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It’s been all go here today! Plasterer and painter, as well as the wardrobe guys installing a straight wardrobe, along with the continued driveway and lawn works. My main contribution to things was to keep the cups of tea flowing and to stir the simmering Pinto beans. (The beans were for us for tea, nothing to do with all the troops). And to keep the kitties settled. As much as I could with so much going on. They found it all a bit much and spent most of the day sitting on chairs under the dining table.

But stage one of the driveway project was completed about 3:30pm. The whole drive had been dug out, and all the piles of dirt transported to the “lawn”, which looked like it had been visited by some sort of giant mole or something!

Then the hideous eyesore of the back area got a quick clean-up, and is now looking almost flat and quite presentable. I need to get out and do some shovel work tomorrow to clean up the bits close to the house, but I’m quite happy to do that small chore when I’ve seen how fast all the other stuff gets carted around and evened out. The thought of trying to do that with shovel and wheelbarrow isn’t a good one!

By 6pm a large number of molehills had been flattened out and spread around, and a level area was appearing in the courtyard area. It’s made a huge difference already not to have the ground sloping away from the house.

Assuming it doesn’t rain tomorrow I wonder what progress will be made then!

…we lost count of how many mice Pinot had caught. I think we’re averaging well over one a day now. But luckily none of them have made it inside. Yet!

Notice I said “Pinot had caught”. I think the only one that Fidget has managed to score for himself was the one that Bec saw in the short grass and called him over and pointed him right at it! And then she felt bad for a bit.

Not that he has any problem stealing them off Pinot to play with. Which seems to be OK ish. She seems to enjoy the hunt, while he just wants to be friends with them and play all afternoon. Although there does seem to be a bit of good natured growling from the one that currently “controls” the mouse.

His favourite game seems to be taking them to the sole tree in the middle of the “lawn” and chasing it around and around the pot it’s in, changing direction now and then, just like kids do. It’s really fun to watch. He can go for hours! At least as long as the poor mouse lasts. Then he looks so sad when the poor mouse can’t play any more. And then he tries half heartedly tossing it around to see if it’ll play any more. But of course it doesn’t.

And then it’s over to me to add it to the stack of used playthings. That stack is getting pretty big now! Three on the shovel is the record so far. They are pretty cute though. Although not quite so cute with rigor mortis and covered in kitty slobber!

Yes, we did indeed get more snow last week. More snow than the first dump a few weeks ago by quite a few centimetres! But we were bored of snowmen, so we had to think of something else to build.

Several changes of artistic direction later, and narrowly steering clear of the usual giant phallus (not my idea, I’ll have you know!) we decided on a 7 foot high rocket.

Unfortunately all the photos I have of it don’t do it anything like justice. Taking a picture of a white thing against a white background with an almost white sky proved almost impossible, so you get what you get. Sorry!

And now, a few days later, we’ve got beautiful sunny days in the mid teens (Celsius). Although we did find one little spot of snow down by the river today. It must have really drifted there!

We were promised it, and unlike most of the forecasters in the UK they managed to get it right! We did indeed get a fair bit of snow over the last day or so. About 15cm over most things. More than enough to have a lot of fun with!

We spent an hour or so out there making Rusty the snowman. (If you want to know why it was called Rusty, ask Bec sometime!) The kitties tried to help, but chasing snowflakes was more fun.

But there were many other pretty things around the place, but taking photos with frozen fingers in a blizzard where there’s not too much light is not a fun job, so you get nothing. Sorry!

It’s now the second time I’ve seen the plot here covered in snow. When I raced back in 2006 to first look at it I met the estate agent out here and it was totally covered then too. Can’t remember how deep it was then, but I’m pretty sure this was deeper. Way more fun this time though!

The kitties have been loving the holes! Once they worked out that they weren’t firm ground, and they had to watch out or they’d just fall down them. Eventually. But then they were their favourite things. They were jumping all over the place like gophers on speed or something! It was tough to get them to give up the games and come back inside.

I’m not sure how they’re going to feel when they go back out and find that the holes are not holes anymore…

When we were in the UK we used to joke that NZ news headlines were along the lines of “Cat up a tree!”. Now we’re back we’re finding out it’s actually more likely to be about sheep…

So to bring things back into line with our way of thinking, here’s a cat up a tree story! In fact, TWO cat’s up a tree! At the same time even!

The eagle-eyed among you will notice that the tree that they’re almost to the top of is in fact the same tree that the fantail likes to sit in when he visits us. I suspect there might be a bit of an issue there at some point!

