HAPPY BEES…

The bees are the busiest I have seen them. They won me some gardening vouchers recently, (a local competition), I will be rewarding them by buying more fruit trees, because who doesn’t need more fruit trees 🙂

Our buzzy friends continue to enable the vege garden to thrive, I am so appreciative, we are eating from it daily again.

The week we arrived back in Dunedin the kids set up tents in the back yard for sleeping in and hung out playing board games, firepit cooking and generally caught up after a couple of weeks apart, it was perfect weather for it, the animals loving the extra attention.

While we were away our house sitter noted one of the chooks looked unwell. She was still not looking great when we got back, I tried numerous things to help her, but sadly she died. We are down to 18 chickens now, 10 Barred Rock, 2 Pekin Bantams and 6 Orpingtons. Between them we have a great egg supply, despite some of them well past their laying lives.

We have exciting news; there will be new additions to Tui Cottage Farm. They have been planned since last year, but we needed to wait for them to be born. I am trialling a different breed, although we loved the Kunekune, I want to try the Wessex Saddleback, I am very fond of the old English heritage breeds of animals, hence the choice of chicken breeds.

Two of these little beauties are on their way ❤ They are currently 6 weeks old; we will pick them up Waitangi weekend. We were going to pick them up on way back from our travels, but they were still too young, I prefer them to be on their Mum a bit longer, so we will wait.

We have also had some more rescue hedgehogs dropped off this month, the last ones thriving in our bush area. We help them along initially with food while they adjust to being on their own, then leave them to it.

Has been good to get back to our usual walk with Pica. The clearing Rich and Luca did in December is so great, makes for such a pleasant amble. Once I hit the main trail I meet lots of tourists off the cruise ships at this time of year; it is always nice to see this part of the world through visitors’ eyes, reminds me not to take it for granted.

Flowers are in abundance everywhere; I dot them around the house in various vessels. This one a wine bottle that Rich brought me, I rather like it so am repurposing, (the wine I liked too 😉)