The Visit

Today started well with a bike ride at 6:30am. I hate riding in the mornings but this morning it was reasonably calm (only a 5-10 knot wind) and forecast of increasing to 15-20kts later in the day, so I opted for the early start. My legs ached but the main problem was the sun in my eyes on the way home. I'd forgotten about that.

After the ride I made a huge list of tasks to be completed today and I'm happy to say, managed to complete them by blog time. The highlight of the day was undoubtedly the trip to our nursery that the Home of Compassion organised for 7 people, including my mum (rest home) and dad. Dad is in Hospital care in the advanced stages of Alzheimer's disease and is only able to visit with special wheel chair transport. They came to see all the delphiniums in flower.

Mum has seen the nursery before and remembers but dad's memory has been so far gone for so long that we wondered if it would register. Dad has been a grower almost all his life, growing tomatoes and chrysanthemums mainly, so being round the nursery would maybe catch his interest we thought. Well, it sure did. He was actually smiling and animated for the first time in ages. Twas a joy to behold! Janice wheeled him round while I helped some of the others then I took over the driving. He loved it. Later, in the packing shed, he ate a great afternoon tea and when I moved outside he made a great lurch to follow, which he could not do of course, so he got another ride out to see more delphiniums. It was real cooooooool.


Another item of note in the day was the White Ribbon March against violence upon women.

A few hundred of us males turned up to march up the central street of Wanganui to raise awareness that violence against our womenfolk will not be tolerated. It may or may not make much difference on its own but combined with growing publicity and awareness of how much family violence there is in our society and that it is not acceptable it will contribute to a change in attitude, we hope. So just remember fellas - cut it out! face the issues, be a man and most of all, love your family, they are the best treasure you will ever have.

So, against those two items the rest of the day pales but between the excitement I sure got a heap of work done too, including checking up on our trial delphiniums at Bristol's place. They are doing fine, just like the weeds.

Now I'm going to play a little guitar and wait for some visitors to arrive.

Cheers

Terry