And yes, this does indeed mean that we’re letting the kitties out. It took a bit of coaxing. Coaxing me, that is, by Bec. I needed quite a bit of reassurance that they were indeed likely to come back, and that they’d be fine… But they have been, so far.

I think we’re up to four trips outside now, and both they and we have got more relaxed about them being outside.

The first couple of adventures were highly supervised affairs, with Bec and I tracking one kitten each, and keeping up with them as they really, really slowly made their way out into the big wide world, running back to us or the door whenever a car went past or a big bird honked, tweeted or quacked. Half an hour was their limit before we captured them and brought them back inside, where they totally zonked out after all that excitement.

The last couple of adventures have been less supervised. Today we just let them roam while we spent the time digging more holes for a couple of hours (more on that later). They were really good though, and came back inside when we called them. I think they’d had more than enough by then. Tree climbing can really take it out of you! Fidget even deigned to lie there and have his paws cleaned on a wet towel when they came in. He was a very dirty cat after playing in all the wet grass and the dirt from the post holes…

The last couple of days have seen a couple of unexpected visitors. First up, yesterday afternoon we were having a relaxing game of snooker with the windows open to make sure we didn’t expire with heat exhaustion when we slowly became aware that there was a hell of a noise coming from the courtyard area. The fantail was back, and boy did he want us to realise it! What was unexpected? The timing of the visit mainly. This was pretty early in the afternoon, when the light was still pretty bright.

So I interrupted our game and wandered out casually with the camera and said hello. He was quite relaxed with me wandering around trying to get a reasonable pic. He even kept flying right by me on his missions to get a bit of food from here and there. And by “right by me” I mean about a foot away. The only thing he refused to do was to show me his damn tail when sitting in the tree where I could take a photo! Grrr. But I’ll keep trying.

The other visitor was even more unexpected. We were up early again this morning, and staring out the window we suddenly realised there was a hot air balloon floating at a pretty low level right over us!

We see a balloon or two pretty much every clear morning, but they’re normally a long way away from us. Looks like this one landed in a paddock just down the road.

I’ve been told in no uncertain terms that we’re running behind in blog plosts lately, so here’s something that caught our attention today…

I have a brown jersey (I can hear one particular person echoing something along the lines of “a POO BROWN jersey!”).

All the cats I’ve ever met while wearing it seem to like it. Really like it! Our two are seemingly no exception. They tracked it down and even though both of them were falling off, and even though there were hundreds of other more comfortable spots to sleep in, they chose my jersey.

The fact they go out of their way to sleep in uncomfortable positions might go some way to explaining why she in particular is quite happy to try to sleep right in front of our faces at night.

I guess you want all the other news too, huh? Well, there’s not much. We finally got our lounge suite delivered. We’ve had some very welcome visitors for various day or day/night visits. I’ve mowed the “lawn” again. I think we’re very slowly getting better at our long snooker shots. I don’t think we’re improving much at all at our shorter snooker shots… The fantail’s popped in now and then, but not as regularly now it’s a bit drier. There’s still at least one hare hopping around outside…

Basically there’s nothing that exciting going on!

We’ll try harder to find something. Honest!

Late this afternoon we were getting in a bit of snooker practice when I noticed a bit of flitting around in the temporary nursery that has been set up in the courtyard until we decide what to do with both it and the plants. A focussed look revealed a fantail jumping all around the tree that’s there!

This grainy photo’s all we managed to get as it was pretty dark and horrid, but it is proof.

I’ve no idea where it came from or went to. We’re pretty much in an empty paddock except for the house. But I’m stoked that it came and said hi, even if it doesn’t come back for a while. But I hope it does! We might have to have more trees in the courtyard than I thought if that’s what they’ll bring in.

We keep trying to get a decent photo of all the swallows that seem to have made the house a regular venue for a snack, where they come and hover just under the eaves and pick off insects. But they’re just so fast that getting a decent picture is a bit difficult.

This is the best I’ve managed so far:

Reminds me a lot of Top Gun, for some reason! And they certainly fly pretty close and fast to both the house and us when we’re working.

Regular readers will no doubt recall the earlier forays into bird watching at Mum’s place. Since we’ve been out here all day for a few days I’ve really noticed the different bird life we have around here on the plains. Magpies, hawks, sky-larks etc all pop around for a visit during the day, and as we’ve spent more and more time out working around the house they seem to get more and more used to us and come a bit closer now and then.

If I could only workout how to take a photo while I’ve also got my hands full of rake or spade I’d have some great photos! But the best I’ve got so far is of this little cheeky chap who was standing on the flowers having a bit of a peck around.

Just have to work out what it is! I suspect a Birds of New Zealand book for the library is probably well overdue.