March 2003

Last several of weekends have been spent gardening essentially. T cleared a load of crap from around the house & she'd managed to score a whole lot of free agapanthus (agapanthi?). SO I dug the ground & she weeded it & planted the agatha's pants. All good fun. We also built a raised vegetable garden right near the house, using railway sleepers & a couple of metres of compost & topsoil sourced locally, and put in a cheap irrigation system so we only have to turn a tap & water everything round the house. (There are no water restrictions at Otaki Beach. Although it has not rained since Boxing day & the paddocks are pretty much dust bowls at this stage. The sheep look fat though, so I'm not panicking yet.)

And from the "you're getting bloody old" files, I'll just take off on a tangent to report that in attempting to move sleepers by myself, I have munted my left foot. After several weeks hobbling around I finally had enough ailments (dermatitis, raging cold, munted foot) to make a trip to the doctor worthwhile. She told me I'd popped a tendon in my foot & will have to wear orthotic inserts in my shoes forever now. Yay! She also berated me for not turning up for a blood pressure test 3 years ago. SO after 30 or so minutes of her wrestling my very tender foot into submission, prodding me painfully in several places, commenting on a 43 year old mole on my foot ("Is that new? Better keep an eye on that!"), filling me in in graphic detail of the current threats to my health from my foot (lameness), blood pressure (blindness, heart disease, stroke, death), moles (cancer, painful death). Well... my blood pressure recorded through the roof. The good news is, I turned up for a blood test (did I mention the evils of cholesterol?) this morning, and as it happened, my BP was normal (Nyaah!). ALthough to appease the doctor I have a very bulky home BP monitor to record my pressure at random intervals during the weekend. I also have to record what I was doing at the time. I'm looking forward to this... herding sheep... taking drugs... having sex. y'know, the usual weekend stuff. Anyway, just about over the extreme heebie jeebies from wearing the chemist bought orthotic inserts. Man, they're intrusive. May have to get custom ones made.... I just don't like the idea of some specialist playing with my feet! I'm funny like that. I might (might) make an exception if my podiatrist was Naomi Campbell. But anyway, even with the shop bought devices, the pain has gone away & I can walk without a limp. She might be a fat, irritating, old nag, but she is a pretty good doctor.

The paddock with the sheep is now completely dry! But rejoice, I have found a solution for keeping the sheep from eating the trees. I found a cool website. It's been extremely informative. They also have a forum for discussing stuff & asking questions. SO I asked if anyone had any good ideas. And this one guy who lives in Upper Hutt has offered to make me any number of wooden tree protectors for $20 each. I've already been around pricing up materials for making these things myself, and this guy is charging about a quarter of what I figured it would cost me to do it.

So far so good. Unfortunately he's going to take a few months at least to build me 10 of them (he has a day job). And while the beasts certainly aren't looking starved or anything - one of them already figured a way to get into another paddock (a bit cheeky we thought), indicating that the grass is noticably greener on the other side to sheep if not to us - we needed to let them rip on fresh pasture ASAP. Plus, everything is drying up so fast, it seemed a pity to let all that clover go to waste.

So I got rough & ready & made makeshift fences for the feijoas by bending corrugated iron into triangles... in my opinion they look decidedly ramshackle. Funny thing is, T thinks they look rustic & quaint. But really, they're too short to work well for long. And to make them suitable I'll need to get some 4 by 2, and cut the iron & myself to ribbons & generally shag around & it'll cost me around $20 a tree... but I opened the gate & let them find their way in (they don't think they should be there & race out the moment they see anyone). And by the time we left that Sunday, they hadn't looked up from the clover to notice the trees.

Also, I spent a morning with the weedeater taking the long grass out so they can get at the lusher stuff underneath. By golly, it made an improvement in the appearance of the place already!

While still on the subject of sheep... their wool is getting pretty long now, and the infamous dags are appearing - making flystrike a much greater possibility. Last weekend we had another highly unsuccessful go at herding them into the pen. SO deciding I need professional help, I managed to contact a shearer who specialises in small flocks, and who lives about 4 houses away from us in Otaki. And he's coming on Saturday to herd 'em, crutch 'em, shear 'em and clip toes & treat fly strike if necessary. All for an embarrassingly small sum of money, so I presume he is so confident he can herd & pen them he doesn't expect to be there long.

It should be interesting.... and I figure even though it's a bit earlier than planned, Summer's going so long they can do with some relief & they'll have a lusher coat when (if) winter eventuates.

T & I also spent a very satisfying couple of days trimming more low branches from the trees in the forest. And I have felled 5 pine trees now & cut them up for winter firewood. Some of them were a bit small so didn't produce much wood, but the idea is to thin them out of the more populated patches of that paddock, and have it so there are nice clear paths through for our evening wanderings.

And that's the latest update covering oh... maybe the last month or so... will report on the shearer next week....

And lastly... for all you Nae nae college-ites. Peggy Sue Got Married....

I don't plan to attend, but I have been told (warned?) that Rankin Jays & Ann McLoughlin will be sending life size cardboard cutouts of themselves wearing speedos if they can't make it personally. Those of you who know or knew these two will of course be appalled by one prospect & delighted by the other. I leave it to your personal preference to decide which is which :-)