on flapping birds, they were left ‘downstairs’ until Lisa got home. Chook training could take a while to complete!

On the lifestyle block it is also time for the Llamas to get sheared. It was due to happen yesterday but due to circumstances beyond the shearer’s control, it has been postponed. They now look ridiculous but due to problems with trying to get photos loaded onto the blog, I can’t let you see them. I will try again and post some photos on the next blog.

December means end of term/school year for schools, with their long summer holiday starting. That means I finish my tutors job and go full-time with Wheelie Fantastic. As cycling trails are opening up and cycling is getting more popular, we are starting to see new businesses start up. Not least at Mapua wharf(which is getting more popular in general). We now have the new ferry owner hiring bikes at the wharf (approx. 20 metres from us). Another business is close by also, scooter hire! 4 bright yellow scooters (moped) are waiting for their first customers. As Christmas is fast approaching, the shops have lots of sales on and Christmas music plays while we all walk around in glorious sunshine. My brain gets a bit scrambled with Christmas messages in summer. We don’t plan to do anything Christmassy, except enjoy a day off together and perhaps eat some nicer food than we normally would on a Tuesday. Then after the calm of that day, we will be full-on busy with casual day hires of bikes. We already have bookings and we are doing a promotion on a national internet bargain website, called Grab One. It is really big over here, with special offers which you buy online.

We have just found that we can use the swimming pool at the local primary school, which is approx. 1km from our house. Nearly all schools have pools and for a small fee, they give you a key so that you can go and use it anytime during the school holidays. They take the reasonable view that if you use the pool and you drown, it’s your own fault! Looking forward to some swims on  hot, sunny summer evenings.

We haven’t seen much rain for a while and some people are starting to buy water to fill up their water tanks. We are OK so far as we have 2 large tanks which hold 50000 litres between them. The grass on the lawns and fields are turning brown. Hotter days are now mid 20’s in the shade. It gets dark at approx. 9pm and is light by 5.30am. You can tell the temperatures are creeing up, as Bonnie spends more time sleeping in shady places during the day and then starts to function again at 7pm.

On the 12/12/2012 (yesterday), we went to a friend’s wedding.  They held it at their own house, with the ceremony in their garden/orchard. In true kiwi style (although they are both Irish), it was very casual. It was a lovely day and all the relatives who had come over, seemed to enjoy the informality of it all. Hopefully a few photos will follow soon.

Season's Greetings to all readers and best wishes for 2013.