Gabions

Mish jamming in the last wire gabion along the driveway. She had to cut a couple of them to fit the Reid design. Have started to fill one to see what it looks like (not easy, someone put a rose across the top). 

It should look okay - industrial grunge, mainly left over concrete from ripped up paths.

 

Driveway works

 Underway!

We have a long driveway down to the road, there's a lot of land there and we aim to make better use of it.

To get some useful land back we've moved the electric gate down the drive a bit and for days now we've had landscapers landscraping. 

The works are horrifyingly huge from the driveway looking up, but when the tsunami comes we'll be behind the massive amount of timber poles and boards and compacted sand and concrete, having a cup of tea.

Concrete truck offloading.

Lower retaining wall in place and poles for the upper level wall, braced for the concrete pour. The old fence is coming out and we'll gain some flat land on the top level.

They've cut the water pipe twice and cut the bore hose today. Ooops. But, they've missed the wi-fi fibre and that's great. Apart from the wasps (two nests in the bank and several stings) and the water issues, the job has gone fairly smoothly so far. 

Every morning we're up at sparrow fart to move a car or two into the park's carpark next door as there's no way we'd be able to drive out during the day.

Hanging over the existing fence and looking down at the second concrete pour.

Work has stopped while they fix the bore hose, so we popped out to check out what we've got so far.

Mish at the top of the drive.

And telling me about something down there in the lower drive. 

Mish now thinking about what we'll plant in these new terraces to soften the Great Wall of Raumati.

Trip hazards (aka site design)

Is anything happening with the reno extension? A little. The architect is about ready to submit plans to council, but the builder won't be ready until 2024. Meanwhile, the funds are recovering (hopefully). Availability of supplies, materials and people, was improving, but thanks to Auckland's floods and Cyclone Gabrielle causing so much damage up north there will be shortages again.

Climate. Covid. Sigh.

Meanwhile, Mish is having fun laying out bits of wood and hose and spray paint to show how the new building might look, and where landscape design elements like the new veggie boxes could go. This is the deck area coming off her studio. The French doors (in yellow) have gone, replaced by glass sliders. The bench seat is in her studio, the framed area  is the deck and its steps leading down into the garden.

 

Fence demolition

Now the gate is moved down the drive a wee bit we can begin to take the upper fence away. Mish is going to give it hell. The yellow rose on the fence is beautiful and it stays - it'll be espaliered along the driveway. Well that's the current plan. Mish is known to get new ideas...
 

Throwing a paling at the photographer (unintentionally but still rather close). 'I didn't see you!' I blame the hat brim.

One section down.

We'll reuse what we can around the yard. This block of palings is headed for the gap we'll make on the other side of the yard when the concrete water tank is demolished. 

Getting the yard back into shape

Go away for a month and there's a bit to do... it's been raining and humid here, and we can tell.

Out comes the new battery powered mower - going through the overgrown grass very well.

Veg garden is chocka with bolted vegies. 

And nice discoveries too, like loads of poppies and fruit on trees and blossoms on the crabapple.

Driveway works update

Looking down the drive with the two new retaining walls pegged out with posts and lines. Existing fence will come down and terraces will go up and we'll gain some extra garden area on the top lawn. Council just approved the works!

Meanwhile, the gate is connected and live. And drive through space is a bit wider than it was so I can drive through faster.

Mish having her first paddle of the season. Still wearing 27 layers though.

And a location shot. From the top of the Paekakariki Hill  looking toward our place beyond Paekakariki village at the base of the hill.

More work and a DNA test and a hangi dinner to finish

 Landscaping works continue. 

The electronic gate has been taken out and is currently propped on the fence ready to be relocated down the drive when the concreting is beautified and the electrician appears to wire the gate up.

The Forester had its first service, at 15000km. We dropped it off and walked to Queensgate mall for an actual shopping experience (few and far between these days). Then we headed to the Hutt River and picked up a car load of river rocks to take home.

The rocks will form part of a landscape vision of plantings, mulch, rock, and driftwood next to the driveway and garage pad. We were a couple of buckets short.

