Thursday 22nd April

Adrian and I went back to Tsaghe Ridge today to have a look at the landscape job. To say I am disappointed in what has been done is an understatement. David has had 9 people there for 4 days, and has completed barely half the work. It’s no wonder I received an irate phone call on Wednesday asking when we were going to finish. The grass has been cut, the 2 garden beds of Helliconia have been weeded and mulched, but the palms have barely been touched. The ones that have been pruned, have been done in such a way that the whole shape is unbalanced, with fronds still horizontal on one side, or just 2 or 3 left, and the rest trimmed. The two trees we were meant to be removing, have been left as they were when Andrew cut his thumb, all in all, it looks untidy, unfinished, and unprofessional.

Adrian is going back on Monday with Hudson, Vincent, Jephtah and Misi to get it finished, there’s about 4 hours in it, including cleaning up if organised. I’m stuck now with the Government House project coming up soon, and I’m not willing to let David near any part of it. Tomorrow is going to be toktok day I think, I’ve been postponing it till I’d had a chance to get to Tsaghe and see for myself. I’m more than disappointed, past annoyed, and moving into angry. Adrian was way past me, he tends to fire up quickly, so I’ve got a promise from him that he is not going to get involved, other than run the work crew for us till we can get a satisfactory conclusion with David.

King George IV School rang today, they want someone from SEB to run a 4 week 5 x ½ days per week landscaping/gardening/soil/environment course for their 6th form students. I’ve put them off till Tiff gets back and we can organise it, I have no doubt it will be me going and running it, until we get the supervisor issue sorted I’m not willing to let things go as they are, while I’m away from the nursery.

Everything is all coming together, the nursery site, more work contracts and short one off jobs, equipment etc is ordered and in the delivery process, so we need the actual work processes to be working properly and efficiently to really get it all together now.

There is, or rather, was, a large Averrhoa carambola (5 corner, Star Fruit) tree between me and next door, that when I looked last weekend was absolutely laden with young fruit, it looked like more fruit than leaves. The branches were actually bowed down with the weight, and it shaded the sun from here in the late afternoon. Got home tonight, unpacking the laptop, when sunlight flooded into the room, and there was a large crack from next door. I popped out and the tree is now mostly a straight stalk, with a few branches left, but it looked too clean to have broken, then one of the daughters started dragging the branches away so I asked if the tree had broken, I got a huge wide grin, and “ I cuttem down!” as she waved her bushknife. I can’t get over the propensity for everyone here to cut things down, pruning, trimming etc, aren’t in their vocabulary, it is either standing or level, there are no inbetween measures.

If you are interested, the fruit from it are not anything I would recommend, I know people that think they are the most exquisite thing for a salad, but in my opinion if you want to know what they taste like here it is.

Take one good paraffin wax candle, not scented or coloured, just plain white, and with a vegetable peeler shave off about ½ cup of fine paraffin wax. Put aside in the fridge.

Fill a glass with the ice that forms in your freezer, or off the inside of the fridge when it is not working properly, and set in the fridge to thaw, you need it to thaw, but still be cold. Do not use tap or filtered water to make the ice, nor use water and chill it, it will not taste the same.

Mix the paraffin shavings with the cold water, and drink. You should end up with chewy bits of paraffin stuck in your teeth, and a terrible flat insipid taste from the thawed fridge ice. That is what the fruit of the Averrhoa carambola taste like.

I may be biased.

I’ve got so many things going on at the moment, I keep trying to focus on one part of what we are doing, and get it completed, but it doesn’t work out that way. I’m very much a big picture person, once it gets down to the fine details, I get lost in the detail, or bored with the process, which is where Tiff is brilliant. She has big picture ideas, but is really good with the detail work, I break it into sections, give her the section detail stuff to do and it is done so quickly and correct I’m always amazed with what she accomplishes. I get the ideas, like the Post Office, Government House, Commonwealth Ave, and can sketch in the broad view, Tiff can come along and fill in the detail and she knows all the right people for us to go to and sell the ideas to. No wonder I don’t want her to leave, or if she does, I’m going with her.

The King George IV School one sounds interesting, I’m not sure how my views on AGW will go, but if I can get them to start thinking instead of just believing what they are told, I’ll be happy with that. And get them to start thinking about pollution, preserving their environment, saving the reef structures. It’ll be good to get back teaching again, I know I’m just going to use it as an excuse to run away from the problems at work with David, but hopefully that will be resolved or under some sort of management before then.

Mum is still managing, Rose said she has 2 ballet tutus to finish, a ballet costume, a dress, a woollen sweater for me, a few more jigsaw puzzles to complete, once those are all done, then she might be ready to go. If she hasn’t started something else by then. Mum has always been kind of indestructible, I don’t know how I’d act if I had the same news. Just give up or try to get more things done in whatever time I had left.

