Auckland

We went to Auckland last week for a couple of nights. Stayed at a motel in Mount Albert that was right next to the railway track. So it was only natural that we would use public transport to get into the city. For $24 we bought a family pass that gave us unlimited travel on the trains. Of course the boys wanted to push this to its extreme by visiting every station on the 4 lines. We did not quite do that but we went on all the lines and had a good look at the back of lots of houses. I certainly would not want to live in Auckland fr any length of time. It took me 10 minutes to cross the road each morning to get to a abkery to buy bread and to visit the newsagent. Double lanes of commuter traffic that would have run you over if you tried jaywalking. We met Walter in town and went out for a pizza at Cassette 9 down a backstreet. He is doing well in the traveller community and is meeting lots of people. On the way home we found a new place of wonder called Farro Fresh. When I say we found it, I mean that we visited it for the first time. There were 20 people working there and a car park full of people who had found it before us. It is a giant deli and we drooled over the breads, meats and cheeses. We shall be returning.

Cabaret

On the last Saturday of Term two stuart went to the school Cabaret. This is the NZ equivalent of an American prom. The girls spend weeks selecting outfits and talk about little else at school. They spend all Saturday getting ready. The boys make an effort to look good. Most of them wear suits and together they lookm smashing. It is a nice evening to go along and help at. There is rarely any trouble and all the students have a good time. Stuart went with a couple of friends. The school hall is decked out by the senior council who burn the candle at bth ends setting up and taking down the whole cabodle. This year's theme was Narnia. The guests arrived in the hall through a door that was a cupboard.

Garden

Winter in the garden means that plants slow down. Some carry on growing albeit slowly. The temperature goes down to below 0 at night and we have had a couple of ice forming frosts so far this year. But most days the sun comes up and the temperature steadily climbs to about 15C. So plants experience a wide fluctuation in temperature. The sub-tropical plants do not like this and die. We plant them next to the house where there is protection from the cold. We have guava and tamarillo in fruit as I write this. Down at the bottom things have to take their chances. We have been doing a fair bit of work on the middle field this year. When Walter was here the boys dug quite a lot of holes for new plantings of olives and natives. I have a snakey path that connexts the dam to the bottom field. The plan is that there will be a band of native planting to the left of this path. There will be a temperate orchard on the other side. To this end I ordered 6 rare breeds of apple trees from tastytrees.co.nz . These are grown by Chris and Brit who live way up in the hills near Mangamuka. Brit delivered 6 bare rooted apples yesterday. For the first time ever I was ahead of the game because most of the holes were already dug! I still spent 1/2 hour planting each tree as they will hopefully grow strong and produce lots of fruit. Today I planted a Cox's Orange Pippin and a Merton Worcester. The pictures show some close ups of a tree lucerne (tagasaste) that is flowering. I grew this tree from seed bought from Trademe. I do not think that they like our wet clay soil. But this one has lasted long enough to flower. They put nitrogen into the soil and are favoured by food forest gardeners. There is also a picture of a globe artichoke in flower mid-winter. What is that all about? Close to this plant are a couple of capsicums that have fruit on them. I found them to be perennial when planted close to the house, but did not expect them to be so hardy. Thanks to Hunter for pointing out that there were spelling mistakes in this post. Have I found them all?

More holidays

We are just over half way through the mid-winter break. No posts for a whole term since last holiday! Why? Busy, busy , busy during term-time. In fact that was a really busy term. Busier than usual, though teachers rarely get much down-time during term. Lots of good things happened at work. The new course we have been developing has taken off and we took 3 days off school to go possum trapping, 1 day off to learn quad riding skills, plus 3 afternoons of bush walking around a local nature reserve where we have started to trap pests. Each day out takes organisation in itself with a lot of paperwork to take kids out of school. Plus you have to set lessons for all your classes who are staying at school. It is a major pain and it does put one off leaving the "safety" of the establishment. But the minute you drive out of school with a van load of escaping students it feels exactly like that .... you have escaped from some kind of prison. I think that a large portion of students would learn more and faster and without the tensions that arise in school, if those children were taken out of the institution of school. There are echoes of previous work in learning disability services in that last paragraph. Normalisation is just as important for mainstream kids as for those with disabilities. It is cheaper and more "efficient" to herd large numbers of them into one class room with a teacher ratio of 1 to 25 pupils, than it is to allow pupils to learn in more life like contexts. Just as it is cheaper to stick all the disabled kids into a special centre with the minimum number of staff that you can operate the place with and say that you are meeting their needs. Anyway, after that little digression you will be wanting pictures of the children I suppose. I shall hunt through the hard drive and post some up.

Found some pictures atken during the term. Stephan turned 60 and he had a birthday bash. Good food and company. Been trapping in the garden to get the hang of the traps we are setting in the bush. Here is a rat caught in a fenn trap. They are pretty effective and my favourite trap so far out of the ones that I have set. Stuart and I spent an enjoyable evening on Moturoa Island counting calling kiwis. We went over on a Saturday afternoon and were sent to a bush edge towards the end of the island. We had to listen out for and record any kiwi on a large map. We heard 2 males calling. Overall the survey estimated an island population of about 60. Very healthy. We were posing for the pictures!