Later that day:

Hired a trailer yesterday and picked up a load of soil to go into the small corten planter box at the front door. I'm ready to shovel but Mish is fiddling with electrics for the future pump's water feature.

Here's the filled planter box and the excess soil dumped in front of it for the next stage. The front entry is taking shape.

We're also having some fun with driftwood totems, stacking up wood, pumice, shells and found objects from the beach. Everything in the big corten planter on the left is growing well.

After shovelling that soil we shot around to a friend's place and picked up a trailer load of kowhai pruning to mulch. Tossed that off in a spare area and will mulch next week when it stops raining.

Just done the Ancestry.com DNA testing. Spit in a tube and post to Ireland; bit of fun.

Working on the spit.

And adding the blue fluid that stabilises the spit while it flies across the world.

Post spit - about to walk over the park and pick up dinner - a hangi made by the marae at the high school. Yum.

Basically that's a roast dinner, meat and veg, but cooked in the ground which gives it a different flavour. Kind of earthy. 

It's a  fundraiser for a couple of kids competing in a trans Tasman netball competition. 

Chicken, pork, spuds, pumpkin, carrots, onion, stuffing, loads of gravy - and some steamed pud and custard which was a nice touch. They were sold out which is also nice.

Fence and flax and concrete

 The first bit of new fence has gone up on the park side of our boundary, and driveway works have begun.

A before shot, the old fence and the bend at the top of the driveway where the electric gate will be relocated. We have to find a new place to do our mulching and store the mulch. This was out of the way and perfect. 

Driveway works underway. This is all coming out.

The landscape guy took out a lot of flax and a huge aloe plant from the driveway. This will be terraced and planted when we get approval for the works from council. It has to be engineered due to the steep slope and as it's adjacent to our top lawn. Regs, phew.

And the fence on the other side of the driveway is gone. Looking up the drive.

Here's the framing for the new fence with flax taken out of the driveway replanted on the park side. That was hard work.

Further up the drive, he's digging some holes for us to plant into. But, in the end, we dug most of them ourselves (hooray for sand) and lugged the flaxes into them by hand.

We reused as much as we could, so all of this went in.

Scrambling and balancing on the steep bank with shovel and mattock and planting into thin air in places. Some of it will grab - hopefully most of it.

Today we've planted the last of the flax and cut the big leaves to give them a fighting chance. Flax is a tough plant so we'll see. 

Concreting the fence posts. Rather large truck, but most of the load is going on to another job.

Meanwhile, there was a trench dug across the yard from the house to get electrics to the new gate. Only grass was harmed in this operation and it skirted the old swimming pool which is still in the ground on the left of this image.

And then a  trench across the driveway for wires to the new gate. Landscaper delivered this batch of concrete in his trailer and shovelled it out - haven't seen that done before.

Next step is gate move and fence capping and painting. We're working around them doing works like moving plants and mulching for summer and a bunch of other stuff. 

But now, Sunday evening, we've packed it in after a game of table tennis. I have a whiskey and Mish has a wine and a compression thing on her arthritic hand and we've cranked up the fire and that's it for today.

Front of house works

 Woman with a mattock. Mish landscaping around the mailbox.

Fence painting

 Mish wanted to paint the fence out the back door. And of course it looks heaps better. Awaiting grapes...

Also awaiting the architect's drawing so we know how close the extension will come to the old water tank, which is now used for garden tools. Then we'll decide how we're going to cut it, to keep as a concrete arc, and what we'll use it for. The two tree ferns there will get relocated to the lower drive where they'll appreciate the shade and shelter and look a bit less beaten up.

Wet day winter works

 This week we have Antarctica cold, coming straight up from the icy south. Lots of rain and snow in the South Island but it's just cold here, like 1-5 degrees overnight, top of 9 in the day. Cold but not fuh fuh fuh freezing.