I got another spider bite at work today, small wolf spider, now deceased. It stung like hell for a while, large blister type swelling that has now settled to an angry red circle, but fading. Another reason for me to have a strong dislike of spiders. On the subject of wildlife, there is a small rip in the insect screen on the window above the stove by the back door and steps. I’ve never worried too much about it, I’ve not had flies or mosquitos inside since I’ve been here so it didn’t look like being a problem. Till last night about 11pm, I went get a cold drink, and there was a large plump rat sitting on the window ledge looking at me as if I was meant to leave food out for it. By the time I found a knife it had decided I might not be friendly and was reasonably calmly climbing back out through the hole in the insect screen and down the back steps. I’ve got the louvres shut with rodent pellets in the window frame now for it to nibble on when it comes back, as I have no doubt it will. I’ll let Tony know and get the screen fixed. The louvres here are on the inside of the window frame, the frame is about 6” deep, with insect mesh then burglar bar frame outside that. So shutting the louvres makes a space in the frame.

Again about wildlife, while typing the above, I’ve had a small gecko climbing up and down my back, and in general being a right bloody nuisance. I’ve caught it 3 times now and put it down, but it keeps climbing back up the chair.

Sunday 25th April

Dawn Service here was good this morning. For those not of New Zealand or Australian backgrounds, 25th April is ANZAC Day (Australian New Zealand Army Corp), commemorating the landing of the Australian and New Zealand troops at Gallipoli in 1915. While New Zealand and Australian troops had served together before, in the Boer War in South Africa in the 1890’s, this was the first time the term ANZAC came to be used to describe the combined troops.

So every April 25th, Dawn Service is held to commemorate all the service men and women who have died, at Gallipoli, and also those killed or lost in other conflicts that both New Zealand and Australia have served together in.

The only places I’ve missed Dawn Service in has been Ireland, I think there is a service held in Dublin, or was, when the NZ High Commission were there. Melbourne has the best I’ve been to, ok, Sydney is close, NZ seems to have downgraded it a lot over the years of the Labour left wing nanny state, hopefully John Key might give it some more emphasis if pushed hard enough. The Cenotaph at the Museum Grounds in Auckland is always crowded, but we need the street parade as Melbourne does. Even if it was only along Karangahape Road, then across Grafton to the Memorial. And a fly past of whatever is left of the NZ Airforce. Probably 5 remote controlled Airfix models.

I’ve made a few cosmetic changes in here, I was probably pushing things a bit with starting this, but ok, I’ve been caught, so I’ve had to do a bit of editing.

Friday was a mixed bag as usual for here. I left David with a couple of the crew chipping branches at Ranadi, and Adrian drove me around collecting the wages, checking in on Andrew at #9, buying a few more tools to replace the ones that have “gone”, bush knives, pruning saws and tree loppers, and got back to Ranadi to find Jephtah putting the covers back onto the motor on the chipper. I’d started it before I left, and it was running, so there were the usual questions, followed by the usual sheepish looks and guilty expressions, David wasn’t there, so Jepthah had to try to explain that it had stopped and David had done his usual “outtem hem” and pulled the motor apart, or as much as he could. It’s a 7.5hp, twin cylinder, petrol motor, barely used, I think about 180 hours use in 2 years, that has never faulted on us yet. Anyway, after I said a few words, Adrian said a lot more, we left it for the time being till we caught up with David to find out what had gone wrong, and why etc?

David hadn’t returned by the time we left, I had to be at the Post Office for a meeting by 3.30, so we probably missed him by leaving early.

Adrian and I went out to Ranadi yesterday, put the battery into the chipper, turned the key and it started without any trouble. Fed a few branches through, we couldn’t find any problems with it. Adrian told me this morning at the Dawn Service that David had called around yesterday afternoon, and said he had a person coming out on Monday to fix the chipper, so Adrian had great pleasure in telling David there wasn’t a Bl***y thing wrong with it, and for him to stop pulling things apart all the time. Which I’ve got to agree with. They have stripped all the heads on the Philips screws using the sparkplug spanner star drive, lost most of the spring washers off the covers, so the screws now vibrate out and the covers fall off, the list goes on.

I think I’ve found out the problem? misconception is better, with David and the one off jobs. Adrian had some words with him about the length of time for the landscape job, David said that I’d quoted $1600, so what was the problem with 4 or 5 days? I’ll have to explain our daily costs/income to David again I think. We need $1400 per day income to cover our fixed outgoings, that will go up soon with the extra in rent for the expanded nursery, but at the moment, $1400 covers everything with no cream to go on top. So far the job that Adrian, Tiff and I all agree should have been done in one day, has cost us $6,600. And put us behind in our contracted work for MID, the Roundabouts etc. Add in the half day Adrian and the 4 crew will be doing Monday, just to finish what we contracted for, Adrian thinks I have the patience of a saint to cope with this all the time. It’s all stuff we need to have settled before we start with the actual nursery proper, I can’t see it going ahead with that sort of attitude from the supervisors, or failure to understand how much it costs us to run SEB on a daily basis. I feel like suspending David for 3 months without pay so we can recover the cost from his wages.

