New Zealand’s total number of Covid-19 cases has now reached 1039.
It seems that my significant other and I have reversed roles – while he’s been creaming honey and steeping batches of kombucha, I’ve been press-ganged into the role of ‘Apprentice Home Handy Woman’.
As such, I’ve spent the past couple of days learning such new skills as belt-sanding, and countersinking (using a drill press). The saying “Don’t give up your day job”, definitely drifted in and out of my consciousness while I was using the belt sander. The wood we were working with was an ancient piece that Dad had found under the house. Being dry and very rough, it took quite a bit of effort for me to make an impression. My beveled edges were wonky and my sanded top, undulating. Not that it actually mattered as the piece was eventually disguised beneath white paint and sealer.
What we were actually trying to do, was to rebuild a shower box that had been cut apart when Mum became wheelchair-bound, more than seven years ago. With all the hardware stores closed to the likes of us mere DIYers, we were working with whatever bits and pieces of timber and aluminium, Dad could find in the garage. And, the end of a roll of duct tape. If only I’d taken some photos!
Anyone who has had the perseverance to read my very haphazard blog over the years, will know that I always include photos… but alas, not tonight. In fact, the reason I’ve been tardy with writing is because I haven’t had the time to take any. Perhaps I’ll make up for it tomorrow.
But if anyone is interested in how we’re coping with the lockdown, I’d say that here in Mount Maunganui, things are fine.
It’s quiet, and my life is very regulated – but then this was the case before our lives were restricted. Spending time here keeping my father company has a particular routine that I would not dare to change. I’m content to fit in with him, and I guess I mustn’t have high expectations (as far as excitement or variety is concerned) as I’m perfectly happy the way things are.
My sister in law is in Japan, also spending time with her elderly parents. We both decided to write a haiku, and here is mine…
Beyond my window karoro fight over scraps.
Scavenger brigade.
A welcome glass of Corbans 2002 Private Bin Hawkes Bay Chardonnay, after a day gardening
After a calm and rainy Saturday, the sun showed its face again today and we spent our time trying to knock some items off our ever-growing gardening ‘To Do’ list. The trouble is, one thing always leads to another – and the ‘other’ is usually something that wasn’t on the list to begin with.
For example, we had two lovely dahlias growing (or trying to grow) under the Feijoa trees. This had turned out problematical for two reasons…
it’s extremely dry under the Feijoas and even though they have struggled on bravely, the dahlias have definitely suffered during the height of summer.
The hens. (Isn’t it always the hens?) They love to sit in the shade under the Feijoas and scratch around, digging up anything that isn’t solid rock. Their scratching shreds any new growth trying to push through the dusty soil.
Multiplication and Division
So, the plan this morning was to move both of the dahlias to a new site. Stage One was accomplished without undue hassles. This thanks to the fact that a space became available yesterday when Ben removed the Buddleja Globosa growing alongside the banana plant at the front right of the house. The Buddleja had been a disappointing addition to that part of our garden – it had never done very well, hadn’t even flowered in the three years it had been there, so we’d decided to get rid of it.
Actually getting rid of any plant is always difficult for me, but this decision was made easier by the fact we’ve been able to take two rooted runners from it and plant them elsewhere.
The new site for the dahlias with Campanula persicifolia around the edges.
It was while Ben was digging up the dahlias that I noticed the clump of Campanula persicifolia growing alongside. I’d grown this from seed way back in 2011, but it, too, had never flowered. However, the clump was looking surprisingly healthy this morning. So we dug this out as well.
It’s really too late into Spring to divide a perennial – and it had quite a bit of new growth – but we managed to split it into about 20 separate plants. These have now been transplanted into various other flower gardens, and watered copiously. Fingers crossed, they’ll survive. I should have done this a couple of months ago when we divided the Geums and the Asters.
Vegetables
Rocket thinnings – these were great in lunchtime sandwiches with avocado and egg.
I didn’t get much achieved in the vegetable garden today – in fact I pretty well gave it a wide berth. But I did manage to thin out the rocket seedlings. I’m so glad we have rocket again – just the smell of it makes my mouth water.
Pruning – Long Overdue
Left: Mandarin trimmings – pity about the fruit but we couldn’t reach it anyway; Right: Firewood-sized plum tree trimmings.
Another task that hadn’t been tackled yet was the pruning of the old branches off some of our very old fruiting trees – especially the apricot and one of the three plum trees. We’ve been working away at this judiciously each year to encourage new growth further down the trunks. It’s a slow process, but of course today I noticed that we still hadn’t done this for this season. Again, it’s getting too late into Spring for this task – but what is the best solution? To just leave them as they are?
Left: View of the lichen-encrusted branches on the old pear tree; Right: Pear prunings.
I still felt it was better to clean things up a little bit, so we set aside one hour and spent that time cutting back branches on our two mandarins, the pear and that one plum tree. Mainly to remove the worst of the out-of-reach lichen encrusted limbs and to (hopefully) encourage lower growth to sprout. Many of the branches we removed had died back, or had only a few straggly leaves.