Time for mushroom soup. This is our third crop from the 4kg bag. It was doing nothing in the bathroom but quite likes getting sprayed in the warmer temps of the main living area by the front door. Pink shitake mushrooms which taste like bacon when crispy. The soup is on the stovetop right now and the first Christmas cake of the year is in the oven.

Meanwhile, Paula is hammering away on the deck, just out of the showers we're getting today. The pyramid stack on the right will replace the triangle of worn deck timbers on the left. Misty Kapiti Island in the distance.

Planter boxes

They are rather large. The big one is up and filled and planted. Rusting artistically on schedule. There's a mix of Mish faves in there: shrubby things and natives and grasses, around the crab apple tree. They'll probably be some culling later if they all grow and take off.

On the other side of the steps is the designer's mock up of a potential water feature: a smaller Corten box with two bowls and water falling from one into the other. First mock up today so that won't be what happens.

We have several bird baths around. It would be good to incorporate bird bathing into a water feature. Everyone needs a challenge. Blackbird enjoying the winter sun today.

Sue and Grace flew up from Blenheim for a couple of days, on a shocking day but they did the short flight in a calm window and only bounced in the last few minutes.

In the city we accidently caught the last day of the David Jones department store experiment. DJs had aimed for the 'most beautiful store in the world'. But it was an expensive store that didn't work on Wellington's golden mile ($5000 handbags and racks of XS clothing also mega bucks and not designed for our climate, who could have known that stock wouldn't sell well?) David Jones lasted about six years and this was their last day. A big empty store is a sad thing. Grace and Sue got some good quality gear.

Jase arrives (put him to work)

 Jason flew in late May and Mish was very happy. He's our first visitor since Covid arrived.

One cool day at the Bus Cafe, Te Horo beach.

Admiring one of our fabulous sunsets. We've red taped the french doors for winter as the drafts move the curtains. That'll fix it.

Then we put him to work shovelling soil into the big planter box for the crab apple. And here it is.

That was before we headed south to Christchurch, and today Mish had him planting the last of the citrus trees in the mini orchard. Jase with lemon.

The works are beginning in earnest

 One of the front planter boxes is built. 

Interior view of the bracing and side

view from the driveway.

Mish and our handywoman pal Paula sorting their stuff to begin bending and cutting the Corten steel to place it around the concrete free area ready for the tree arriving in a couple of weeks. Change of plan for the tree; we did buy an ornamental cherry but have swapped it for a much more productive and pretty crabapple.

Woman with a power tool. Sparks flying

And woman with paint, spraying the plastic house letterbox installation.

Our small metal letterbox was nicked last Christmas so we had the bright idea to remodel our failed fire as a letterbox. It had been sitting outside since the end of winter 2021 waiting to be either scrap metal or art work.

When we found an actual house shaped letterbox in Napier the vision solidified into using the old fire as the base and plastic house as letterbox on top.

Here it is before painting, in disgrace out in the yard. A little Mish carpentry on top to attach the letterbox house.

Trolleyed it down the drive, blimmin solid iron thing, and worked it into position. We tried to place it over the base of the old letterbox but someone (this writer dear readers) had miss-measured the base  😕 and we got a bit stuck. Heavy! At that point a car pulled up and a beefy grinning neighbour jumped out and gave us a hand. We sort of got it into position and he shot home and came back with a reciprocating saw and took a bit off the old base to make it fit. So now we've met John and Diane who live around the corner. 

Painted, in position, and getting a touchup where we scraped some paint off.

House letterbox is on and ta dah!

Meanwhile, in another part of the yard...

We have to do ground testing to build the extension, so the builder knows how deep to drive the piles in  our sandy soil. A geotech team came this week and did miscellaneous engineering stuff for hours involving 10 metre deep drilling and a soakage test where 5000 litres of water was pumped into a hole (and disappeared - gosh, it's sand). And of course, a liquefaction test to see if the backyard will turn to mud in the vibration of a big earthquake. 

Funnily enough, we did have a good shake this morning, haven't had one for a while. 

A 4.7 quake centered 25km west of us in the sea and 28km down. 

Several hours and thousands of dollars later, findings are pending. No probs expected.