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Aching back, hands, arms and legs all keeping me company, it was back to the grind of digging more holes yesterday. But this time I also had Bec and the kitties keeping me company too. And actually helping. Or something!

We managed to knock most of the blighters off. I think there are only about 2 that haven’t been started (excluding the 3 corner ones that will wait until a better tool arrives to deal with them on Monday), and 6 that need just a little more finishing off. Probably on hands and knees with an empty plant pot or something. Getting the loose stuff out of the hole has proven to be the hardest part of the whole exercise. There’s obviously a real knack to it that we haven’t yet mastered, and we’re running out of holes to master it with…

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…

…was not a success.

In fact, it was a duck-killer if ever I’ve baked one!

I’m not entirely sure just which part of the process went wrong, or even which parts went right! Although when I re-read the recipe this afternoon I did think that it’s entirely possible that I forgot to add any salt to the mix, which the book does highlight as being essential… I do remember adding the olive oil though, but the book said that was optional. Oh well.

So I’ll try again, starting the rather long process again tonight. And I’ll try to pay more attention to the size of the dough to make sure it’s actually doubled in size etc. If it goes horribly wrong again I think I’ll try making a new starter just on general principles. Why I think that will help I have no idea!

The one day that we were in town all week and it happened to be the day that a shipment of wood was arriving for us to finally get on and get a deck and some stairs done so we can remove the pallets lying around all over the place. So we just had to hope all day that the driver wasn’t too stupid, and put it all somewhere close to where it was going to be needed! Luckily he’d the sense to call Jeff who was able to give him some advice about the correct location. Whew! Although in looking for a quick way out the driver buggered up the only decent bit of lawn we’d managed to cultivate so far. Oh well. A decent roller will start to even it out again, but at the moment the push mower won’t cope very well with the tyre indents…

So that’s the timber sorted then. We managed to get the house builder back on site on Friday to start to build it all. But I thought I’d add my help too. I might regret that yet! First stage (after a long discussion about just how we were going to do it all and some measuring and marking, of course) is all the holes for the posts. Between us we got a fair few done (29 and 2 halves) with the aid of an auger and spades before he had to shoot off for the afternoon, leaving us to finish the rest (another 25) over the weekend. I think I might have mentioned before about how stony the round is here? But Ill mention it again anyway. The ground here is bloody stony! I think my wrists and elbows are suffering from all the jarring of hitting stones on every drop of the spade blade.

But it’s started. We’ll see how long it takes to complete!

This week I finally got around to home-brewing a few temperature sensors to monitor just what’s going on around the place and help us to make sure that we’ve got all the settings for the heating system right. Which I’m sure we haven’t yet, but then it’s hardly been cold yet. In fact it’s been bloody brilliant weather lately.

So here for your viewing pleasure behind the clicky icon below is a graph of the temperature in seven different places around the house.

I’m sure that was really interesting for you! I can post more if you like?! Just a pity I haven’t (currrently) got an outside temperature reading to compare to these internal ones. I feel a weather station purchase coming on sometime. Yes, you can indeed expect more graphs!

I’ve currently co-opted some of the network cabling for the sensors, and tried to find spots where no direct sun hits the sensors. I’ve already found they give strange readings when that happens! Nice to find a use for some of that cable!