Rāhui - Days 4,5 & 6

I doubt I'll do a post every day, unless there's something interesting to share. There's been more sorting and organising, this time the garage. Joe assembled the cupboards he bought before lock down, and we've pretty filled them already, when it's all properly sorted I'll share photos then.

Day 5 - Monday

Joe, as I have mentioned previously, may have to work the occasional day to do maintenance at essential service sites, such as the dairies and power stations.

This was the case on Monday and Tuesday, hopefully it won't happen too often.

When sorting the garage on Sunday I found some more cookery books, one of these being my pickle and chutney bible. I made Feijoa relish as I had so many. There were so many in fact that I offered them to the neighbours. One of those neighbours started a Facebook page so that we can stay in touch, help each other out if need be. A few of those neighbours took me up on the offer and we 'met' over the deck railings, keeping our safe distance of course. Not the ideal way to meet people but it will do for now, I'm sure the whole neighbourhood will be longing for a social at the end of all this.

 

The recipe made 4 x 250ml jars, hardly 3 litres Digby mate!

 

I also made a feijoa cake, recipe below 

and because I could I had afternoon tea in the sunshine

Day 6 -Tuesday 

Not only do we have an abundance of feijoas, we have a rather rampant passionfruit vine.

What's a girl to do bu make passionfruit syrup

Joe's just got home, so I shall sign off for the day

but I will leave this here!!

Spell checker anyone?

Safe safe everyone and stay home!

Rāhui - Day three

If truth be told this isn't really much different to what I usually do, it just has a different view! Although there could be more beach involved! There will be once this is over, as long as everyone sticks to the plan and stays home, the sooner we all do it the sooner we can leave our homes and go outside blinking into the sun, we might get to meet our neighbours. At the moment we are all just staying in touch by regular emails via our neighbourhood community watch thingie.

So what did we do today?

There was of course this first

View through the square window

  

You can glimpse the harbour from our deck, I got my proper camera out and popped the zoom lens on, I'll send Joe out tomorrow with the chainsaw and get him to cut down a few of those trees!

There was a bit of this going on today, this was taken at 12.45pm

My Dawn Hansen pottery from the Ugly Beautiful Studio says it's very happy to be at the beach

We have a few feijoa trees, feijoa cake tomorrow I think

As I had my camera out I took some photos of the plants in the garden

 This is at the front of the house, it's a bit messy really.
It will get a tidy up at some point, it's on a slope and the grass is non existent, might have to lose the grass here, I certainly don't want to be buggering about mowing around that lot!

Later in the afternoon Joe carried on with some more cupboards in the garage

My mate kept me company and sat on my lap for ages

Eyes closed Dot!! Dozy tart.

I have a new fridge,  a Samsung.

It does this!!

That'll do today
Stay safe y'all 

 

Time to get those jobs done

It's day two of lock down, but I don't like that word, I saw something on Facebook today and thought, yeah, I like that much better, here it is,

rāhui 

1. (verb) (-ngia,-tia) to put in place a temporary ritual prohibition, closed season, ban, reserve - traditionally a rāhui was placed on an area, resource or stretch of water as a conservation measure or as a means of social and political control for a variety of reasons which can be grouped into three main categories: pollution by tapu, conservation and politics. Death pollutes land, water and people through tapu. A rāhui is a device for separating people from tapu things. After an agreed lapse of time, the rāhui is lifted. A rāhui is marked by a visible sign, such as the erection of a pou rāhui, a post. It is initiated by someone of rank and placed and lifted with appropriate karakia by a tohunga.

So day two of rāhui, and we're doing fine, it is only day two after all, I'm quite happy doing this most of the time anyway so no real hardship for me, but Joe will no doubt feel it in the coming weeks. His work involves maintenance etc offsite much of the time, such places as Fonterra, dairy farming and Huntly Power station. Both essential services during this time, they need to be maintained to ensure they run smoothly. Next week Joe and  some other workmates will need to working at one if these sites. Good working practice is in place so they will be fine.

In the meantime there is plenty for us both to be doing here. I'm still in the process of sorting the office/sewing room. In order for that to be done other things must be sorted first. So it will be ongoing for a little longer. 

Before I share today's efforts I will bring you up to date with progress so far.

One of the first and most pressing jobs was to somehow get this walk in wardrobe to work for us both, a few years ago I would have considered this such a luxury and it still is really, but I was very spoiled at the last place with my dressing room, which, if you've been following my blog for while, was huge! This is not so huge, it needed more hanging space, Joe was able to turn the very large and heavy shelving to sit along the back wall, he then put up the wardrobe packs you can get from DIY stores. It is so much better now and all of our clothes fit!!

There's no door until it can be rehung to open outwards.

While Joe was away doing something somewhere, no idea what, can't remember now, I decided to make a start on my books, boy was that a mission!

I was quite ruthless, there were books there I had collected in order to read as many on the BBC big read list, well I've ditched that idea for the foreseeable future. I had a cull, four banana boxes went to the little book shop in town just before we all began rāhui.

 As you can see they look great, I'm not sure whether it was pure luck or very good judgement on my part but they fitted in perfectly, what are the odds on that happening, perhaps my love of jigsaw puzzles helped.

It's starting to look like home, I'm sure there will be minor changes or tweaking as we go, but for now getting us back to some semblance of normality will do

 

Joe got the TV working so we've been able to watch TV, no internet connection as yet, I expect we may wait a while now. So I rely on my free 2GB after 5pm on my phone, which is pretty dire.

We finally got to cook at home rather than grab a take away, wine was involved

  Chill con carne

 It was delicious

 

 So back to today, before any work started breakfast was needed, we think we might try starting the day with a good breakfast and eat smaller meals as the day goes on, with less activity it might be better for us. We'll see.

 

First job, shelves were needed for my spices, 

I cleared the area so he could start

Another job started today was the putting together of white cupboards for the garage, even with a huge declutter there is still plenty of stuff that we need to store. He had an audience.

 My very important job was to sort these fiddly things!

More of that tomorrow. 

Time for me to enjoy my second G&T, ice from the new fridge/freezer 

and a lemon off the tree in the garden/

Cheers, see you tomorrow.