Badminton, the garden and a wedding anniversary in the Wairarapa 2019

Our garden continued to produce well for the remainder of the summer and into spring. We had more than enough tomatoes, runner beans and cucumbers to share with neighbours and friends. 

Our feijoa trees also produced well. There is something so satisfying about eating homegrown produce.

Excess gherkins got turned into gherkin pickle to enjoy throughout the year

Most of my gardening time and effort goes into veges and other edibles as I like things to be 'useful' in life. However, I do maintain a small flower garden on our patio and the sunflowers did give me a lot of pleasure.

Friday 12th April 2019 was our 11-year wedding anniversary and Will and I had booked a weekend getaway in Riversdale in the Wairarapa to celebrate.

We stayed in a super-cute wee cottage called 'Cobweb Cottage'. We arrived in the dark but the owners had lit the fire for us so it was warm and welcoming when we got there.

We spent Saturday going for a nice long walk on the Riversdale Beach. Neither of us had been there before so it was good to explore somewhere new.

We then drove out to Castlepoint which is a favourite place of ours. It's such a special spot.

On the Sunday we had arranged to meet up with Elvie and Mike and family, friends of ours who had bought a property close to Masterton. We enjoyed a nice brunch in a local cafe, then on Elvie's advice we went exploring in the nearby Queen Elizabeth Park. 

In the park you can gather up acorns and then hand-fed them to the very cute deer.

We were also lucky enough to see a morepork hunt and catch a mouse right in front of us! This was amazing to see as morepork are usually nocturnal. It then flew up to a branch and swallowed the mouse down in one!

The following weekend we had our friends Ric and Graz from Auckland come to stay for the Easter, along with their very cool kids Toby and Anya. Ric and I taught maths together in the UK, so we go a fair way back.

The kids enjoy spending time with Will and I because they get to play Pokemon Go! I do like the intense concentration below!

It was lovely to spend a few days with them as I don't get up to Auckland that much. The last time I had seen them was when my teammates and I stayed with them for 10 days during the World Masters Games in 2017!

Speaking of badminton, over the Queen's Birthday weekend I was once again invited to play for Southland in their Division 1 team at the South Island Masters which this year were held in Christchurch (which was a bit easier to get to than Timaru where they had been the previous year!). I flew down on the Friday night and the timings worked out that I could be picked up from the airport by a group who had driven up from Invercargill in a minivan that day.

Somehow in all my years playing badminton, I had never played at the Badminton Canterbury hall where our two Saturday ties were played. My mixed doubles partner Cameron is looking very stylish as he plays his shot in the pic above!

Our two Sunday matches, plus the one on Monday morning were played at the new Zhu Badminton Centre which opened in August 2018. My Southland team had a good tournament, coming in third behind Canterbury and Otago. They are a great group of people and lots of fun to hang out with both on and off the court.

I had some lovely views of the alps on my afternoon flight back to Wellington.

Mum and dad had flown down for a visit the day after I left for Christchurch, so Will was in charge of looking after the in-laws. They had been busy in my absence demolishing our old garden shed and working on the base which we were going to reuse and build our new shed on. That chicken below doesn't actually belong to us, it was visiting from our neighbours!

Mum and dad stayed for  week or so, then a couple of weeks later I was off on my big trip to the UK and Slovakia.