Labour weekend, a public holiday in NZ

I'm a bit slow in posting this, it's almost another weekend and I haven't had a chance to write anything about last weekend yet. It's going to be a long post so you might want to go and get a cuppa!

Labour day was on Monday and so meant that Joe wouldn't be working. To make the weekend seem even longer he had also booked Tuesday the 27th off as it was our 19th wedding anniversary.

Saturday 24th October
I'm sitting here staring blankly at the screen because I can't remember what we did today! It all seems a long time ago now! I know we took the dogs to the beach in the afternoon and I'll put some photos on in a bit. I'm fairly certain today was a bit of a clean up day, the porch and hallway were in desperate need of something being done. With all the renovations going on it had become an extension of the workshop, it looked like this!




I hated seeing it every time we walked through the door, but anyway it now looks like this! All we need to do is redecorate!!




In the afternoonwe took the dogs to the beach, they love it and it's usually quiet and pretty much deserted where we take them. I think that going late afternoon/early evening is the best time, the sun is on it's was down and we have seen some lovely sunsets there. Today wasn't one of those days but it the light still made for some interesting photos.





To see some more photos click here
Afterwards we got fish and chips, sat on a bench and looked out over the harbour.

Sunday 25th October
A bit of an outdoor, veggie garden workday today. It's getting warmer by the day here and the grass is growing everywhere, great in the paddocks but not so great in the garden. And especially not so great in the vegetable garden! We've had a fair amount of rain so the grass has just flown up in there. It was cut about 3 weeks ago and it was about to take over, so something had to be done, as you can see...




It took a while to cut it all but it was a massive improvement!




Our deck(this warrants a post of it's own sometime!)needs replacing, so Joe started to pull up some of the lengths of wood to re-use as path edging. The stakes were some offcuts of roofing timber Michael brought back from a job when he was trialing for an carpentry apprenticeship. The ends were cut with a saw to make a point, it had 2 cuts, 4 may have been better as they might have knocked into the ground easier. With just 2 they liked to twist, but they did they job.
So now it looks like this.





We still have some matting to put on the paths around the raised beds and we have some pea shingle to put down on top of that. We will have to do it soon though or the grass will be back up before we know it! Everything seems to grow much faster here in NZ. The border along the edge of the fence will be planted with an edible hedge.

Monday 26th October - Labour day
The plan today was too carry on with the paths, but we had a phone call from one of Joes workmates, asking if we wanted to meet up at a beach out past Raglan. We had to follow the coast road and once we got to the gravel(unsealed) road the turn off to the beach was about 15kms! This gravel road was so bendy and it seemed to climb for ages then made it's way back down again!There were a couple of moments I shuddered in my boots as there were some scary drops down one side of the road! I'm not good with heights!
It was certainly a secluded beach, the dogs met some new friends and had a great time. It's a popular surf beach and we've since found out there is an easier way to drive to it! Isn't that always the way!





To see more photos click here

Tuesday 27th October
Our 19th wedding anniversary started with trimming goats feet! We have a show on Saturday so we needed to prepar for that. We then cut the grass and then showered and went out for dinner. We went to an Italian restuarant called Cafe Caetrale in Hamilton City centre

Thank you for reading this very long entry! Well done!