October Update

Well it’s a first in my memory, which given my memory doesn’t mean much, we’ve had a fine Labour weekend, right up until Monday night and we needed that rain to water in the tomatoes. Perfect. My summer jandal tan is coming along nicely and Tony had his shirt off for four hours (I had my sunnies on - ‘protector safety glasses’), and I’ve asked that the sun shade be put up over Joe’s play area.

With so much bush around so much farmland with so many dodgy fences, there’s quite the feral animal population, there was even a television show made about a fellow who rounds up Northland’s wild bulls. Our pretty fourteen month Hereford heifer must have started to secrete interesting pheromones enticing a passing bull to visit. I was trying to get Joe to have a sleep when the dog’s barking finished that attempt. It was such an emergency panic bark I went for a look, instead of yelling for them to shut-up, and there, licking Ruby’s unmentionables, was a very large bull. 

I admit I didn’t stop to ask for credentials, so I don’t know if he was wild or just over from a nearby farm for a visit, but he had no fear of me, loudly and rudely ‘encouraging’ him to go away, waving a stock stick and throwing stones. I let the ferocious looking barking and snarling dog off his chain, which then stopped snarling, barking and looking ferocious and went and gave the other dog a cuddle before taking off to look for the stinking dead possum recently chucked into the bush. Bull baiting was temporarily abandoned while the now stinking dog was caught, re-chained and then resumed his snarling, barking and looking ferocious. 

Ruby, demanding a little more romancing please, had turned and was rubbing heads with this big red fellow and taking advantage of a pause in affections I threw a rock, in a manoeuvre I could never repeat, landing square between his eyes. He stared directly at me, for the first time realising my presence - clearly – or thankfully I am no contest for the pretty Ruby Moo, and lumbered down the track for five meters before stopping to nibble grass. With courage, paralleled only by the insane, I placed myself between Ruby and her paramour to undo her chain, she is a compliant beast and followed me to her paddock.  It took several hours for my adrenalin to subside. 

After work, Tony and Kaarac crashed about in the bush but there was no further sign and he hasn’t been back... that I know of, time will tell. Truth is our fences, well our one paddock fence, wouldn’t deter a determined wandering amorous bull, a Hokianga feature we will be more than happy to take advantage of in around eight months.

Joe is having his first ‘not-in-the-car’ daytime sleep in over a week, I’ve certainly been missing it. It’s amazing how much I can get done without ‘help’. But even sleeping in the car is declining. Booked in for his first trip to the theatre, after a morning session at Playcentre I took Joe for a nice long drive so he’d be fresh for The Lion in the Meadow at 5.30. He slept for only an hour, but I needn’t have worried as the on stage performance enthralled him. Tony and I enjoyed watching Joe delight in the experience. Joe and I also went on a Playcentre trip to the glow-worm caves just south of Kawakawa where the highlights for him were the ladder and the climbable rocks and handrails. The caves and the tour are great, highly recommended. 

Tony’s flat out at work. With the onset of spring, winter idle mowers and machinery are shearing belts, blowing seals and breaking tines and he’s touring about discovering orchards and garden perkies... sorry fixing things! Painting’s coming along and I even managed to briefly get a paintbrush in Tony’s hand, but really he’s been fantastic measuring, cutting and fixing bits of wood and moving my scaffold as required. If we can keep the cow and now the goat from eating the paint, it might even look a bit flash for the wedding!