1 week down 9 to go...

Don't worry, I'm not really counting down until my next holiday already. Although it's worth counting down to as we get 3 weeks for the next one & my school is sending me to Sydney for a course on the last weekend of it. I've chosen to fly out a week before the course starts so I can see the sights.
I forgot to say in my last post that Will & I had done a really nice walk in Otari-Wilton's bush. This is the beautiful native bush reserve just a few minutes walk from our house. We went along the blue track which took us past an 800 year old Rimu tree.

Near the main entrance there is a canopy board-walk which looks down on some lovely tree ferns...

I enjoyed the last few days of my holiday. On the Thursday I hosted an afternoon tea for several of my colleagues, as they were really keen to check out our house. I enjoyed baking up a storm in the morning, & ended up making FAR too much. I made everybody leave with some sort of doggy bag. The neighbours also benefited from some of the leftovers. It was a most enjoyable afternoon, & then I had badminton that night to work off the cake!
We are continuing to get plenty of visitors to our garden of the feathered variety. The wood pigeons are still going strong on the berries on the cabbage tree. We were right below the fella above & he was not in the least bit bothered! When picking the last of our apples Will deliberately left a couple on the tree for the birds, & they have been most appreciated.

The birds have also learnt that scraps get put out around the bird-bath, so they tend to keep a fairly close eye on that... 40 odd is the most I've counted in one sitting. We are lucky that the neighbours cats wear bells! All the bird pics (bar the wood pigeon) have been taken through our lounge windows, so the quality isn't that great.
Will can't quite believe the size of some of the NZ insects. We have a 'pet' weta who has taken quite a shine to the inside of our letter box, & then we came across this guy sunning himself on our deck.
The wind has knocked the last of our walnuts down so we gathered them up last weekend. It wasn't a bad crop & they are drying nicely.
This weekend has been nice & relaxing. Today we had a wander around town & bought ourselves a heater for times when it's not practical to light our wood-burner. It's still pretty mild & we haven't needed any heating yet, but winter can't be too far away... We went out for brunch at Cafe Neo in the city centre, taking advantage of the Wellington Entertainment Book which we've bought. It's full of vouchers for either 'buy one meal & get another free' or '25% off the final bill' for all sorts of eateries in Wellington & surrounding areas, so it'll be a good way to try a whole lot of different places. It also has 'buy one ticket & get another one free' offers for both Wellington Lions & the Hurricanes rugby teams, as well as places like the Zoo & Zealandia Wildlife Sanctuary.

Today we also checked out the fruit & vege market which is held every Sunday in town. It is crazy cheap, less than half the cost of the supermarket. We ended up buying a bag of apples, loads of kiwifruit, some plums, bananas, vine tomatoes, 4 small red capsicum & a huge leek for less than $10!
This afternoon Will finished framing our giraffe picture from Africa. He's done a great job on all of them, building the frames from garden stakes. We decided that next to giraffe was the only place this pic could go... I love how giraffe seems to be looking at the new arrivals, checking them out! At my afternoon tea in the holidays, Nada, my head of department had given me a very cool pie dish as a house-warming present. Will & I had roasted a small leg of pork for dinner on Friday night, so decided to bake a pie for dinner using the left-over meat tonight. I essentially made a chicken & leek pie, but substituted the pork for the chicken & it was lovely. Very tasty indeed.