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A few pictures of unusually high water level we had here in the weekend.  There is usually about 3 metres of sand between the water and the grass, and the walkway at the little marina would normally be a metre or so above the water

Yeah I couldn’t resist

I have joined in for Movember as a Mo-sista, and am pledging to knit one moustache for every £2 donated via my Movember profile page.  If you’d like to help support Movember and raise funds for mens’ health, please visit my profile page and make a donation.

The more you give, the more of a challenge it will be!

I’m relieved, happy, emotional, proud and a bit homesick after this morning’s victory by New Zealand in the rugby world cup.

The last 12 months seem to have been a string of downers for NZ; the Pike River mining disaster, the Christchurch earthquake, and the environmental destruction that is still playing out in my hometown as a stranded container ship leaks oil and spills cargo into the sea.  No one can say that winning the world cup makes any of these things better.  But at least it’ll cheer people up for a while.

I just wish I could be there for the party.

Photos from a harvest festival at a petting zoo that Is run by the church near us.  There were veges for sale, animals to meet and Anneli got to go on a pony-drawn carriage and a donkey ride!

A really rotten one. But, just in the nick of time, I received a copy of the brazilian sewing magazine Manequim, that I won in a blog giveaway from The Curious Kiwi. The perfect accompaniment to a hot cuppa and a medicinal whisky.

So, how did we manage to pick 23 kilos of cherries in one day?  Well, here’s the trick.

First, you need a lumberjack.

Lumberjack lurks beneath the cherry tree

Then it’s just a matter of …

Down ...

... she ...

... goes!

Then you send in the pickers.

Lumberjack of all trades

Little picker

It’s a bit of a shame to lose the largest of our cherry trees. But the lowest branches were so high, it was impossible to get any fruit from it, so only the birds were getting any benefit.

To answer Kathleen’s comment:

“and then did you pit them all?!”

we pitted a lot of them, by a variety of methods.  Some were cooked and then mushed through a grid (for jam), some were cooked for wine making, some were pitted by hand and made into pies.   We have thirtysomething jars of jam downstairs, some dried cherries going into our muesli, some fruit leather, some cordial, and some cherry wine that is getting very promising.

No kidding.  Sixteen goats in a tree.  I want a tree full of goats!

We were in a secondhand office furniture store today, looking for desk chairs. I thought all these overhead projectors looked pretty sad. These were such a constant presence through all the years of my education, and now they’re so obsolete. I can’t imagine anyone buying these – they are probably all going to end up at the dump.