January

It's a stormy sort of day in Pukemiro. The wind rushes up the valley, and you hear it roaring in the walnut trees before the gusts reach the house. So far only a few spots of rain have fallen. It's a nice excuse to stay inside, and a nice break from the hot muggyness.

Not a great deal of progress over the holidays. I've been busy with work and family. One half of the lounge got re-plastered and re-undercoated. Weeds have grown everywhere. Lawns are being constantly mowed, but I enjoy the exercise, I can't stand the gym, I need to be doing something productive if I'm expending my energy!

I haven't seen pukekos or turkeys for weeks now, although I've heard the pukekos in the night. The grass across the road has grown so long that the wind running through it looks like waves across a lake, except it's all a sort of golden syrup-y brown colour. Instead, I've had a family of quails visiting. In the morning three of them walk in single file down the road, calling to each other, and in the evening they walk back again, sometimes crossing the front lawn, and panicking when they lose sight of each other in my "weed strip". (That's a sloped piece of lawn right by the front fence that's too difficult/dangerous to mow. I've let the daisies and dandelions grow there because I don't know what to do about it.)

I came up to the house last week to find this little hedgehog asleep under my tomatoes. I have no idea how he got under the netting, as I could find no gaps! I didn't know if he was trapped, or how long he had been there, so I raised the netting and put a dish of water next to him. He just opened one eye at me and went back to sleep. When I went back in the evening he was gone, and the water was untouched. I haven't had slug bait down since I first planted everything, so he's welcome to feast on those slimey critters. I just wish I knew how he got in!

I picked up a BBQ plate from the op shop before christmas. It turns out to be just the right size for my gas burner, so now I have an indoor BBQ. Very handy when it's windy. I've been grilling the courgettes from the garden. One of them got away on me when I was away for a week and a half and turned into a marrow. I sliced it up and layered it with mince and pasta sauce, and cheese sauce. It took two bloody hours to cook! But it was delicious.

I've made this wall hanging to cover the strange bit of wall in the spare room where a doorway has been badly filled in. It's not proper door sized, so must have been a cupboard tacked on the the back of the house, back when it was a two-room miners shack. In the corner you can see the old wallpaper. The last owner must have painted around a cupboard that was there, but he demolished it before he left.

Dad mad me this lovely little chopping board for Christmas. Isn't it sweet? Mum always calls it "The little house". It doesn't seem that little to me. The rooms in this 1920's cottage are bigger than the room's in mum and dad's 1910's transitional villa in Auckland. But they have nine rooms, (and an awkward layout from when the house was two flats), where I have five rooms.

The pink dahlias are finally starting to bloom. I was beginning to wonder if I had killed them all off. I bought my china doll tree inside last week. It's been struggling outside since I bought it down here. I think it's the wind it doesn't like. It's perked up since it came inside. There are all these plants I want to grow, but I keep having to stop to consider if they can deal with frosts, and wind, and summer droughts. No drought this summer though, not yet anyway. There seems to have been rain every week since I planted the vege garden (yay!). Those water crystals I used seem to be working really well too. Much as I like the idea of an organic garden, right now it just wouldn't work, with me not being here all the time. I wish I could have chickens too.

One day.

December

Uses for a wallpaper sample book:
uhhhh... wallpaper? Suddenly the kitchen is much more bearable, and it's only up with blu tak so, whatever. I like it.

It's amazing what you find in a skip. Like these bed ends. Exactly what I needed! I'm just not sure how to attach the wooden side rails that I found in the inorganics. Errrr, requires more thinking. And also a trailer or something, because I can get them in the hatchback, but I can't close the boot! Arrrgh.

Naughty little Trademe purchase. A sewing machine from the same era the house was built. I was given a modern sewing machine, but it's kind of yuck to use. The whole thing shakes across the table with a plastic rattle and buzz, and the foot pedal slides across the floor underfoot. I'm used to Mum's old knee lever Bernina, which is on it's last legs. This Singer does straight stitch, and that's it. It doesn't even do reverse. And it's a joy to use.

I went to a giant demolition yard, and found some brackets for the pink sink! They cost $20 freakin' dollars. My $1 sink is now a $21 sink.

My Mum has weak elbows from old work related injuries. This makes it hard for her to lift things like 2 litre milk bottles. At her place she uses a milk jug. At mine, we now use an old milk bottle. I put a standard milk bottle top on it by cutting away part of the inside spiral so it just pops on and off.

Finally got around to getting some paint on the gib behind the shower. Well, actually, Mum did it. That's her, just finishing up the bottom corner. Suddenly it's starting to look like a real bathroom. From a certain angle.

These guys finally made the move. So far they have made it two whole weeks without being stolen. Gatepost gargoyles. I've also re-plastered another section of the lounge walls. Now it's half done. It was three quarters done when it was suddenly decided that I should do the piles. Then all the walls cracked along the joins. Now I have to do them all again. On the up side, I am getting much better at plastering.

Nights in Pukemiro are still blissfully cool. It's much easier to sleep without Auckland's crazy humidity. And sleep is what I'm going to do now. ZZzzzzzzzz

A bit of backtracking.

There are a couple of things I forgot to mention.

This is the carport. The much less leaky carport. Clever uncle Phil works in a timber mill, where they use these giant sanding...belts? I guess you'd call them? So he was able to grab some used ones that were going to be thrown out. They have a sort of rubber backing. He sort of stapled them to the carport roof. Ta-da! Now there are only one or two bits where it leaks, where the belts overlap. Much better working conditions for power tools now. (Don't look at me like that! It's only temporary!)

