December already

I think this is the longest I have ever gone without posting, since starting my blog all those years ago! Apologies to anyone who has been checking in for an update every now and then...

I'll start with chicken news, as there has been a few changes since the last post... Of our original 3 hens, we only have Florence left. She is pretty old and slow now, but managing to hang in there. She has done her dash on the laying front, but has earned the right to happily see out her retirement free-ranging around the property. Here she is in all her glory...

 

And chilling out in her favourite pot...

When I last posted, we had recently got 2 new 'babies'. Unfortunately, one of them suddenly dropped dead one day, just leaving Amy. The most annoying thing is that they had only started laying a week or so earlier! It is bit of a mystery, we found her just peacefully curled up in the spot where she used to dust bath, with her head tucked into her wing as if she was sleeping. Here are a couple of pics of Amy. She doesn't seem to be missing her sister too much... I don't know what it is with chickens and pots, but they love them!

So, because we were down to only 1 'layer', a few weekends ago we did a road-trip to the Wairarapa to pick up 2 new 'babies'. We've named the newbies Jen and Chloe, and they are super cool, super chilled out chooks. They were tame right from the beginning, so had obviously been around people quite a bit from a young age. They get a bit of grief from Florence and Amy (the pecking order well and truly coming into play), especially at meal times, but it doesn't seem to bother them.

Amy had been laying an egg a day in the nesting box, but was obviously a bit put out by the newbies as she stopped as soon as they arrived. A couple of weeks went by and we started searching high and low in the garden to try and figure out where she was laying. One morning Will saw her coming out of some long grass. He went to investigate, and lo and behold... We tested the eggs and they were all fresh (Amy had chosen a nice cool spot underneath a hebe!) so we've been enjoying using them and giving them away to friends.

The social hub of our garden (for the birds that is!) is the bird bath that my nana gave us as a house-warming when we bought the house. It is always a hive of activity.

Even the chickens have been known to drink from it, although the newbies need to realise that they are just a little bit too big to actually land on it!

That is enough chookie news, you are probably also wanting to know how Will and I are getting on! Will is especially good, having recently being promoted from Senior Lecturer to Associate Professor at Victoria University. I am really proud of him, it is well deserved because he works so incredibly hard.

I'm also all good on the work front. I've recently taken on a responsibility for the school timetable, so that has been keeping me busy the last few weeks! The women who has done it for many years at school is retiring at the end of the year so I've been working on it with her this year, then will have to try to remember how it all works next year, eek!

Unfortunately, things haven't been quite so rosy on the sporting front... 10 weeks ago I managed to slip in the shower and do some serious damage to my knee. To be fair, it is the same knee that I have already done ACL and MCL damage to from rugby and badminton respectively... This time it is currently looking like I might have torn my meniscus. I've been through the long process of A&E, GP, weeks of physio, back to GP for referral to orthopaedic surgeon, then initial appointment with surgeon. On Tuesday I have an MRI scan, then a follow-up appointment with the surgeon on the Friday. I fly to the UK on Saturday, so at least I'll know where I'm at before I go. It might be a case of surgery in the new year. The timing was pretty lousy as I did it the week before my badminton club champs. I was looking forward to trying to defend my doubles and mixed doubles titles! I hope the new winners appreciated the nicely polished cups...

 

As I've mentioned in earlier posts, every now and then Will and I try to have a special 'date night' on Wednesday nights. Last Wednesday we went to see Spiegelworld's 'Empire' which was an amazing show. A mix of circus tumbling, comedy, burlesque and vaudeville. See here for the NZ trailer. The show was held in a 'spiegeltent' which was a gorgeous wooden big top with stained glass windows that had been put up on the Wellington waterfront. The whole show was absolutely brilliant, but these guys were phenomenal. However, the opening act was Will and my favourite. I'd highly recommend the show, although it is probably best not to take children... For instance, at the beginning of the show we were told that photography is allowed, but no flash photography because 'we don't want you to f**ken kill our acrobats!' Here are a few (sans flash!) photos from my phone.

 

 

I'm back at school Monday and Tuesday, but it'll just be working on the timetable. I actually taught my last class for the year last Tuesday. As mentioned earlier, I'm then off to the UK on Saturday. I'm flying over by myself as Will has to help run a conference in Dunedin before joining me in the UK 5 days later. I'm looking forward to catching up with my London based friends, then once Will arrives we'll head up to Oxfordshire and spend most of the remaining time with his family. We fly out on the 29th December for Hong Kong. We'll spend a night with my brother before heading off on a 2-week Vietnamese adventure which I'm enjoying planning at the moment. We arrive back in Wellington mid-January.