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In the last week, I've done 8 hours playing carols. Bronwyn did two carol services this morning, and I got to play for the second one. But finally we have some peace. The family dinner is planned for tomorrow.
As usual, unlike many in New Zealand, we won't be going on holiday until the end of Jsnuary. Just as everyone else is getting back into work and hoping we are too. We're all going to Festival One again. Preparations are underway. Bronwyn and Sarah have been making some toadstools to put outside the tent. And every year we acquire more solar powered lights andchargers.
I didn't mention the car. Bronwyn's brother Allan borrowed her old car (that we'd been trying to sell) to drive up north. He didn't get there. Fortunately an off-duty policeman found him in the ditch shortly afterwards. Allan's OK, but due to a possible blackout from a heart issue, he hasn't been able to drive, and hence hasn't been able to work. He's doing fine, and has been doing some work around the farm instead. The car was a write off, which actually did us a favour.
We might be needing Allan shortly. We moved the cows last weekend, but three calves doubled back and didn't go in. So we shut the gate and left them in the hope that they'd go in the right direction once they got hungry. They didn't. The cows did. The next day, the gate was broken in two. Completely. I also note that they've created a new route into the hay barn. We need to work out which cow currently has a sore head...
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( 3.1 / 17 )I can tell. Whenever Rachael spends ages cleaning her car, and then having a shower. Oh yes.
No. He's not Sean. He's Taumata. Or Taku. Or generally just T. And Rachael spends quite a while in the city with him. As well as cleaning her car. Thoroughly. She's added decals on the sides, and she's had the headlight glass polished at a detailing shop. Allan has given her some lights to stick under the car, and she's got an animated display on the back window. But mostly, she cleans it.
We're into the silly season. Lots of Christmas lunches and dinners, carolling, reviews and concerts. I've tried to gather everything onto one calendar. It looks a bit untidy.
But everyone's now finished university for the year. Rach has another year for her masters degree. The funding for the job she was hoping to get has been cut, so she's looking at what courses might be more preactically useful. There's one on geotechnics, which would allow her to spend her life drilling holes on building sites and studying mud. But regardless of the current government budget, we're still sitting on a major faultline, and it's not necessarily going to wait for Labour to get back in.
Sarah passed Maths 102. She was so pleased. She's quite good at the coursework; it's making sense. But the final exam questions can be hard because they sometimes put things backwards. "Here's the result the student got, what did she start with?" which means you have to not only understand it but be able to do the steps backwards too. She got enough to pass. It's Maths 108 next year, but Rachael says that it's just Maths 102 in more depth, so not so bad.
Bronwyn has just passed her Batchelors in Applied Theology. This has taken about 7 years, and involved a lot of assignments as well as case studies and quite a bit of Maori panel weaving.
With all three of them currently Advanced First Aiders, they'll all end up more qualified than me. Although I still have my three star canoeing certificate. They haven't beaten my Eskimo rolls just yet.
Meanwhile, Dmitri and DeLorean are out in the paddock and learning how to be sheep. I'm still feeding the ducks, and I now have a core group that are semi tame. There's a family of ten Paradise ducks, and three mallards. The Paradise ducks are larger and louder, but tend to feed out in the open. So I've been giving them a couple of handfuls out on the jetty in the dam, and putting the rest up on the bank behind the long grass. I know there's a few others around, because I sometimes see other ones on our driveway.
We've got through quite a bit of chicken feed this year. Both for the ducks and also for the extra four chickens that we've acquired this year. We've just lost one of the older ones, so we're currently at seven, and about 2 or three eggs a day. More than we can eat, so we've occasionally had to give them away.
It's getting warm for once, and plenty of rain. Great weather for ducks and sheep, but not the ones with hay fever. I need to get the garden under control. May need the baler.
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( 3.1 / 71 )Every morning, we have issues regarding who fed the cat. He can lie very effectively when you emerge from the bedroom. Bronwyn wrote "CAT HAS BEEN FED" on a random bit of cardboard. Trouble is, we now also have the dog, plus the chickens and two lambs. I want one of those sliding signs so we can keep track!
Of our two lambs, Dmitri must be about 5 weeks old now, and growing fast. He can also get past any barricade we put up, particularly when he's hungry. DeLorean is about 2 weeks old and still at the easy going tiny stage. But also growing fast. He doesn't latch onto the teat very well, so it can be tricky guiding him gently while fending off the monster who wants both bottles if at all possible.
