Well, here it is, the end of 2013. I can hardly believe how fast the year has gone by. For us here at the Mello Farm we can look back at what was, for us, a pretty good twelve months. Health is good, lifestyle is good – nothing to complain about! Overall, I guess 2013 was a year of renovations, albeit in a fairly relaxed manner. We started the year working on a bedroom project, ended it with a garage project and had a few things in between, so we feel like we’ve got the house moving in the right direction.
The carport we started with.
The carport structure and concrete removed.
This is where we are at the end of the year… garage with roof, but no walls yet!
From the pictures, it doesn’t look like too big of a deal, but more than half of our roof had to come off in the process. As it turned out, we had beautiful weather for most of the construction phase… the only day it rained really hard was the day the roof was off and uncovered! Murphy’s Law at its best. As 2014 gets going, our builders will get back to work and finish the garage. We have a few more things for them to do in the house before we let them go, a little bathroom work, a little hall work, nothing too big. We’ll still have bigger projects yet to do in other areas of the house and will get to them as we go.
We’ve been happy to have some beautiful Hawke’s Bay summer days over the holidays, warm and dry. The rest of New Zealand, from the tip top to the very bottom, hasn’t been as lucky and has had its share of rain. Apparently the Christmas campers have had enough! If the forecast holds true, it doesn’t look like we’ll be getting wet for a while. Of course, when you depend on the rain for your bath water, like we do, you don’t want to go without for too long!
Napier’s New Year Forecast
The fine summer weather has also served as an invitation for some local starlings to start building a nest in the eaves of our roof. Having had this problem before, Jim set out to stop up the holes the birds were going in and out of. He tried chicken wire – no good; he tried spray foam – no good; the starlings were winning 2-0. The only option was to get out the .22 rifle. It had been so long since the gun had been out that the dogs thought there must be a possum in the yard that had to be dealt with! Once they realized it was a stake-out, the three of them – Jim, JR and Scarlet – waited for their prey. Actually, it took a couple of days, but they ended up getting 1 out of the 2 troublesome birds and the other decided the territory was too unsafe and bugged out on his own. The down side to this story is the minor bird shot damage done to the living room ceiling! Of all things, Jim was putting the gun on safety in the living room after having been on bird watch for a while, and it fired… he thought he had messed up, so did it again and it fired, again. The first time it hit the window, the second time the ceiling. But it was such a strange thing that Jim didn’t understand what was happening. The third time, he showed me what he did, put it on safety and it fired, again – this time into the carpet. Clearly something was really wrong and this time he realized that the trigger was not working right. I’m pleased to report that the malfunctioning gun has already been to the gunsmith’s and been fixed – the entire trigger mechanism had broken. We’re lucky that the only thing that got ‘hurt’ was the ceiling and it has to be painted anyway!
Jim, JR and Scarlet on starling patrol.
For me, my usual summer past time, a summer garden, is not going well. While living in Hamilton I had an extensive vegetable and herb garden that always yielded a lot of produce. Since moving here I have not established a garden, nor have I had much luck with potted herbs or even my good old yearly tomatoes. Even though it has been warm the last couple of weeks, it was fairly cool before that, even downright cold at night, and we’re already a third of the way through summer. I just don’t think it gets warm enough where we are for proper gardening. Also, it gets pretty windy, pretty often. I thought I had gotten a jump start on my tomatoes by growing some plants from seed over winter… they were beautiful, then I left them outside one warm spring day only to discover at the end of that day that it had been a little too windy for them. They looked like they had been hit by a flame thrower! So I had to start over. It’s now the last day of the year and I have yet to see a single tomato. I guess that’s why there isn’t an established veggie garden here already, it just isn’t a good place for one. The neighbor down the road that does grow vegetables has a big hot house… that may be the only way to make it work.
I did have a little more luck in the flower department… I’ve had this cactus plant for a number of years and brought it with me when we moved to Hawke’s Bay. I put it under a bush and it got overgrown and lost for almost a year. A few weeks ago I found it while doing some hedge clipping and put it out in the sun just in time to see it bloom for the first time. It had the most beautiful flower I’ve ever had in my garden.
Actual colors… no PhotoShop!
Looking forward I hope that this coming year will be great. We have friends both far and near who received news this year that wasn’t all that good and we hope that 2014 will be better and brighter and that things will go well for them. (We keep you in our hearts and on our minds… you know who you are!) So Happy New Year and may all your wishes come true!
