House and Garden

The second week of my holidays was very relaxing. I did a few bits and pieces around the house, and also fitted in a few gym sessions. On the Thursday I ventured out to the Hutt to visit my friend Elvie who, together with her fiance Mike, has bought a house in Silverstream. On the way home I stopped in Naenae to visit Nada, my ex-HOD. It was really good to see her and catch up.

 

On one nice day I walked in to the gym via the Botanic Gardens to check out the tulips. It was the middle of the spring festival, but the tulips were up a bit earlier than usual this year, and with all the wild weather we had had, were a bit past their best. They still looked pretty good in patches though.

 

 

One of my holiday jobs was to paint the bathroom and toilet. We have had to do very little work to our house in the nearly 4 year we have had it. However, we've never really liked the colour in the bathroom and toilet, so finally got around to doing something about it! Part of the reason we lived with it so long is that Will and I never actually use those rooms, bar the occasional bath... We use our ensuite instead. It is now a nice soft grey (Resene's 'Double Concrete' if anyone is interested) with nice crisp white trim. I've still got the ceilings to do, but they can wait... It all looks very nice with the darker grey floor tiles.

The inside of the doors on both of those rooms had also been painted, which is a shame as they are gorgeous rimu. I plan on restoring them back to what they should be. I've got probably 99% of the paint off using paint stripper and then scraping them, and already they are starting to look good. Will has bought me a little electric sander to finish them off which I'm quite excited about! We'll then PU them to make them the same as all the others in the house.

 

I have also been busy in the garden. As you can see from the pic below, I had some weeding to do that was quite overdue!

 It's now starting to look a bit more manageable. I also finally got around to planting out my potatoes which had been chitting on the bench for about 2 months! Whoops...

 

When ever I'm out and about in the garden I always have three little 'helpers'. They particularly like it when I'm digging as they swoop in and snatch any worms. They get so close to the spade it's a wonder that none of them have lost a foot!

Here's a couple more chookie pics. The one at the bottom is poor old Daphne, the one who survived the attack from our neighbour's dog... She is slowly starting to get back to her old self, her feathers where she was held in the dogs mouth have grown back, although hasn't laid an egg since the incident! You can see that her comb is a lot paler than the other two.

 

I've had the vast majority of my seeds germinate which is pleasing. I've had over 80 assorted tomatoes come up, as well as 30 odd capsicums, and a similar number of chilies. I'll fill the greenhouse, then there will be plenty spare to give away to friends. I've already got a waiting list! I actually took this photo a few weeks ago and the seedlings are much bigger now. I'll plant them out in the greenhouse in the next couple of weeks.

 

Speaking of the greenhouse... It did come to grief in the big storm last week. I was leaving for school on Monday morning when we had a knock on the door from our bottom right next-door neighbour. He said 'Are you aware that your greenhouse is in our section?'! Obviously we weren't... He helped us return it over the fence that night and surprisingly there is no damage to it whatsoever (and only a few minor scratches on the neighbours deck railing). It could have been a lot worse... Luckily there was nothing in it bar the kaffir lime in a big pot. I had prepared the beds during the holidays ready for planting, but wanted to give my seedlings a bit more time before putting them out. Will has now dug 4 holes for the corner posts and will concrete them in.

I'll leave you with one more pic of our cinerarias which are lovely this year. Mum bought down some plants with her a couple of years back when she was visiting and planted them under our climbing roses. They have self-seeded and filled the whole area nicely.

That's all from me. I survived my first week back at school, although it was bit of a shock to the system... Only 7 more to go until the summer holidays, bring it on!!!

Badminton, Holidays and Dave

Since my last post I had a trip to Tauranga to play the Masters Badminton Nationals. Geoff and I flew up, and we met up with Richard and Hazel who were already there as they played singles on the Thursday. On the Friday it was women's doubles and I played with Deidre Bartels in the 35+ section. I know Deidre from when I used to play in the Waikato over 12 years ago, in fact her husband Kevin coached me throughout juniors. It was a lot of fun playing with her, and we did pretty well, especially since it had been so long since we last played together! We ended up finishing fourth, but just lost out to the gold medallists 26-24 in the third set, and also went to three sets against the silver medallists. Both games could easily have gone the other way on a different day... Deidre did really well considering she had already played in the 40+ group that morning and had a lot of very long tough games on the way to winning the silver medal for that section.