We didn’t manage to get to the apricot – this will have to wait for another day.
Perhaps we should just give up on these old trees, as they don’t always produce much fruit, but I like the fact that they’ve been here so long and that someone else planted them all those years ago. I like to feel the links to the past, I guess, the continuity. And why destroy a tree if it still provides something – even if it’s just shade, a place for birds to build their nests and the occasional piece of fruit.
We were away from South Head almost all of Friday. When we arrived home later in the afternoon and I checked the blackbird nest, it was empty. There was no sign of any damage to the nest, nor were there any signs of anything worse, i.e. feathers or baby chick body parts. I can only assume that they grew large enough to fly. I last took a photo of them on Wednesday 15th (see above).
We’ve seen the hen blackbird a few times today and she seems to be taking worms, etc., up to the Lilly Pillies over the fence behind the plum tree. We’re hoping that this is where the family has moved to.
Vriesea
Vriesea hieroglyphica.
Finally, here is another photo of one of our bromeliads. Again this is a form of Vriesea hieroglyphica. A striking green one, this time.
Life has been busy over the past week or so. We have saved a nest of hatchlings (of the avian kind), we have purchased some black and white Orpington pullets, I have made a batch of feta cheese and we have discovered that the nearby lake is beautifully clear and warm for swimming in.
Baby Sparrows
It hadn’t been a particularly windy day but towards sunset last Wednesday, Ben discovered a rotund, bushy shape bathed in late afternoon light, lying on the grass beneath the Golden Totara. He picked it up to investigate and heard a faint ‘peeping’ coming from inside. Ben hasn’t always been too keen on birds, but has become more accustomed to them since we’ve had our own hens. However, he was holding the nest very gingerly when he brought it inside for me to check the contents.
My first view inside the nest.
The nest was deep with a small opening at the top, so I had to part this and open the nest out a bit before I could see anything. Inside, there were at least two yellow beaks in a tangle of soft grey baby-bird body parts – sparrow hatchlings. I could count three little ones, with a possible fourth.
I’d raised a hatchling to almost adulthood once before when I was 10 or 11 (with an unfortunate outcome associated with our pet cat), but these were very young babies, with not even the first tufts of feathers showing on their smooth little bodies, so I felt somewhat daunted at the prospect.
There is a good deal of advice on the internet about what to do with baby birds, including the advice that where possible, one should try to put the nest back in the tree, as the parents would invariably still be around, wondering where their little ones were. Apparently birds don’t have very strong sense of smell, so the fact that I’d touched the nest and poked around with the opening wouldn’t deter them from continuing to feed their babies.
With this in mind, Ben and I took the nest outside in the gathering dusk to where he’d found it, and looked up into the tall branches of the totara. It didn’t look promising. The stronger branches were positioned too far up the tree for us to be able to reach them, even with a ladder. And we couldn’t think of any way to attach the nest to the nearest branch, even if we could reach it. So, it was back to the drawing board.
A tiny sparrow chick in my hand
I mixed up some boiled egg yolk with a little milk (a recipe I’d found on the internet) and fed each chick in turn using a pipette. We could see now that there were four babies. One looked very poorly and could hardly open its mouth, but the other three were perky and squeaked and squawked with surprising loudness once I started to feed them. The two loudest jostled around trampling on their quieter siblings.
A fortuitous phone call from my daughter Immi reminded me that the Bird Rescue Centre, in Green Bay, Auckland, would take and raise these little orphans for us. She had rescued a young rock pigeon a few weeks back and had taken it there.
Founded in 1984, the NZ Bird Rescue Charitable Trust has bird rescue centres all over New Zealand, and will accept and care for any rescued birds, whether they are native, non-native or pet. They assist thousands of birds each year, many being the victims of cat attacks, road accidents, pollution (such as fishing line and nylon entanglements and botulism) or human cruelty. So we decided to think about taking the wee ones there. The centre is about 84 km from where we live, and Ben would have to divert to Green Bay on the way to work in Auckland the next day.
In the end, this is what happened. When I fed the chicks their last ‘meal’ for the night, the sickly one had died, which made me realise how difficult it would be to raise the remaining three successfully. Even if we did manage to get them to fledgling stage, there was the question of how to avoid them becoming too familiar with humans, and the fact that we have our cat, Molly… it just didn’t seem worth the risk.
Hens
On Saturday, we took a return trip of almost 400 km to collect four new pullets. Our current three hens (Leila, Lottie and Lulu) are Red Shavers, which are a relatively recent breed (related to Rhode Island Reds). In New Zealand, the red shaver is the breed that is predominately used in battery hen farming and they are the easiest hens to find if you wish to purchase point-of-lay hens for your farm or smaller property.
