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Slow news week. Not much has been happening here at all. Not even a cat up a tree.

But speaking of the the kitties, they do seem to be finding interesting places to sleep lately. I happened to walk past the bathroom and heard a bit of slopping from something. Wandering back to check it out I caught a glimpse of a little kitty cleaning his head with his front paws, as they do. I sneaked away and got the camera to catch the little shite in the act so Mike would believe me and not put the muddy kitty paw prints on the vanity down to the fact that I hadn’t filled up the kitty water bowl so he must’ve been looking for a drink.

Once he finished posing for the photo he got a short sharp shift!

Sometimes it seems like it’s easy for us to forget just how things were, and how far we’ve come with the house and garden. We don’t always have before and after shots of things, and if we do they seem to get stuck on memory cards somewhere in the cupboard and we don’t have a look and compare to now to see how things are coming along. But today I was scanning through some old directories and came across the photos that we took just over a year ago when we started to disguise the septic tank. This one, in fact:

Made me realise that some things have indeed changed over the last year! Here’s what it looks like today:

A lot better! Not perfect, but we’re getting there. And the much more even grass and lack of shingle piles is still a huge relief. Might still have to take a pail of green or brown paint to things yet though.

And I might just have to trawl through the memory cards to see if I can find some other before and after shots, just to make us feel like we’re making more progress.

Slightly earlier than last year, we did indeed get a dump of snow this week. Quite a dump! When we woke up on Wednesday morning it had already started to settle, and it just kept on snowing all day, getting heavier and heavier and heavier.

I’m pretty sure I’ve never seen flakes as big. They were massive! And with no wind they just drifted down majestically, piling up ever higher. By the end of the day I think we had about 7 inches as a standard covering, with a bit more in small drifts. More than enough to turn everything white and pretty!

There was so much piling up that I thought it wise to go and sweep off the tunnel-house a few times during the day, just to lighten the load a bit. And even the netting over the chicken’s run was slowly collecting a fair bit of snow and starting to sag somewhat, so that got a few rounds of banging too.

The normally nosey chickens were nowhere to be seen while all this was going on. I don’t think they emerged from their little house at all on Wednesday, and only came out very late yesterday. I did take pity on them and take some food and unfrozen water out to them to have inside. They better not get used to such butler service though!

The snow also apparently settled right on top of all the trees sitting next to power lines. Enough to take out trees, and therefore the power. For us we were without any juice for just the 22 hours. Gulp! Luckily the house stayed warm enough, and we were smart enough to cook dinner before the light faded (on the gas stove – love gas even more now!). And even more luckily we weren’t one of the poor guys that still didn’t have any last night either.

But the day was clear and bright yesterday, so the sun warmed the house in the morning, as well as making everything look very pretty. As only snow can do.

As usual the kitties went through several phases of going completely loopy trying to catch flakes or roll themselves small snowballs to bat around, then a bit of chasing each other around, followed by some chilling and warming action. They’re so funny to watch. But Fidget was also really cute wandering up and down the tyre tracks, freezing fog slowly rising behind him, like some sort of Siberian mountain cat.

As I type this up at midday Friday, we’re still surrounded by it all, but it’s starting to look a bit soft in places. But it did have a bit of a slow start as it got bloody cold last night. I’m just glad we had power and heating for that one!

Given that there is no other news to report, I have continued on the blind making expedition. This room only had one window to cover so all in all should have been less time.

It has become easier as the calculations and measuring make more sense, the sewing is getting slightly better, and the hardware to add for hanging is becoming more automatic. So you would think on that note that this one would be the best yet. Hmmmmm, probably the most troublesome yet in terms of a straight top and bottom. Somewhere along the line I managed to be out by about a cm or two on one side. So down it came for some handy hem work to straighten it up. All good now and safely restored in it’s rightful place. So this room is now called the Paua room. At least for now.

Now there is just one more bedroom to go and we will have a complete set…

Bit of a busy day here today. We had a couple of real rural kiwi blokes around to plonk in a bit of a fence for us. Luckily for them they had the right tools for the job. A tractor, a pile driver, and a bloody great metal stake to drive in the ground before even trying to drive a post in.

So now we’ve basically halved the plot into two bits. The back bit, which can just stay pretty untended for now, and the front bit that we can worry about tending to a bit more. It actually does a really good job of putting a nice square edge on the lawn too.

And we can also use the fence to support some wind-break cloth so we can start a garden along that edge too. That was kind of one of the major driving reasons to get some fencing done at all.

And while they were here I got them to drive in some bigger poles for the chook run. So now we finally have somewhere for my most excellent door to hang, once I manage to get some hinges and a latch thing. And for the actual chicken coop to hang out in too. Just have to get the important bits sorted, like wire netting and, of course, the chooks themselves.

But at least we’ve started the year progressing things along. Wonder how long that will last!

It’s now been about a week since the lawn got seeded and I’ve been out looking for signs of life but no luck. Until yesterday, about 3:30pm. That’s about when I saw the first sign of life that didn’t look like weeds. Yippee! All the watering and rain seemed to have worked some magic.

And this morning there was a huge explosion of growth all over the place. Yippee again!

(Honestly, there is some grass in this photo! I’ve even made it clicky for a big version to prove it!)

Now we just have to keep it alive enough to grow and spread, then think about mowing it all…

It might look pretty much the same as all the other pictures of the lawn to you, but there’s a subtle difference. This one contains the grass seed that was distributed yesterday as well as the last remaining small stones. Yippee!

Now it’s over to us to get some proper irrigation sorted in the next few days so once “the lawn” starts getting a bit damp we can keep it that way so it’ll get a good start in life. Then maybe we can finally move away from staring at brown and start starting at green.

We can also start to finally start thinking about some fences and gardens too… Just have to remember not to use the back door for a few days.

Another day’s work on the lawn area today. Levelling out most of the remaining hollows and humps (not that there were many left) and then running a stone burying machine over it all.

It’s looking really, really good. Good enough for a casual game of croquet anyway! It’s amazing to see how few stones are left of the surface now. I think we can claim some credit as we did a pretty reasonable job of collecting the big stones and carting them away, but it’s still pretty impressive anyway.

So apparently tomorrow there’ll be a lot of rolling with a big roller, and then the seeding. Then it’s up to us and nature to keep it all watered until it’s nice and lush. Gulp! The responsibility after all this work!

We arrived home tonight to find that Tony had obviously been around and re-cultivated the soon-to-be-I-hope lawn area. I’m not sure if that was in response to the weather or the slightly probing phone call we made to him earlier in the week. So just a bit more stone burying to be done and then the seeding. We hope!

Might be almost time to get the hoses and the lawnmowers sorted…