My grandmother died this week, at 97. She had a minor stroke last week, but it sounds as if she had another, which was more serious. She had been in a lot of pain, and found it hard to do anything, so in a way it was a relief. My oldest memories of my grandparents were from when they had already retired. I can't remember either of them working, although Granddad was always out in the garden, and Grandma was always sewing or knitting something. She reckoned she made a thousand aprons to sell at the WI stall. She was always generous, and I would rarely leave with less than I arrived with!

Granddad is fine. He can't remember a lot, so he's happy. He can walk a little too, so Mum has been taking him into town. She considered bringing him to New Zealand, but my uncle wasn't sure if he'd make it!

Didn't mention that we got two new kittens last week. A ginger tom named Diamond and a grey queen named Sapphire. I think that's the right way round. The names don't bear any connection to the colouring! They have spent the week shut up in the kitchen, and have largely behaved themselves, so we've let them roam the house a little.

Bronwyn's mum gave me some money to buy trees (as I said, it's their land, and they promised the council to plant trees on it several years ago) so I made the most of the current bargain price and bought 104 trees. That's 100 standard native trees, and 4 assorted ones I bought as an experiment.

I've planted 30 so far. Bronwyn's dad Ross strengthened the fence this afternoon after a cow got through. Fortunately it didn't do a lot of damage, and must have only just got in.

We've had a friend to stay the night this weekend. We met her on beach mission six years ago, but just recently she's got back in touch. She was going to a 21st party of a friend of hers. The party was over on the east coast about 45 minutes drive away. Since I also knew this friend (he'd been on the same beach team) and since it was quite a journey, I crashed the party and stayed until our friend decided to go home. It was a really good party, mostly friends from church and school, with the obligatory embarassing stories. And there were three others from the beach team there, so we organised a quick Beach Mission Reunion photo too. Got back at 1am.

Got up early to take our friend Michelle to catch the bus. However, she'd booked the bus from the east coast, and we decided to pick it up as it stopped in the city later in the day. So, after a short visit to church, we went into the city. Arrived in good time, put Chelle on the bus and then had an interesting time exploring the new underground train station. Turned out we'd parked right on top of it!

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