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!!!