Excitement and adventure and really wild things...

...well, sort of.

the delight of drains

The Drain Man arrived on Wendesday and duly replaced our old ceramic drain, circa 1910, with a new plastic one. Hopefully that'll put an end to our drain problems for a while. Iain replaced the soil yesterday, and it was going to be my job to re-lay the paving stones today, but fortunately it's been raining all day, so I've been given a reprieve. The only other thing left to do is to dispose of the pieces of old drain. Iain favours chucking them over the fence into the stand of bamboo in the empty section nextdoor, but I've vetoed this. I quite fancy recycling them in some way. I've thought about breaking them down to use as mosaic tesserae (once we've given them a thorough wash, of course!), but I think they're going to be far too thick to break. If you've got any ideas for ways of recycling old drainpipes, please let us know!


more mad flowers

When I was blabbering on in my last post about the weird combination of things in flower in our garden, I mentioned a snowdrop and a rose. Realising you may find it hard to believe these two are flowering simultaneously, I've collected some photographic evidence. These photos were taken within minutes of each other. Weird, or what?!

snowdrop flowering on 2nd August

rose flowering on 2nd August

work developments

I've been invited to take part in an international project, which will involve a trip to Cape Town, as well as at least six months' full-time work. It all sounds very exciting. At the moment I'm waiting for further details, but I'll keep you posted.

holiday plans

Since my last post we've booked our summer holiday. We've wanted to go to South Island ever since we first arrived in New Zealand, but the month-long tour we'd planned had to be cancelled due to work commitments. Iain's got some time off over Christmas, so we've booked the ferry for a two-week tour of South Island.

one of the Interislander ferries

We're setting off on December 27th, the day after the Boxing Day 'Cemetery Circuit' motorbike race, and returning on January 10th. We've booked the cats into a cattery, and, as we're going to be camping, it's possible that their accommodation for the fortnight will cost more than ours!

During the last few days, in order to begin to think about putting together a rough itinerary, we've asked two people who have travelled extensively on South Island which places they would recommend seeing. And they both, independently, gave us the same answer: 'All of it!'. Which was not very helpful, but nevertheless very encouraging. Given our mutual love of wild places, Iain's obsession with mountains, and my childhood dream of being Heidi, I think it's possible we may go and live on South Island at some point. So the journey won't just be a holiday, it will also give us the opportunity to look at some candidates for future places to live.


Helen