Sunshiny Day

It was such a hot day today - blue blue sky and scorching sun.


Garbo spent alot of the day in the yards which is excellent because that it exactly how I designed them to be - so that they could use them when they wanted, and not be locked in.

Wine Barrel

Got half a wine barrel today and some tub mix and planted some lavender and some grasses, it's out the front of the barn (or back depending on which way you think about the section)...

Also planted some flaxes behind the grisilineas which we have replanted in the wetter areas.

Willow mulch

Tim mulched some of his willow trees and so offered us some of it for round the mandarins. We bought 2 truck loads and started putting it round the trees today - looks much better! George had sprayed about a week ago so it was a good time to do it.

Tim also sprayed seaweed on them when he was here.... they look happier already and check out the fruit on this one.


I got 9 small grisilineas for $5 each today as well and we started planted those in the spots where the others have died. We decided not to buy any bigger ones than that just in case they die again.

Tomato

After finding out the latest craze is to grow tomatoes in an upside down bucket I bought a cherry tomato plant today to try it out. George quickly rose to the challenge and stole my horse hoof dirt bucket and drilled a hole in the bottom and stuck the tomato plant in it - filled it with top soil and hung it up and gave it some water. We will keep you posted (no staking!)

Plumbers

The plumbers arrived yesterday and I think they have finished the under slab work.

I am not sure the foundation guys will be too happy to see their boxing broken and their site not so level anymore mind you.

We'll see come tomorrow 6.30am!!

Rain

We had about 15mm of rain today - and the driveway turned into a temporary puddle. The next day we surveyed the site to see the puddles there - not too bad. It was quite windy so dried everything out pretty quickly.


The next day everything just looked super green because it had been so humid.

Birds nest

My wooden spools came in handy for the birds. On closer inspection after seeing a bird fly out of one (and lots of bird poo on top) I found a nest in each one, and one nest had three eggs.

Sadly though I have not seen the bird back again and now there is only one egg.

This was our Friday!

It was such a nice day we flew down to Whakatane to see Dad and Sue.

We got up relatively early (8.30am - we got a sleep in as no builders today). We arrived at Whakatane airport one hour after we took off from Parakai and Sue made us coffee and chocolate cake!

Later we went to Palmers for lunch and a browse.

The lovely coast view on the way home.

Gorgeous day - arriving at Whakatane.
Look how still the water was...


Then we flew over home to take some piccies.

Family Room

This is George holding our coffees in the family room where we imagine we will be having many coffees in the future! It's a lovely view (once the topsoil is spread out round the site)...


This is looking east.... this will be a drive where George is standing....


This corner is where we hope to one day have a spa pool. It will be a lovely private corner with a great view. Also the view from the north side of the house is completely neighbour free!


The house looking from the office wing end.

Tim

Tim came to mow the middle paddock and all the buttercup and dock!!

Final result - much better!!
The boys thought the tractor was chasing them so they got quite a bit of exercise.
I have a video too - just have to get it to upload!

Piles

So the dictionary says that a pile is;
pile

n.

1. A quantity of objects stacked or thrown together in a heap.

2. Informal A large accumulation or quantity: a pile of trouble.

3. Slang A large sum of money; a fortune: made their pile in the commodities market.

4. A funeral pyre.

5. A very large building or complex of buildings.

6. A nuclear reactor.

7. A voltaic pile.

8. A heavy beam of timber, concrete, or steel, driven into the earth as a foundation or support for a structure.

9. Heraldry A wedge-shaped charge pointing downward.

10. A Roman javelin.

I am going with number 8!

So here are our piles.

Profiles

Well at least I think that is what they are called.

They added string outlines of the edges so we walked around the house today! It seemed small - incredibly.

Large driveway

Well as you may know, I can't read plans very well, but it seems to me that the graveled area out the front of the barn is wider than the drive on the plans.

Anyway - looks good, as long as it doesn't end up costing us more.

More digging

I got home from day one of the training weekend lats night about 10.30pm and fed the horses in the dark, and fed the pussycats too. I couldn't really see what they had done that morning so I had to wait till this morning. I took a couple of photos when I got back this afternoon too.

I need George back to help me understand the plans and how that relates to this...one thing I can't do is translate one dimensional paper plans (looking from above) to an idea of what we will end up with. Looking like we will have a 'bank' area where we will need to do some kind of planting I guess.... but it's clay.... hmmm


I have also taken some shots of the 'cross section' of the ground where our grisilineas got wet and died over winter. Nothing obvious I can see apart from the fact there is perhaps more soil (top soil) and maybe that held teh water more from the section above. Who knows.

Update for George

George is in steamy Sydney so here some photos for ya Hon.

Here's how much clay we have right now - spare. Look at that sky!






I was walking around taking these photos and Maraschino came to see what I was doing.

Day three

Well the first photo is from this morning and the next three from tonight - it's 4pm and Friday so everyone just left here. Back again tomorrow at 8am. Trucks coming to take the clay away - we have too much! $260 a truck load to remove - betcha they sell it for more than that too. Shelley saw a sign this morning on Waitakere Rd, wanting fill so she called in when she went to get coffee for us but they had just had 6 truck loads delivered.




Gorgeous day - and hot too!