Dodging trees

Oops, where has the last week gone? We've gone through all seasons in the past 7 days. Monday and Tuesday was like autumn except it wasn't leaves blowing about in the wind, it was whole trees. 150km gusts (same as Welly) that took down 13 trees, cut our power, blew 2 panels out of the greenhouse and probably will have dislodged several lambs from their mums' sides. However, ours were safely tucked up inside that day. Wednesday and Thursday took me to Napier for work where it was perfect 22 degree weather (I hadn't dressed for it - polyprops and pants, humph) as through summer had come early, Friday and Saturday continued the good temperatures and today it is very chilly and feels like we may be thrown back into the depths of winter. And spring? Well, the grass is greener than ever and the horses are getting merry on it.


Dad, Niki, and Jordan came up on Monday afternoon for a couple of days. They got the worst of it and we spent all Tuesday inside sheltering from the tempest. We had no power for a lot of that day so resorted to cooking pumpkin soup on the pot belly fire and toasting bread by it too.

Jordan was entertained by learning to play the guitar and drums and took back a bird's nest and 6 dead puriri moths (he will have a dead collection yet!) as souvenirs.




The horses almost got hit by an enormous falling branch and were not happy about it. Brother was so unimpressed that he wouldn't let us catch him. Dino was surprisingly calm - maybe it was shock.

The huge gum tree on the front lawn lost it's top... 1om of it and there is another branch dangling perilously that we will have to get down soon, a HUGE gum tree branch came down in the front paddock, 6 other whole trees along various fencelines, a big totara in the garden, a branch of the 150 year old holm oak, a couple of trees on the path to the bottom paddock and a fair amount of debris has been strewn about the property.




And the big gum tree on the front lawn plunged a branch a couple of feet into the ground it came down so hard. I'm very glad I wasn't under it! I did see it fall though.

I picked up Graeme from Napier on Wednesday night. He decided to come down here for a bit before he flies out to Australia on Tuesday. He was a great help chainsawing fallen trees and chopping wood. He left very early this morning to get back up to Napier by 7.50am and Marty took that as an opportunity to go surfing.

Thursday saw the return of our AWOL goats. They weren't happy to be collared and spent quite some time trying to hang themselves by running full bore away from the fence they were tied to and almpst breaking their necks when the rope became taut instantly. It was quite distressing. They have calmed down somewhat now although we are still needing to detangle them fairly regularly. They are cute goats though. Very small. Their names are Eidel and Fungus. Both nannies but oh well. I'm hoping they will become a bit tamer because I don't want to have them tethered all the time. But they can escape through just about anything!

And I have just found out about a kunekune piglet for sale. I would love a pig but I think we need to slow down for a second and think about how all this id going to work. We really need to sort out the arena paddock so it's suitable for animals. At the moment it's a mess. I will have to talk to Marty.

Ok, I need to find out a bit about taming goats.

:)