In which winter is coming...as is the plumber (I hope).

It is with sadness I need to announce the death of the large plot of agapanthus in our backyard.

What are agapanthus? Those green leafy things you see in median strips that have the purple and white flowers. 

www.flowerpower.com.au%2Fgardening%2Fagapanthus-care%2F&psig=AFQjCNFXM9EfV5ZeC0TtuCtA2gAo-lUKEg&ust=1459202760648421

They are (according to DOC) good for holding up banks (I can only assume they mean the earthy kind not the monetary kind?!) and otherwise a noxious weed that rapidly exclude native species from the forest floor.

Bookworm tells me she has spent 30 years trying to get rid of them from her garden after digging them up soon after she bought the house. I imagine, like the Easter fable of Jesus Christ being resurrected after dying on the cross and arising again (sorry Christians, I'm still sceptical), I expect to spend a large amount of time digging out resurrected agapanthus whose bulbs I missed.

Anyhow, I spent a large amount of Easter Sunday in the garden creating this destruction. You can see the dead bodies in a pile on the left along with our ex letter box which still hasn't gone to the dump.

Picture provided with kind permission of "4P Talent Management Inc."

 Let me tell you this was a lot of digging! Finally, 6 months after having Audrey, my back seems to have come right so I was actually capable of doing this.

Then there was our preparation for winter which sadly has snuck up on us. When we moved in the new council bylaw requires the seller to remove the non-compliant fire before settlement, so we were left with a "lovely" monstrosity of an exposed pebble hearth with no fire.

After settling on a "clean air compliant" fire we engaged the services of a plumber (who installs fires) and the bloody building consent has taken a while. So long that the plumber put us off until "after Easter". My concern is that in tradie parlance "after Easter" could actually mean "before Christmas", thus we will freeze to death over the winter.

Nevertheless, thinking positively, we organised for a large amount of firewood to be delivered and popped on our back lawn. Right before the huge amount of rainfall the Wed and Thurs before Easter. Thankfully we had purchased a tarp and I covered it not a moment too soon - the heavens opened and it rained solidly and sometimes torrentially for 48 hours.

So on Saturday we started stacking the firewood beside the house, as the Fat Controller had decided it was too late to help us build the planned woodshed (read: he had some fishing to do). 

It was a smooth business thanks to Mickey's previous experience being used as "a slave in a work camp" during his teenage years. 

He tells me he was rented out to family friends along with his twin brother for any heavy lifting and firewood stacking that might be available, including one year when his parents planted a small field of potatoes on their spare section and the boys were detailed to rotary hoe and plant it. That's one way to feed two hungry boys!

That brings me to my socialist tendencies. Someone once said to me "The harder I work, the luckier I get". But is that true?

This is the first year I've had to buy firewood.

 Admittedly we could have collected firewood from free sources if we had had a whole summer to do it (and not had a screaming baby) but what about the people of Rotorua who simply don't have $800 to spend on a whole load of firewood in late March? 

What do the pensioners who are incapable of stacking the wood do? What do the single mums do? Do they buy it bag by bag (quite a bit more expensive)? Do they use a freestanding gas heater that releases moisture into the air thus providing an ideal breeding ground for mould? 

If they are lucky enough to have a heat pump do they simply wear the additional power bills or do they resort (like I hear so often) to a whole family sleeping together in one bed or room to keep warm with only a fan heater. 

No wonder we see so many sick kids in the winter. How fortunate am I to have a husband in work?

But enough of the soap boxing. I digress. We are now owners of a large six foot stack of firewood that will hopefully get us through the winter. When we get our fire. 

Watch this space.... and happy Easter!

A'GACI on Twitter: "Happy Easter Bunny Babes!! 

What do you start with first - ears or tails? http://t.co/a3lKFIOYp8"

In which we: Solve a cat door conundrum, obtain some curtain linings and put in a letter box.....badly!

Greetings blog readers (I fear this may just be our long-suffering parents!)

I'm sure you have been wondering how Ames and Mickey have been getting on with that house of theirs. 

Big plans are afoot! But first children, let me tell you about the little stuff we have got done.                                                                                                                                                                                               The ever -amazing Bookworm and the Fat Controller came to visit, bringing with them beans from the garden and some curtain linings that Bookworm had casually whipped up. 

These are thermal fabric with curtain tape (picture right) that you can hook onto the back of your cheap and nasty Warehouse curtains that you liked the pattern of but will ultimately result in you freezing to death over the winter on the volcanic plateau. 

Then.... there was the cat door saga. As you can see (above) the cat door is now in place. We did have a cat door but Jim and Sparkles are quite possibly cat swingers and like to lure other cats inside to EAT THEIR EXPENSIVE FOOD and then have kitty orgies. We think. 

So anyhow, the original door was on the left of the picture but I couldn't put the microchip door there because the ranchslider wouldn't open over it. 

Solution? Pay a glazier $69 for 5 minutes work (surely he could have also taken me to bed for that price- maybe it would have been free?) to turn the window around.

Result - cat door is down the end away from the ranchslider. Thankfully Jim has gotten over his initial fear of anything new and is using it now. apparently it makes a very scary click when it opens. Pussy.

If you're not asleep after all that thrilling news, then there was the letter box. As you can see we were blessed with a retro 1970s letter box. It's not very nice and it is certainly not capable of handling my parcel deliveries that feed my Trademe addiction.

So off to Bunnings I went to acquire a new letterbox.
Poor Mickey shakes in his wee boots whenever I go to Bunnings. The credit card gets a hammering. But you know what? It's the staff there -it's all their fault. I swear they must be on drugs - they are so damn nice all the time and helpful. The nice man told me I needed only one bag of Easycrete for a letter box. He even lifted it into my trolley for me. I thought about asking him to be my Granddad.

So with the help of Muscles Mickey we (he) dug out the concrete foundation, we fille dthe hole with water, poured in the concrete and put in the post... and waited for it to set. We had a beer while we waited. It was only polite.

As you can see we took great pains to make sure it was level.... but what we forgot was to make sure it was parallel to the road!!!!
It's not as bad as it looks in the picture (above).
So now we have a letterbox that is shiny and new and faces slightly to the left... I maintain it's so people can see the numbers when we drive up the road.
It's meant to be like that.....

Characters, not necessarily in order of appearance....

Cast List *:

Mickey: 
30-something Kiwi bloke whose interests tend to be more towards sci-fi and video games. Limited DIY skills. Possesses a willing spirit especially if beer is offered.

Ames: 
30-something Good Keen Girl with a dream of renovating her first home. Last time she did woodwork was in year 8...

Audrey:
A feisty wee baby who dislikes sleep and enjoys her food, especially mango-banana Only Organics range**.

Jim: A cat with an anxiety disorder. Dislikes change and loud noises in general.

Sparkles: A happy go lucky cat who was brain damaged at birth and subsequently possesses no common sense or fear of danger. Main raison d'etre is eating Jimbos Pet Food**.

P4: 4 chickens with names starting with P. Publicity shy so will probably not feature heavily.Do not possess the "power of four" a la Charmed, sadly.

Fat Controller: Poppa - in possession of a ute, trailer and various tools. Handy to know. Like to direct proceedings rather than get stuck in.

Bookworm: Unflappable grandmother. Has a wide ranging knowledge of many things including vast gardening knowledge. Embodies the saying "if you want something done, ask a busy person".

Toto: Gran who took early retirement. Has built several houses (not literally) and has a working knowledge of how to do most DIY projects.

Handy Andy: Grandad who owns his own engineering business. Handy with his tools, often available at the end of the phone to provide advice. Very good at woodwork.



*Not our real names
**Sponsorship welcome