A few Pics

Here are three images. One of our delphiniums at the Bason Botanic Gardens in Wanganui, another of a really lovely day lily from Nan Ripley's seed and another of a dwarf runner (?) bean we are growing for Mark Christenson who is collecting and experimenting with "Heritage Plants".

I'll leave you to guess which is which.

More tomorrow when I intend to have some R&R

Cheers

Terry

Application for time to slow down

Wednesday passed in a flash. Tractor tyre puncture fixed, seed order to mail order seed company in Russia went out. Checked on trials growing at Bristol's and found oxalis rampant, but the delphiniums that are above the oxalis are doing well. Delphiniums flowering at the Bason Botanic Gardens look great. Will add images when I get a chance. Thinking of putting in an application to God, the Prime Minister, Oprah, Tiger Woods or some other authority to request a slow down of the rate that time flows. I'll keep you posted about progress

Thursday. We have an Internet slow down. I hope that is not a result of my "time" application. No - it appears that our carte blanche to our visitors for Internet use has sent us above our limit. Back to normal at lunch time .... hopefully. Only wasted an hour sorting this out.

Off to spread slug pellets at Bristol's after lunch, still have some spraying and pollinating to do first. more email to attend to too. Christmas is certainly coming.

Note for proof reader...Bason is correct, after Mr Bason. Full stops missed through laziness.

Cheers

Terry

Terry

Backgammon Christmas Dinner

Tonight was backgammon night. All members of the backgammon club, plus wives were there for a Christmas Dinner. That made 7 in total.
Janice had to leave a little early because the quilt club had a committee meeting but quilt club meetings are very efficient so she returned before we'd finished desert.

Just for fun, another day lily image:


I didn't bike or walk today and spent it in quite a lazy fashion doing some pollinating and gardening. This was one of my days off in lieu of the open weekend. I'll have another half day off tomorrow.

Cheers

Terry

Open Week End

Wow, nothing since Thursday. Well, it has been really busy.


Last weekend was our annual open weekend when we throw the nursery open to all comers and show off our delphiniums. Nothing unusual happened except that the weather was fine, just the right temperature and calm, something that is very unusual for this time of year. We were extremely pleased.

Janice did most of the work while I juggled the incidentals - like pollinating some trials, fixing some irrigation and generally hanging around trying to stay out of trouble. The sun brought our lots of customers and lots of lookers and we met up with many old friends. All in all it was a successful weekend.

Saturday evening was the Daybreak Rotary Club Christmas do so we didn't have to cook dinner after the day in the nursery. It was a great evening of boulles "petanque" style and charades with rather nice food too.

Sunday was dinner at the Gaskin's place so we didn't have to cook then either and tomorrow is the backgammon Christmas dinner. All in all some very lazy days not in the kitchen.

The delphiniums are now well into their pollination and the bulk will indeed be mostly finished by Christmas. The new season's trials are not yet flowering but some day lilies I bought from Nan Ripley a couple of years ago are beginning to show off so that's what you see in this blog.

All for now.

Cheers

Terry

In the Kitchen

Here we go, cooking again.

J cooked rissoles for dinner while N made the salad and now they are making macaroons. I really like these two visitors.



Winter returned again today. Firstly we had a power cut and I was woken by the ups beeping until I got up and closed the computers down. Then, as the day wore on the temperature dropped until now when it must surely resemble a cold winters night in Winnepeg - well, maybe not quite.


Plenty of work was done today however. I spent most of it answering emails and writing up new pages for the web site. These are for North Americans trying to find delphiniums that grow well in their region. We need to be more sophisticated when dealing with the regionalism that now dominnates google searches - probably won't make any difference! I've not updated "Terry Says" for ages and the "What are we doing this week" needed refreshing too.

Jason and Natasha prepared some plants for sale at our open weekend in a couple of days and Edita nad goodness knows how many staff were pollinating.

Oh yes, I went for a 40 minute brisk walk in half a gale

Not much today

Ah ha,
Sounds like Jason and Natasha have just come in for a game of Catan as I sat down to blog, I'll come back to this.
Jason won, Natasha second.
It's a little late now so that's all you're gonna get today

Cheers

Terry

Pizza for Dinner

Hi Brenda, Jason's mum. Thanks for leaving the comments. The point about the table at the market is a good one. We will do that next time (which may be spring next year).

Yes, we are really enjoying having Jason and Natasha, they are good company and tonight Jason cooked us a beautiful gluten free pizza dinner, seen here in the oven.




We've found quite a few interests we share, including playing a game called "The Settlers of Catan".



I've been giving Jason "engineering" type jobs such as sharpening the blades on our lawn mower. Natasha and Jason also planted up some hanging baskets.

With any luck we'll be hanging the baskets up at our friends house before our two visitors leave. The baskets are for an electrical engineer and his wife. They get free baskets, we get a free electrician service.

Cheers for now

Terry