Watching – The Edible Garden. Alys Fowler transformed her English urban backyard into a garden with the aim of having at least one meal a day from it.

This meant planting the right things in the right places at the right times – sometimes with great success, other times with miserable failure.

Beautifully filmed (and I love the quirky dresses she dons to do her weeding) and for this weekend gardener very inspiring.

Ah yes, must work on improving my vege patch which only has two rows of runty carrots to show for itself at the moment. Oh the shame…

Listening – Mumford & Sons. I usually lean towards music that’s a bit more rockier than this folk “rock” band from London but I love the voice of the lead singer and they ain’t bad to look at either. Great to chill out to while surfing the net.
 

Reading – The Road to Castle Hill. After the death of her husband, well-known Kiwi philanthropist Christine Fernyhough bought the notoriously difficult to farm high country station Castle Hill without an experience in farming at all.

She has to deal with floods, snowdumps, recalcitrant farm managers, escaping stock, and the challenge of making the farm economically viable for the first time in its existence.

This is a wonderful story with gorgeous photographs of a courageous woman’s journey to achieve her dreams.

I devoured it one sitting and highly recommend it!

Liking - that I’ll be spending this weekend up in Paihia with the two people I love most, which also in turn means taking lots of photos (hopefully the weather behaves and we can take a trip to Opua) and paying my usual visit to the fabulous Flying Fish Design Store!

Yippee!

Angela, the wife half of our [Geordie](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geordie) neighbours up the road has found it really hard to get work over the past year, and has taken on any job she can to contribute to the family coffers.
So when the position of School Bus driver for our local route came up at the beginning of the year she thought that as seeing she already had her HT licence (which meant she could drive a truck) and the hours and holidays were absolutely perfect as they have a 7 year old son who rides the school bus everyday, why not apply.
Finally, after sitting the “P” part of her test to enable her to take passengers, and getting the all-clear for her police check (which took months and months), Angela rolled out the school bus last week (and the start of term 3) for the very first time.
It’s no more shuttling kids to the main road anymore; it’s door to door service for Miss 9.10, the nieces and Joe and Freya at no 105 and it’s the perfect job for Angela…even if those corners are a wee bit tight on the twisty windy country road we all live on.
Billy, Angela’s 7 year old, reckon she’s really, really cool and best of all?
He doesn’t get picked on on the school bus anymore.

Errr, no, you can’t watch telly 2.30 on a sunny Sunday afternoon.
Or any other time on a sunny Sunday afternoon, for that matter…

[Ms Mac](http://www.ms-mac.blogspot.com/) wanted to a peek at Lil’Sis’s house and where it was in relation to ours.
On the left you can see the side of the Beige Barn in the distance with two windows (photo taken from our verandah).
On the right is a photo of the Beige Barn from the front (taken on Christmas Day) – the windows in the photo on to the left are on the right hand side of the upper story, towards the back…
It’s still a work in progress but when you consider Bruvinlaw built this pretty much singlehandly, it’s quite something!

I am tickled to be the recipient of this lovely Cherry on the Top award – many thanks to Laura from Our Wee Farm
whose beautiful blog I discovered via NZ Life & Leisure magazine last month.

And now for part two, I need to tell you three things about me:

1) I’ve just had crumpets for lunch. One with Marmite, one with Golden
Syrup (which always seems to seep through onto the plate so you have to
eat it quicker than the one with Marmite on)

2) I spent my early childhood years on Waiheke Island. We lived in a bach surrounded by bush overlooking a quiet tidal bay – which I think is why after living in big cities for years I’ve returned to the peace and tranquility which comes with rural living.

3) I’m terrible at making cakes (let’s just call them “doorstops”, ‘cos that’s all they’re good for) but I make pretty good cheese scones.

Part three: Post a photo I love….

Even though I took this photo nearly two years ago I immediately thought of it. I’d not long had my macro lens and was trying to perfect getting my images sharp in focus and also experiment with different angles – and I reckon this one worked on both counts

And paying it forward…

Iridiscent Jellybean

Countess Interrupted

Greenstone Thoughts

It’s the freakin’ weekend at last! Oh praise be, it’s been a long time coming, ‘specially after having only worked two short weeks previously. This week the time seemed to be wound down to slow motion…I swear I looked at the clock on my computer at work @11am on Wednesday, thinking that three hours has passed and only five minutes had.

Ack, it was grim indeed…

Anyhoo, this afternoon on the way home (without my usual sidekick; the Other Harf was on grocery-shopping duty) I made my traditional diversion through Whitcoulls to purchase my Sunday-morning-reading-in-bed magazine stash (Digital Photography – how to take awesome photos and Life & Leisure – always full of awesome photos) and after satiating the thirsty tank of my car I treated myself to a raspberry *K-Bar at the petrol station.

I tell you, there is no confectionery item like a K-Bar for getting your money’s worth: I paid 60 cents and it took me half an hour to eat masticate my way through it! A total bargain if you ask me, even though I may have to book an appointment with the dentist for a filling replacement on Monday…

Then it was home to Miss 9.10 and tales of exactly how wisely she spent her (once-a month-treat-on-a-Friday) $5 lunch money (two mini pizzas, one blueberry muffin and a caramel slice all for a measley $4.30!)  followed by a smoochy session with Rodney, who is on the mend and still purring, despite having some Frankenstein-ish stitches where his right eye used to be and the fact that he has to wear one of those really annoying and deeply uncool plastic cones round his neck and his Whiskas Casserole in Jelly Selection dinner keeps falling down into it.

Plans for the rest of Friday evening? One rotisserie chook c/- Pak’n'Sav and oven chips with a side order of garlic mayo, a few glasses of wine and Glee.

Weekend? I so am ready for you.

*A well loved Kiwi institution – K-bars are a mega-chewy, tooth extracting. fruit-flavoured (Lime, Lemon, Orange, Pineapple, Blackberry, Raspberry) toffee bar. They’ve been around for donkeys ages.

Continue reading »

It’s off to the vet’s first thing tomorrow with our prodigal pusscat. His eye is getting worse by the hour, and he’s going to need a lot of medicine and TLC to get it right.

I just wonder where he’s been for the past eight months and… bugger, he really does have the most beautiful yellowy-green eyes, even for a cat…

<a href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/kiwifruitfi/1167654484/” title=”The size of my whiskers is the size of me by KiwifruitFi, on Flickr” target=”<em>blank”><img src=”http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1399/1167654484</em>edccd80bd3.jpg” width=”500″ height=”333″ alt=”The size of my whiskers is the size of me”/></a>
<a href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/kiwifruitfi/1014005593/” title=”Investigation of the paws by KiwifruitFi, on Flickr” target=”<em>blank”><img src=”http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1344/1014005593</em>42bb0f8974.jpg” width=”500″ height=”333″ alt=”Investigation of the paws”/></a>
<a href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/kiwifruitfi/2444193627/” title=”Rodney upside cat by KiwifruitFi, on Flickr” target=”<em>blank”><img src=”http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3270/2444193627</em>132a83e944.jpg” width=”500″ height=”334″ alt=”Rodney upside cat”/></a>