Spring!

Spring has officially sprung, although our Stellar Magnolia has been in full bloom for a few weeks now, courtesy of a very mild winter. Today was a glorious day, but unfortunately I had to spend most of it inside marking my IB maths internals...

Above you can see our nectarine tree which I planted a few months ago. It's doing really well and is covered in lovely pink blossom. At the same time I also put in a blackboy peach tree, and planted some tulips at the base of both trees which are starting to come up.



The first 5 weeks of this term have flown by. We've only got 8 weeks in total this time round... Senior mock exams start this Thursday for a week so I'll just be down to 1 junior class for that time which will be nice. Though obviously I'll also have a bit of exam marking to do to keep me out of trouble! I've got leave next Thursday and Friday to fly up to Tauranga for the NZ Masters Badminton Nationals which should be good. It means there will be only 1 week of school left when I get back...

Here's a cute pic I took of my friend Hiria's cat. I looked after her and her brother for a bit while Hiria was away on holiday recently. When I've minded them in the past they wouldn't have a bar of me and I'd barely see them, but this time round they warmed to me a bit... I think they were just after a bit of fuss and attention!

Speaking of Hiria, on Friday we had a good night out for her birthday. We started off with a pre-dinner cocktail at 'Alice' bar. I had a couple of vouchers to use up which got us a tea-pot cocktail each, with tea-cups to drink it from. Very appropriate for an Alice in Wonderland themed bar!It's a pretty cool, quirky place. We then met up with a bunch of her other friends for dinner at Pan De Muerto. Friends of mine have raved about the food here, and it didn't disappoint. I had the cerviche as a starter, followed by the pork tacos, both of which were amazing. I don't usually go around taking photos of restaurant toilets, but I was impressed with their creative use of old singer sewing machine tables! After dinner a few us went out for a drink, then ended up in Enigma cafe where I had the most amazing peanut-butter/choc chip gelati.

Last weekend was also a good one. We had our final Wellington Masters badminton matches in Napier.  We had an easy 12-0 win against Bay of Plenty, then a tough arm-wrestle against Eastland whom we just managed to beat 7-5. We were actually up 6-2 after the doubles, so only had to win one of the mixed doubles matches in order to win the whole division. Well, our number 4 mixed pairing lost, followed by the number 3, followed by the number 2... That meant it was all down to Geoff and I playing at number 1. We managed to win something like 21-14, 21-17 in a really good hard-fought match. It meant that Geoff and I both ended up undefeated for the season which was nice.  We enjoyed celebrating our victory that night, starting with a well-deserved pre-dinner soak in the motel spa-pool! The only downside to the weekend was that 2 of our team-mates were driving up to Napier on Thursday night and were involved in a head-on car crash just out of Levin. They were incredibly lucky to survive it with 'just'a few broken bones... They ended up having to stay the night in Palmerston North hospital before a family member drove them back to Wellington the next day. It meant that we played the weekend with only the bare minimum 4 men and 4 women, but we managed to get by and it was extra incentive to do well. We visited them as a team on Tuesday night and they are recovering well, although it'll be a while before either of them will be able to pick up a badminton racket again...

Here are a couple of chookie pics... Above is the welcoming committee by the front door that I come home to after-school one day. Since then we've actually fenced them off a bit so that they can't get onto the front of the section after one of them had a run-in with the neighbours dog... She's OK, (the chook that is!) but a bit traumatised! The dog carried her next door to the owner in its mouth... They are usually really good about keeping the dog fenced in, but had let it off just as it got to the gate after a walk and it had obviously spotted the chooks a few moments earlier and raced back to find them! Luckily it chose the hen that seems to have stopped laying, so it could be worse... I like the pic below of them chilling in the sunshine in the rhubarb patch.

 

Lastly, here are a couple of pics of miniatures I'm collecting from a supermarket promotion to celebrate 50 years. New World has made miniatures of 44 of their products, and for some reason they really appeal to me! They are just toys, but the detail on them is amazing, they are exact replicas of the real thing. The marmite is my current favourite.