On Being Five

Janice and I spent Friday and Saturday in Wellington with our daughter Sarah and her family. We were there for Jessica's 5th birthday. Jessica is our youngest grandaughter and obviously very full of herself about being FIVE and able to start school - which she did this morning. No reports yet except that she went enthusiastically.

Whenever we have a grandchild reach the age of 5 Janice makes them a quilt to present at their birthday. Last week was rather frantic with all the other work needing to be completed as well as the quilt, but she made it.


We drove home on Sunday morning in bright sunshine and spent the afternoon installing a new tv (Sarah got us a good deal) attending to the nursery and tidying around a little. Oh, then there was the preparing of the cheeseboard (Janice), the cooking of desert (me - slow cooked fresh pears with a caramel sauce and cream) for dinner at the Gaskin's that evening. It turned out to be a great meal with Robert cooking a coconut, banana, capsicum and chili steamed fish, Jennifer the colourful veges and our contribution. Delicious!

This morning Janice and I heard the Mayor of Otorohanga, a small NZ town, speak about how they managed to get the unemployment rate down to zero - real jobs, real opportunity and real commitment to kids.

The delphiniums are charging away now, there's a heap of management stuff to do, pr, writing, staff to hire and .... better get it done.

Cheers

Terry

You can bank on it - maybe!

I had lots of messages in town this morning, mostly connected with all the things you have to do when your parents get old and need care. The most difficult of these tend to be related to banks or, more specifically, my parents bankers, the ANZ bank or, more specifically, the Internet banking arm of the ANZ which, specifically, is a cripple without a crutch. Further, if it did have a crutch it wouldn't know how to use it or where to put it. I could make a suggestion or two.

For some reason the ANZ have obviously designed their Internet banking site to be a challenge for their clients. I naively believed that once I had registered and obtained a password then I could conduct or access all, or most transaction types on line. However, if you are doing anything for the first time (like making a payment to a third party) you get to go through a few screens and are then directed to ring customer service to set it up - which they do. There are more passwords and pin numbers required than anyone can possibly remember and once you have a drawerful of these - they don't work. Well, not properly and not in Firefox.

I spent the best part of an hour battling with the system yesterday and this morning presented myself, yes physically, at our local branch where they completed the 5 different transactions or so in around 5 minutes. Now, even allowing 25 minutes travel time, I save half an hour. Welcome to Internet banking ANZ style - no thanks!

It has been a wonderfully sunny, warm day today. Tomorrow will be the same. I love fine week ends. I thought you'd like to know that. I just have this hang-up about stupid banks.

Cheers

Terry

Delphiniums trials are growing

The seedling trials at Bristol's are now starting to grow and strangely, the weeds are too.The top of the soil dries our quickly and a few hours with a hoe should see the weeds gone and a light, fluffy soil mulch in their place, until the next rain. We're due for a week of fine weather though and it should dry the weeds out well and give the delph a chance to outgrow them.

This afternoon is fine and sunny and I should be inside doing more paper pushing but am going to sneak out and do some plant work....which I have now done and this had better close now as Janice and I are off to a movie!

Cheers

Terry

Tomorrow

Tomorrow is another day - today. I'm fully recovered from the whatever it was that floored me and have enjoyed today from start (answering email at 6:30am) to finish (blogging at 8:30pm) and I still have to tend my farmville farm.

Today the irrigation was still working so I sealed it up, the sun shone, the tempreature was relatively warm and the wind relatively subdued. I spent time making dwarf delphinium crosses and pumping up the tyres of eight pollinating steps (must get a photo) three wheel barrows, a sprayer and a trailer as well as my bicycle. This was quite easy as I've just bought a new foot pump. No, don't ask why I need my foot pumping!

There were lots of other sundry jobs too, some in the office and some out of it (thank goodness). The great thing about these is that they all went well.

At about 3pm I loaded 35 or so delphiniums in 8 litre pots, took them to the Bason Botanic Gardens, 15 minutes out of Wanganui, couldn't find anyone to take delivery so consulted "the plan" and planted them myself. See above. I also admired the first of our delphiniums flowering in the Homestead Garden - see below. We provide all the delphiniums free of charge and are rewarded with some really good warm fuzzies and a beautiful garden to visit.

It was absolute bliss. On returning home at 5:30 I met a prospective worker (I forgot she was coming) that Janice was just showing round and after coming inside cooked a steak dinner for Janice and me followed by baked apple and ice cream.

Ok, can I go now?

Cheers

Terry

One of those days

Today is one of those days whenI simply didn't want to get up. Surely I'm not too sick to work? Get up, no breakfast because stomach won't like it. Meet someone looking for work, hang aaround and finally fix the irrigation problem that refused to resolve yesterday. Come back to the house around 11am and crash. Wake up at 1:30 pm and take boxes of plants to the courier in town, have a massage (great but achy). Do several messages, pick Janice up from her massage and come home to crash. More people looking for pollinating work so I show them around. It looks like we'll have plenty of motivated staff for this year's pollinating season. Eaten nothing all day so have a small dinner. Now 8:30pm and regretting eating the food. All in all a great day. Year Right!!

Better day tomorrow

Cheers

Terry

Navel Gazing

Mondays are usually gentle starts to the week which begins with a Rotary meeting at 7am. This morning's meeting was however unusually boring because the club spend all of the time navel gazing - at best uncomfortable and at worst disturbingly ugly and boring. It was an "at worst" gaze this am.

Rotary clubs do from time to time - well every year actually - worry about how their membership is aging and falling. Some of them do constructive things about that, getting out into the community and publicising their efforts to help others. Other clubs navel gaze, write lists of possible members and suggest someone approach them, then go back to navel gazing. I fear we have just done the latter.

Fortunately we had a hugely successful, well publicised project a few months ago which does, and did wonders for recruitment and retention. Some of the team below:-


Please club, leave our navel alone and if you must gaze at navels, please make it someone else's.

The rest of the day has been spent battling with an irrigation system, tidying my desk and doing the Monday chores and other sundry work, and visiting mum and dad.

Right now I'm going off to navel gaze. No, I won't tell you. It's none of your business!


Cheers

Terry

A day of rest

I'm blogging on a Sunday because yesterday was so good that I didn't have time - or I forgot.

Janice and I spent until 3pm yesterday at the market, grocery shopping, visiting my mother and doing nursery work and quilting. You can work out who did what. After 3pm a couple of our neighbours who we saw at the market came for afternoon tea and we just frittered the rest of the day away. Nice.


This morning I plan to spend time in the garden and will take a few images to show you how, despite the cold, some plants are growing at pace.


The delphiniums are coming into flower too and it looks like we'll need more pollinators in a couple of weeks.



Roses are breaking bud.









And there is a small, summer interloper setting up shop in the greenhouse.



So, a good day in the garden and I finished off the activity with a bike ride, the first for some months. I figure if I can keep up the blogging then I can keep up the riding too.

Cheers

Terry