Marine aquarium

We have been back at school for a week. All of us apart from Stuart who did 2 days and then came down with a nasty strep throat again - he had to take off Wednesday to Friday. We arrived at this weekend worn out from the unaccustomed early mornings and full on days. This weekend has been time to catch up on sleep and generally chill out.
We had a Fawlty Towers video night with Mike and some of his kids l;ast night. 6 episodes one after the other. Still funny but I couldn't have coped with any more. Basil is such a tragic character. Why does he not save himself a whole load of trouble and tell the truth. Him and Sybil could use some Relate counselling as well, either that or a ME weekend!

Today we heard through the grapevine that there was going to be a 12 hour power cut while some repair work was done. Fortunately I heard early enough to go into school yesterday and do my photocopying. That meant we had the day to play. It has been a bit grizzly, overcast with an unsettling wind and rain not far off. we decided to do something with the large fish tank that has sat gethering dust in the corner of the dining room for a year. This was brought about by Paddy producing some mud crabs that he had been "storing" in a plastic bag since his camping trip .... 11 days ago!
By some miracle of endurance they were all still alive and he had them housed in an ice cream tub. So we trotted off to Henderson Bay and got rocks and various invertebrates from the rock pools. we picked up some sea water at pukenui wharf and put the whole thing together at home. As Eric said it is like having Animal Planet next to your dining table. I will stick up some pics in due course.

Animal news: 2 ewes have been shorn. No 14 took 2 1/4 hours last Sunday. I am getting the sheep back on nuts so that we can get them doing what we need them to instead of chasing them round the paddock over and over again. One of teh barred rocks started sitting on 11 eggs on Tuesday so we put her in an isolation coop today. Eating lots of broad beans and are concerned about the resultant increase in greenhouse gases from Northland. A lot of my seedlings do not like the nutrient poor compost I am growing them in and they aren't too keen on the strong winds that have been drying them out either. In a future time I will build a lean to greenhouse.