Since last time, gardening and the Fondue party

We had quite a full time recently. Well for someone who does nothing it was full! Ha!

  After returning from the beach, having Penny working away at the chalk face all week for a number of weeks seemed to make time disappear.  I've been doing a couple of help jobs.  a few afternoons helping paint the stairwell in Bro Roger's rental place,  a bit of floor sanding and varnishing  together with taping of joints in the rather interesting hardboard ceilinged garage.  followed this with a bit of shelving in a friend's airing cupboard, still on-going.

  

Meanwhile the garden saga which has so far been un-mentioned is more or less complete (well the idea is anyway).  originally we had a red guava which produced quite a lot of fruit but unfortunately the red ones have irritating little stones in them.  not only that but the bush is  (or rather was) straggly and in a prime position in the garden.  So it had to go.  Of course it was pruning time anyway so all the apple and plum trees had their autumn prune some of the Puka trees were blocking light at the front of the house so they joined the heap and the question of the moment, the palms at the front of the house lost most of their fronds in a pretty vicious haircut.  more on the heap.  I borrowed a chainsaw from a mate but in the end I was convinced by Pen not to remove them.  This was going to cost over $100 just for the bin hire to remove the wood  (is it wood in a palm?).  However I did say that that was the last time I climb the ladder to that height to prune the fronds.  If I have to go much higher next year they will have had their day.  After scuttling around to various places we seem to have a nice collection of bargain plants. Two nice smelly camellias for the front replacing the unfortunately chosen brooms which I took out in the spring, a viburnum,  lilac and a rather interesting plant called a Silver cloud which is a scented magnolia look-alike to replace the guava, the horrible (to me) 3m high native kauri tree which I have put up with for years (how about this, I advertised it on Trade-me and someone took it away for a dollar! Apparently he specialises in making them into sort of bonsai trees. good luck!) and my much loved  by me but not by Penny, Tree tomatoes which for some reason died.  All I have to do is to prepare the ground, which unfortunately on the hill here is pure clay of amazing colours and consistency, and dig them in.  When the rain stops that is.

Last weekend was nice.  Cold and bright enough to drive us out for a walk somewhere other than the botanical gardens for a change but not to the local beaches because of the sneaky wind.  So we went to Cornwall Park in town (One tree hill domain that is)

Here's 

 on the mount. notice gloves!! most unusual for us.

And on the way down

Then later on we had people around for a fondue party! Shades of the 1980's eh!

It was very noisy, probably because we had Westies there.  See this site for the next instalment