Since introducing the red shavers to our family, I’d become interested in adding to our small clutch with one of the older, more traditional breeds. We decided on Orpingtons as (1) I wanted a breed that would lay white eggs to go with the brown eggs the red shavers produce, and (2) everything we read about Orpingtons mentions their docile nature and the fact that they make good good pets. They also look very cute. This breed is raised for eating as well as for their eggs, (but we would never consider eating our own hens!).
So we purchased two black and two white Orpingtons, as well as 20 kg of pullet food and brought them back to South Head.
Earlier in the day Ben had assembled our smaller hen-house and separated this from the other part of the run with a wire-netting fence. It was a very hot drive back home and we were worried about the babies’ state of health, but they survived the trip okay and at around 5.00 pm we introduced them to their new home.
Our new white Orpington pullets
There appears to be quite a difference in age between the two whites and the two blacks. The white pullets have long legs and are much taller, with a slimmed-down body. They’ve also been in a group of hens that have pecked each other, and one in particular has quite a few feathers missing and bare, raw patches.
The new black Orpington pullets
The two little dark pullets are like balls of fluff, with shorter, stumpier legs (in proportion) and a mop of black feathers with glints of iridescence. It would be so easy to love these two the best as they look so much cuter, but I’m sure I’ll love them all equally when they grow to the same size.
I don’t think these little chickens had ever been in an area with trees, shrubs, weeds, grasses and dry leaves, before. The little black girls immediately took to scratching around in the leaf mulch, peeping away happily. The white ones are a little more proprietorial – they seem to be looking out and about a lot, and are more aware of our older girls in the next door ‘pen’.
I was happy to see one of the white hens taking a dust bath yesterday. Happiness turned to horror when when the second white pullet started pecking quite hard at the bare patches at the base of the first one’s tail. This behaviour seemed to persist, so we separated the protagonist into the other side of the run, and shut the door so that Leila, Lottie and Lulu couldn’t come back in.
Ben purchased some Stockholm Tar on the way home from work today, and has applied this to the bare patches on the two white pullets to hopefully deter future pecking. The tar provides a healing coating on the skin and if the other bird pecks her again, she will get the tar stuck on her beak which will distract her from pecking her again – instead she’ll have to spend time trying to clean the tar off her own beak. Let’s hope it works!
Cheese Diary
Just to keep up with things on the cheese-making front, I made my first batch of cow’s milk feta cheese yesterday. On Saturday, we had purchased another 4 litres of fresh cow’s milk from the farm in Helensville, after which I pasteurised it and used it to make the cheese.
The feta curds after being cut up in the pan
I had a problem with finding moulds to rest the cheese in, once the curd had been cut up, then had the bright idea of using the basket from our lettuce spinner, as well as the small ricotta mould I already had. This is why my cheese pieces comprise of one little round cheese, and four ‘quarters’ of a larger round.
Feta cheese after it had rested overnight
After the curds had set and been transferred to a mould, I rested them overnight, and then added them to a 10-15% solution brine this afternoon. The 4 litres of milk produced 1089 grams of cheese.
The pieces have been sealed in an air-tight container in the brine and placed in the fridge. They will stay there for at least 10 days to mature. Ideally we should resist the temptation to eat the cheese until 21 days have passed, after which we can cube and store into jars of olive oil or (of course) eat. Full maturity will occur after 4 – 6 weeks.
We tasted a tiny sample tonight and it already tastes very good.
I also finished salting my Ricotta Salata, today, and this can now be stored in the fridge for at least 2 weeks, to mature.
Lake Ototoa
Lake Ototoa, South Head
Lake Ototoa is a dune lake, the correct Maori name for which being Lake Rototoa. According to the NZ Department of Conservation, it is the largest, most pristine freshwater lake in the Auckland region. The lake covers around 110 hectares and has a catchment of approximately 525 hectares. At 29 metres deep, it is also the deepest. Unfortunately, due to the introduction of exotic fish and weeds, the lake is now beginning to suffer.
A tui feeding on harakeke flowers
It differs from most other dune lakes in that it is formed by a depression in rock, rather than by the trapping of water behind sand dunes formed adjacent to the West coast. It is rich in local flora and fauna.
Lake Rototoa is situated about 6 km from where we live. The lake supplies water to many of the properties in the area, including our own. Ben and I had visited it a few times since we moved to South Head, and although we had heard you could swim there, we hadn’t really investigated this.
Yesterday we decided to take a walk along the pathway that leads around the left of the lake from the road. The path is narrow and follows the contours of the lake edge. At times it is a little steep and there is prickly wild gorse to contend with, but it’s not a difficult walk. As well, it was calm and overcast, and warm enough to make the water look increasingly inviting.
First swim in Lake Rototoa
When we came upon a small sandy crescent of a beach, we knew we’d have to hop in. The water has a sandy, silty bottom and after about 10 metres, drops sharply.
The water was warm and very clear. There were a few other people on the water – swimming and kayaking at a bay a little further along. The noise of loud laughing and splashing affected the beauty of the scene somewhat, but we could see that if it wasn’t the weekend, it would be the most beautiful place to spend a few hours on a hot summer’s afternoon.
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