Day 43 12 February – bbb (buzzy bumble bee)

Today I spend the afternoon with my two lovely friends and previous work mates (the same vibrant ladies from my entry Gourmet Pizza) and once again they provided entertainment and a sense of acceptance. We went to the Howick Historical Village for a venture back in time during the fencible period, when the Royal New Zealand Fencible Corps was posted in Howick to defend the area against possible attacks. Volunteers dress up and act out how life would have been for the settlers and soldiers. There are 33 houses or sites to visit and even though the grounds are not very big, you almost feel as if you are intruding on their land and way of living. It is a fascinating event and one I would love to take my children to.

One of the sites you can visit is the main homestead, which is a magnificent old villa with all its original interior kept in tact. When we walked into the living room I imagined the room filled with neutral floral hoop dresses, awaiting young gentlemen on the dance floor, while a musician played a popular classical piece on the piano. You are surrounded by 1800 ambience and it is bone chilling realism.

During our walk through the village, my eye caught an unfamiliar plant and flower. While I was admiring the plant, I noticed a bumble bee waste deep into the open flower covered in pollen droplets and thoroughly enjoying his sweet feed. It was too precious not to take a photo. The bee was oblivious to the giant imposter and happily carried on with his pollen collecting duties.

After our village visit we took a drive to the marina where we ate at one of my favourite eating places called Grangers. I chose the potato skins with parmesan, porcini and truffles and accompanied with passionfruit and feijoa cider. Oh wow, this was the first time I’ve had truffles and I LOVE the smokey, woody taste. It transform a dish giving it a depth of bursting flavours, like woodland fairies dancing on your tongue. The marina is buzzing from excitable visitors, everyone enjoying good food and even better company. We ate, drank and laughed.

But still, how cute is that tubby bumble bee!

 

Day 22 22 January – candle light

 

I mentioned in a previous post that the south island was hit by a terrible storm late last week, and just when I thought the north island was clear from it, it hits us on Saturday night. Gale force winds strong enough to break large branches, throw our lawn chairs about the patio, tip our barbeque over and snap several power cables along our street. Around 10pm on Saturday night my husband and I were watching a movie and suddenly, darkness. This is not a strange phenomenon to me, as growing up we lived on a farm most of my life and when the highveld thunderstorms hit, you were assured to be without power for most of the night.

Luckily I have HEAPS of candles! And thankfully we always have matches as we can’t live without them during the winter months when the only main heat source is an old wood oven. We took the lit candles to the room, snuggled up and I finished reading my book. I went to sleep with a heart of thankfulness as we are safe indoors from the storm outside, and even though without power we can still function within limits.

We woke up this morning with still no power. Reading an online article from my phone, 15 000 homes around Auckland are without power from the storm ad the electricity provider warned those affected that we need to prepare for a pro-longed outage as the weather is making repairs difficult. I was off to work, and my husband too the kids into town for breakfast. Surely by the time they arrive home late morning it will be fixed? Uhm, no.

10pm tonight and we have been without power for 24 hours. It feels like we have been sucked into a parallel universe and soon the apocalyptic zombies will be grudging their way through our front door. Almost all our candles are burning tonight, there is no more water left as we do not use municipal water and the pump runs on electricity to purify/pump water from the water tanks. Thankfully we have a 2 litre water bottle in the fridge which we use to brush teeth with and drink clean water. We scrimmaged through our pantry trying to find snacks to eat and charging our phones whenever we are in the car. We can’t wash dishes, flush the toilet or shower.

A quick look into the future (seeing as New Zealand is the first to see the sunlight), the next morning is no better as we woke up to day 2 of no power. Packing lunches and getting ready for work and holiday programs took on some DYI and genuine kiwi ingenuity.