My mum and dad came over from Hamilton for the day to watch, also bringing my Nana which was lovely. They seemed to enjoy their day, even if Nana was more impressed with the speed and strength on display in the men's doubles, compared with the women's! I think dad thinks I still play for Waikato with that scarf he's wearing... A friend of mine suggested I send him a Wellington one for Christmas!

On the Saturday Geoff and I played the 35+ mixed doubles.Mum and dad also came back and watched for the day. They really are good about coming and supporting me whenever I am vaguely in the vicinity. At one stage I actually ended up with a huge support crew. My friend Glen Baveystock who lives in Tauranga popped in for a bit with his two boys, then while they were there Deidre (who wasn't playing mixed) also came and watched for a bit with her two children, also bringing Bill and Joan Bartels, Kevin's parents. It was lovely to see them as it had probably been 12 or 13 years... Bill also used to coach me a bit, way back in the day... Geoff and I did well to win our box and get a free ride through to the semi-final. However, we didn't play that well in the semi and were comfortably beaten. Geoff is eligible to play up in the next age-group next year, so I'll have to either find myself a new mixed doubles partner, or else try to convince him to keep playing in the 35's with me...

On our badminton trips we'll often try and fit in a bit of mini-golf and we found a great course at the Mount where we were staying. It was pretty tough with not many barriers, more like a mini version of 'proper' golf. I'd hate to think how many penalty shots I gave away for going off the course... Geoff is the undisputed mini-golf king and he comfortably won. I snuck in at second place, just beating Richard by 1 shot. The last hole, 'The Mount' that Geoff is playing below was an absolute nightmare!

After the mini-golf we hit the Mount Hot Pools as they were right across the road from the apartment we were staying in. We were after a nice long hot soak to ease our aching muscles, but the pools were actually disappointing. They just weren't warm enough, not really any hotter than a warm bath. It was bit of a let-down.

Saturday night was a nice quiet night in as we were all pretty knackered.  We got some fish and chips, drank a few beers and watched a bit of rugby. Another couple of Wellington players who weren't staying with us also came and hung out. It was all very chilled and a good way to end the few days away.

I got back to Wellington with only 1 week of school to go until the holidays. Unfortunately it was bit of a week from hell... Senior exams were still going when I had my time off school for the badminton so I had all that marking to do on my return. We had parent interviews on the Wednesday and Thursday that week to give back the exam results so the marking had to be done pretty urgently. I also had all my IB internal assessments to finish marking by the Friday which wasn't much fun either... It meant for a lot of very late nights that week, but I managed to get everything done and to deadline. I was well and truly ready for my 2-week holiday by the end of that week!

I couldn't have too much of a lie-in on the first day of my holiday as Saturday was the Wellington Badminton Club champs. This was the last 'proper' badminton event of the year and I finished the season on a high note, winning the women's doubles with Hazel and the mixed doubles with Geoff. It had been a very long season as we started early February, but an enjoyable (not to mention successful) one. There is something like another 3 Thursday club nights left, then it's all over till next year...

 

Last Tuesday night Will and I went to see Dave Dobbyn and Don McGlashan playing Old St Paul's as part of the Acoustic Church Tour. What a brilliant show it was! Old St Paul's is just around the corner from my school in Thorndon and we have a few services there. It is a gorgeous old wooden church and the acoustics were simply amazing. We were lucky enough to get front-row pews and it was just awesome. I don't know if the set list below is big enough/clear enough to see, but it was a mixture of the 'greatest hits' (Whaling, Loyal, Dominion Road, Anchor Me, Welcome Home etc.) as well as more interesting obscure songs that Don chose for Dave and vice versa from their respective (extensive!) back catalogues.

 



I actually recorded 'Welcome Home' on my iphone, and it came out really nice, but it was a pretty big file at over 600MB and blogger hasn't been overly cooperative about uploading it...  I managed to nearly half the file size by converting it from a .mov file to a .mp4 file, but it still didn't want to upload. You'll just have to take my word for it that it was awesome!

This is getting pretty long so I'll call it quits here and put the rest of my holiday news in the next post... Above is the latest addition to our fridge, his and her robots!  They are very cute, a friend of Will's from korfball gave him a pack that makes over 50 different robots. Will was impressed that I made them hold hands!

Speaking of cute, I'll leave you with a pic of Dora the Explorer. There will be plenty more in the next post too!