Andrew is doing well, we caught up with him at #9, the infection has been cleared, there are 3 strands of stainless wire holding the bone in his thumb together, he was going home for the weekend under strict instructions to keep it all dry and clean, then go back Wednesday for further x-rays to make sure the bone was knitting. If he can keep any infection out, he will keep his thumb, and be back at work in a couple of months. I told him his position at work was not in doubt, he had been worried that he was going to lose his job entirely over it. Even if they’d amputated his thumb, I’d have made sure he had a job at SEB for as long as he wanted anyway.

Another update on the wildlife here. 4.30am on a Sunday morning is not the time to be finding a shirt on the shelves in the bedroom and have a large rat jump out of the shelf. I have no idea where it ran to, I opened both outside doors, then spent some time going through the 3 rooms tipping everything up to chase it out, but never saw it again. I saw Tony at the Dawn Service, and he is going to have the guys come around Monday and lay traps and sticky rodent tape inside and out. Next to spiders, rats are second on my list. I have poison scattered around inside again, and done the cupboard cleaning and washing the floors, bench top scrubbing and oven cleaning stuff again. I may bring an air rifle back with me, BSA .22 Airsporter would be good, although quickly aiming a rifle is a bit awkward in a small room. Chip will disagree with me I know.

I finally got to Kukum Fish Market this morning, oh, the little truck is back too, and going, and wandered around looking at prices from everyone first. My usual people that have chillies have changed the marketing presentation, and are now doing picked chillies in 300ml bottles, which look really good, and at $5 are a better bargain than the branches they were selling. So being me, I opened one bottle, pulled a couple of chillies out and munched them, to the horrified look of the vendor. They were absolutely delightful, really hot chilli flavour, so I bought the bottle. By which time I had about 6 or 7 people gathered around looking at me as though I’d just stepped off the spacecraft. I didn’t carry on eating anymore, to be honest, they were bloody hot, 1 or 2 were more than enough to try, anymore and I would have been a basket case. It took about an hour for my mouth to stop burning.

Still, it was good fun, and I’m sure he will remember me next week.

I’ve got a litre of coconut oil in my water tank now to try and kill the mosquito larvae. Once that has had a bit of time to work, I’ll wait for a wet weekend with lots of rain and wash the tank out, then hopefully I’ll be back to reasonably clean water in the tank again. The coconut oil is to stop the larvae from breathing, it forms a skin over the surface of the water, and when the larvae come up to breathe, they can’t penetrate the oil layer.

For some reason I had water flowing most of the weekend, so the clothes, sheets, have all been washed, the floors have been scrubbed and disinfected, all the dishes have been really well cleaned, then tonight, just as I decide to start cooking, the water vanishes. Well, ok, it isn’t that big a worry, I have a full water tank, but the convenience of just standing at the sink and turning a tap on has ruined me for the rest of the week. As well as the long shower I had this morning.

I’ve got Peter Tosh playing at the moment, reggae with a hard edge is how I’ve always felt about him. Great music, the message needs a bit of conciliation at times, but ok, that is how he sees it. Doesn’t stop me agreeing with him and how he sees life.

Mum rang earlier. She was going to see Swan Lake, with Rose this afternoon there. So I guess she is still managing ok. She’s stopped taking the morphine/paracetamol and is back on her favourite aspirin again. I think she’d rather be lucid and in a bit of pain than how the morphine made her all fuzzy and wandering. She is considering donating her body to the Auckland Med School, as she said, the specialists at Auckland said she was too far gone with cancer for an operation or treatment, so she feels that maybe if they have her body to open up, they may find a way to operate on someone else in time. Or at a later stage like she is.

Mum never ceases to amaze me with stuff.

Given my aversion to people touching me, I’d go for a Viking style, open boat cast out to sea, either on fire or not, to drift wherever it takes my body. A bit like crossing the River Styx, Charon steering the boat to the land of the dead. I remember when I was really young, and reading all the Arthur Mees Encyclopedias that were around then, with all the different sections and the Greek and Roman mythology, and wondering how those legends started. What was the basis for them? Apollo, Zeus, Athena, Dianna I could understand, even the Norse gods, Frig, Lokki, Thor, but where does Charon arise from? Crossing the River Styx to the Land of the Dead is so far away from a seasonal/sky being, birth and rebirth gods are common to everyone, how did a boatman arise? Answers on the back of a postcard please.

I’ve been thinking, a boat full of pyrotechnics, set for a few hours delay, time to get way out to sea, I’m sure Damian would oblige me with that.

It’s 8.39 pm, I’ve been trying to phone out to Rose, but no go, and now the dogs that didn’t eat the poison have started the nightly howl session. It starts way back behind me, then gets progressively nearer and nearer, till the local ones join in, which is when I go outside and throw stones towards the noise, it is too dark to see anything. From the yelps and general silence I figure I may hit one or two each time.