Founders Weekend

Week 3 at school was another good one. We had ERO in for most of the week, but you would hardly have known it. I didn't have anyone come into my class room at all. It was a pretty messy week for them to be in as there was major disruption on Monday & Tuesday with the snow. On Tuesday we had a significant number of students who couldn't get in due to the weather (or probably more accurately, could get in but chose not to!). The majority of Wellington schools were closed on Tuesday, so those students who did come in were feeling rather aggrieved, as were some of the staff! It was languages week & during the Monday assembly the girls who went to Chile did bit of a presentation to the school about the trip, & at the end they presented Lucy & I with a lovely bunch of flowers each as a thank-you for taking them. It was quite a surprise considering it has been over a term since we got back!

The Otari-Wilton bush hills we look out on looked lovely with a dusting of snow. It stuck around on the tops for most of the week.

I hadn't been feeling too flash on the Thursday & Friday, so didn't make it to my usual badminton club night on Thursday. If I had  gone, I would have been reminded that I was meant to be playing the annual Porcelain Cup match against the Varsity on Saturday. As it was, I clean forgot, which is pretty unlike me. It was even written in my diary! I really must have been under the weather... Anyway, it was meant to start at 10am, & I got a phone-call at 10:30 trying to find out where I was. Luckily they managed to find a replacement player as it would have taken me a good 40 minutes to get ready & head to the stadium on the other side of town. I still feel bad about it, so big apologies to any of my team mates who might happen to be reading this...

Sunday was a gorgeous day, & we had a road trip to Levin to pick up our chickens which was very exciting! We stopped in Otaki for a spot of factory shopping on the way. The pic above of the Tararuas looking very picturesque was taken from the Otaki railway station.

The chooks are brilliant, exactly what we were after. We bought them off trade-me & the traders had a stack of positive feedback about the quality of the hens, so we were pretty confident. We have gone for 3 Hyline Browns (thinking that with that name they would fit into the family well...). They will be 18 weeks old on Wednesday, so hopefully not too far off laying. They were surprisingly tolerant about being bundled into a cardboard box & driven back to Wellington!

We got home at about 2pm & introduced the chooks to their new home. We have fully fenced off the bottom of the garden for them to roam around in as they please. When we took them out of the box they all made a beeline straight for the coop. One of them appears to be a bit braver than the rest, so we have named her 'Dora the explorer'. She was the first to leave the coop & have a good look around the place. The one with the distinctive long white tail feathers seems a little mad, so she has been called Florence (vaguely after the English singer 'Florence and the Machine', who also happens to be a slightly bonkers redhead...) & the third is as yet unnamed. According to Will we are 'waiting for her personality to emerge'!!! They really are lovely animals to have around, I have been amazed how much time I can waste just watching them go about their business.

Today was a bonus day off school, being Founders weekend. The kids are lucky enough to get tomorrow off as well, but the staff have to go in for professional development. It was another lovely day, so I spent a lot of it outside (& yes, some of it was just watching and talking to the chooks). The garden seems to have survived the severe weather it has had lately. One or two of the daffs got a bit battered, but most of them seem OK. The tulips which were just starting to come out when the snow arrived also seem OK. The main casualty is the Stellar magnolia. It was about half in flower when the snow came, & now a lot of the pure white blooms have browned off.

I did a pump class at the gym today which felt good. I was a bit negligent last week, with a combination of the snow & ice at the beginning of the week, & then feeling a bit crook in the latter stages of the week. I also had a long conversation with one of our next-door neighbours who is an elderly woman who lives alone. We often chat about gardening, & she was saying how she had never seen our garden  before. I invited her round for a tour & she also enjoyed meeting the chooks. It is her property which is next to the hens, so I think she will quite enjoy having them just over the fence to talk to. She left with grapefruit, lemons, silverbeet & leeks from our garden, so she was happy. No other news, just a couple more picks of 'the girls' to finish off...