a long and very warm weekend

Not really in a writing mood ...We have a long weekend ...Last Friday was Waitangi Day. A public holiday here to celebrate the signing of the treaty between the Maoris and the Poms ....It has a great deal of significance over here. Especially to the Maoris due to the inneficiencies of the Pommy lawyers who left huge tracts of the treaty open to 'grey areas' and 'open interpretation'...

Still we all get a public holiday and to make it even better McD and I booked Today, Monday, off as well...

 

So thats good then ...

 

Except it's in the 30-34C heat range (high 80s-low 90sF for those baby boomers out there) ...I spend most of my week in an air conditioned office ... So these temps are pretty much like climbing into a medium oven for the day .... 

 

So Friday I thought I would do a bit of work around the garden ..The vegie plot in the main... Heaved up a bag of compost and trudged up the hill to the plot... The spuds are now all dug out so its time to add compost and then the autumn/winter cabbages and broccoli ... 

 

So having carted said large bag up the path to the back of the house then along the back of the house and up the pathway through the copse to the vegie plot I then carefully plodded my way up the vegie plot to the bare soil bed ....

 

Except, almost there, I slipped on some rubbish and spent a small slow motion lifetime trying to keep my balance, not do the spilts in both directions at the same time and keep a 30kg bag of compost from crashing on top of me or the occupied borders !!!..... 

 

Which I did manage successfully albeit very un-gracefully... Not much swearing !! As I was also working hard after that climb to get oxygen into lungs and blood stream .....

 

I did pay for it on Saturday though when my back seized up with muscle strain .... 

 

But we had already planned to go over the hill to the Wairappa and look at the antique shops and do a couple of 'Geocaching' hunts (hide and seek using a GPS system to find the treasure left by others )

 

Turned out the two 'hunts' we chose were in areas we wouldn't have visited other wise which is great..treasure hunting and exploring at the same time:O) ... The first was a general council park for dog walking etc ...There was sposed to be a large pond in the middle of it but with high temperatues and no rain ..No pond ..Just a white wooden bridge over a dip in the ground ..... We found the treasure under the second bridge a small bottle crammed with little treasures such as small toys , a marble, a dice (die?) etc and a note book where past finders log there successes ...people from around there world had been there .....As per the rules we left a small plastic bear (from a previous find) and took a dark coloured marble ....Left a note that the dinzies had found it ; hid the treasure again exactly as we found it and happily went off to find the next one ....

 

 

 

The next one was hidden at the back of a small Forest and Bird reserve ... The reserve is significant as it holds a colony of brown mudfish within its wetlands ...If they can survive the drought we are having.... We had to do a bit of a trudge up hill through the reserve in the heat ..Like mad dogs and Englishmen we just can't seem to help ourselves ...Mad Dog McKenzie leading the way as usual .... 

 

It was fun though and we got to see some fine vistas of the wairappa valley ...And then in the forest we were visited by a family of Fantails eager to catch any insects and small moths we put up with our feet as we walked by. Flitting around they would often sit on a branch close to us and chatter back to by quiet whistling through my teeth at them ..... Just too fast to photograph properly ......