Despite my years of learning Spanish the finer differences between El niño and La niña as far as the weather is concerned are a bit of a mystery to me. All I know is that El niño is not something that we really want as it brings lower than average temperatures, lots of wind and anger bursts of rain. Guess what we’re getting for our New Zealand Christmas?
After an early flourish the official start of summer has been an inauspicious start. Cold, wet, windy – darn right miserable in fact. This has not been good news for building our kitchen garden.
But kiwi blokes are not put off by a spot of rain. They simply put on another layer and get on with the job.
Our garden has been a riot of fluorescent colour bringing brightness into what has otherwise been a dank and dreary sight. Our beautifully excavated site has been turned into a mud bath.
Big boots and machinery has made its mark giving the bassets a wonderful new playground. Fortnum has not hesitating in jumping in but little basset is more discerning where he puts his paws. The landscapers don’t have much choice they’ve been plodging around in the mud and making the best of a wet situation.
The drilling is the easy bit as far as I can see. Cementing posts in wet weather is very challenging but they’ve plugged on and built the retaining walls. These walls are much needed infrastructure and will give us a wonderfully sheltered backdrop away from the winds.
You’ve got to hand it to the lads, they’ve pushed on regardless. I certainly wouldn’t haven’t wanted to be working in amongst all this.
The kiwi blokes have battled on despite the wind and rain and I am ever so grateful as I want to get planting before Christmas so our food factory can become operational this summer.
Progress is painfully slow but at least it’s progress. I’ll showcase kiwi ingenuity for landscaping in the next post so you can see how far they have come this week.