Also forgot to mention my other uncles genius idea. Getting bits of tin out of a scrap bin.....

....in order to patch some of the bad holes in the weatherboards! This resulted in at least one pair of birds being ejected from their nesting site. Unfortunately not the very noisy stomp-y ones in the roof over my bedroom.

I knocked together a seat for the kitchen out of bits and pieces too.

In garden news...

Started picking my lettuce and spinach already! And those tomato plants have flower buds starting on them. Crikey!
When I planted this garden, I kind of forgot I had already planted a tray of various seedlings. Instead of wasting them, I decided to build another garden. Not sure how wise that was.

Here they are all covered in bird netting. Cucumbers, courgettes, more lettuce and more spinach, and more tomatoes.

...and here is the strange frame I made to hold up the netting and for the cucumbers to climb. Will it work? We''ll see.

The feijoas have flower buds. I wonder if they will come to fruit? They haven't been in the ground long.

I admit, I've been raiding the green waste dump again! Picked up some bromeliads, succulents, and possibly some kind of dietes? I will have to wait until they flower to find out!

Trains and automobiles. And hedges.

The good news is... the BBQ works! (How could it not?) See my lovely assistant dressed in fetching "country attire". You can't beat a proper wood-fired BBQ for that smokey flavour. We had BBQ for dinner two nights this weekend, just to make sure the first night of deliciousness wasn't a fluke.

Sunday was a Bush Tramway day. It's open first Sunday of the month April to December, so the next one is the last until Autumn. (Apparently they aren't allowed to run in summer because of the fire risk!)

Here is Conrad with Pukemiro Junction Station behind him.

Somewhat confusingly, Pukemiro Junction isn't that close to Pukemiro. Infact, Glen Afton village lies between the Junction and Pukemiro Village, about 5km distant. Somewhere down that way.

It's free to enter the "grounds" but to ride the train you need to buy a ticket for $10, that allows you to ride all day. Our train was stopped by this solitary bandit.

In house news, someone threw out a whole hedge, which I proceeded to rescue from the green dump across the road. I think I got about 10 plants. I reckon they would sell for at least $15 each at the garden centre, so it's kind of like rescuing $150 from the rubbish.

Because I don't know what type they are (some kind of buxus?), I don't know how large they will grow, so I'll have to wait and see if they will need to be moved. I need a reasonably tall hedge as a wind break, so if they remain small I'll have to move them up the back. No biggie. The soil is actually quite nice and easy to dig compared to the volcanic Mt Eden soil I'm used to!
The vege garden is doing well, I think the lettuces and spinach will be ready to start picking in another week or two, which seems very quick growing to me. The corn and tomato plants have doubled in size during the week too. The boysenberry I planted against the fence has new shoots, so I guess it has survived, and the mandarin seems to have kept it's blossoms, (unlike the plums). I didn't know I was supposed to trim the plums when I planted them! It wasn't mentioned in the gardening book, but I recently read another one. All the information about pruning is terribly confusing.

Oh, and in non-house news, my car was a victim of siphoning. (In Auckland, not Pukemiro!) Someone got under the car and cut the hose! Bastards. So I lost about $60 of petrol (They would have got about $35 worth, and I tried to put $25 in and it all fell out)and it's going to cost another $70 to get it fixed. I'm resolving to not have a full tank of gas anymore. Half will do. Unless I'm travelling out of town. Which is every week. Grrrr.

Here comes summer.

It's been all go lately. The little house is coming along in leaps and bounds.

Thanks Uncle Phil for the excellent work on the bathroom floor and walls! It was a pleasant surprise to find there was building paper on the walls.

I forgot to get a photo of the bathroom with all it's walls on, but it does look fab. Now I have to figure out how I'm going to attach the old fashioned pedestal sink to the wall. hmmm, no bolt holes! Oh well, it only cost a dollar.

My first solo-power-tools project was building a new laundry tub cabinet. Success!
Before

After

After

The compost pile in the back corner of the garden looks great now all the weeds are gone and it's been turned. It was a nice surprise to go down this weekend and find the bits of tin had been nailed over the worst of the holes in the weatherboards. Thanks guys!

I've had a really brilliant weekend down at the house by myself, very productive. Dug a little vege garden...

....with spinach, lettuce, tomatoes, corn and parsley.

Rebuilt the back steps....

....it's more like a little deck now. Can you tell how proud I am of it? I'm calling it the gin deck. Just big enough for a gin and tonic! And then I got even fancier and built steps on either side.

AND THEN, with the 12 concrete blocks that were excavated from the old steps I built a BBQ. Sort of.

Well, I haven't tried it out yet, but I'm sure it will be fine! Just in time for Labour Weekend too.

I don't know who or what the Rotowaro Legionaires were, but their sign was used as the backing for the old bathroom cabinet.

Pukemiro Moonrise.

See the way the moonlight reflects off the septic tank in an attractive manner? ;-) hehehe.

Spring has sprung.

The wisteria has developed fuzz wee buds and a couple of them have burst into flower!

We've been planting fruit trees! Feijoa hedge (can two trees be a hedge?) between me and the neighbours, with a lemon tree at the end of the row, that we transplanted from the middle of the front lawn.

A Satsuma mandarin at the side of the house.

New neigh-bours! Hehehe. These guys are just grazing over the back fence for a while.

It's been a month of slow progress. High winds, bad weather, flooding (not on my section though!). But little touches are starting to really make the place feel like home. Pictures on the wall, a chest of drawers, incense, cushions.

I can't wait for the summer.