Bronwyn started her new job last week aa mental health chaplain at Auckland Hospital. After a few months to recover from the concussion, she's also now back working full time. She's on the 8am shift though, so it means leaving very early in order to get through the traffic. She has made many friends on the streets through her previous job, and has had multiple farewell dos to say goodbye to everyone. But she'll still be dropping in at the cafe for breakfast, so they haven't seen the last of her.
We finally have all the cars back on the road again. Bronwyn's new car has been repeatedly showing warning lights, and has been in for tests and checks. They decided to open the engine properly, and fixed a cracked head as well as several other bits. Cost a lot, but we're hoping it's now fixed properly!
Sarah has started Psychology, and is also doing a foundation maths course. It covers several years of maths in about 5 months, so I've been helping her get her head round it as much as possible. She's got permission to postpone Chemistry for a semester so she can focus on the maths. As well as the psychology. Unfortunately I don't know a lot of psychology, so I can't help with that.
Rach brought a boy home. OK, briefly, then we left for the weekend. His name is Sean, and they started chatting over Minecraft. He'd never left Australia before, so we decided to take him to Rotorua because he's also never seen anything remotely volcanic either. Very nice chap. Left us some chocolates and a nice note. He'll be back for a music concert later in the year.
Straight after Rotorua, I was off again for the youthwork conference, and a week or two after that to the national brass band contest. Fortunately both events were in Auckland, which made things easier. We came second in everything at the contest. It's the regionals next month. I appear to be playing a solo with lots of high notes, so I'll need to get practicing. Meanwhile, I'm still teaching an extended family of Burundians how to play trumpet as well as transporting them to a brass band to get a lesson. They can now play a recognisable version of Jingle Bells without my help. That's a big improvement over January when I was fearing for their neighbour's sanity.
Down to ten ducks on the dam now, but they seem to be pretty settled. Seem to have acquired a couple of geese too, and several pukekos. I've put the feed out on a polystyrene raft to give the ducks a fighting chance...
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( 3 / 270 )We saw the aurora! Bronwyn said that some guy on Facebook had seen a pink glow, so we went outside to have a look. It was indeed pink. As we fiddled for our cameras, it changed to green. Then vertical lines appeared, and it grew to cover a large chunk of the sky. We watched for about 20 minutes until it got just a bit too cold. Apparently that was the only time it was visible in Auckland that night. I've never seen it before, and I've been a lot closer to the pole in England.
Duchess has settled down a bit. She's developed a liking for sofas, despite having her own soft cushions. We've had sheep in the paddock so I haven't done the drive up and down the hill so much, although I did manage to clock her downhill at 50kph once. She does enjoy running through the bush though. I'll be digging at some blackberry and wondering where she is. Then suddenly there'll be a thud and a crash, and Duchy appears, runs past at top speed, and disappears into the forest on the other side.
Sarah had her 19th birthday last week. We got her tickets to the King And Country concert last week. She had really wanted to go, but it was all sold out. Unknown to her, Bronwyn had got a couple of tickets on pre-release. She thoroughly enjoyed it, and described it as the Best Birthday Ever. This week it'll be Rachael's turn.
I've been feeding the ducks. We get a number of them using our dam as a stopover when the acorns are on the ground It's also hunting season, so there's number of others arriving as well. I've been sneaking out after dark and putting out some chicken food. I think it's worked; we now have about 50 there on a regular basis. At least we have plenty of chicken food...
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( 3.1 / 390 )Duchess must have some greyhound in her. She's got too much energy. We've taken to driving up the hill and back in order to give her enough exercise. She can do 40kph uphill. Downhill is tricky, because she runs on the passenger side and we have to let her run ahead so we can see. She's fully grown, but still behaves like a toddler on a trampoline. Fortunately, she's not aggressive, and will politely wait while the sheep go past. And the cat is still firmly in command.
Two months of sunshine. The grass was about to turn brown, but we had some rain just in time. But we did manage to get some of the hay in. Bronwyn rustled up a hay gang through a contact at work, and we moved over 500 bales. That took 5 hours, and we were all exhausted, young and old. We're due to bale the big paddock next week. That'll be 800 bales, but at least the hay barn is in the corner of the same paddock!
Rach has got her Batchelors, and is continuing to an Honours and then a Masters degree. She'll be studying deep ocean mud sediment as part of he project. She hasn't brought any boys home yet, but has filled the house with plants. Sarah is also at uni studying Chemistry and Statistics. She's currently working through some foundation courses and I've been helping her with the basics. Bronwyn has two more papers to go until she completes her Batchelor of Ministry. Meanwhile I've had a full few months, teaching brass instruments to a family from church, getting the youth trust through an audit, and helping on the farm. As well as driving up and down the hill once or twice a day...
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