December 29, 2014

First off, I did notice how un-keen most of the family was in Skype on Christmas. Or rather, Christmas Eve, for you anyway. I could sense the "oh, he's gonna be home in like a month anyway" attitude. So, in lieu of that, and in keeping with the social attitude of my generation, let me just say that I am deeply offended. I have now logged the incident away within my mind, so that upon returning home I can let everyone know just how offended I am by posting an extremely lengthy-albeit completely unnecessary- rant on my Facebook page.

I have some good news! At least, I'm pretty stoked about it. My camera decided it wants to work again! Well, sort of. It now turns on, zooms in an out, takes pictures. Only problem is that I can't take any pictures during the day. For some reason the exposure decided to go off the charts, so if I take a picture when there is any significant amount of sunlight present, it looks like we're on the surface of the sun. Having said that, I'm just happy that I can take pictures again, even if it does have to be either in the late evening or at night. Next problem I noticed (and you also will notice when you see the pictures) is that the lens is all spotty now, and not on the outside where I can clean it. Which has led me to the conclusion that some sort of condensation must have gotten into the camera, which caused the malfunction in the first place. That's what I'm going with anyway.

So, with my camera finally working, I can send you some pictures of our garden. It's doing awesome! Though, last night we discovered a rather unfortunate turn of events. It looks like the neighbors threw a bucket of some kind of liquid over the fence into our garden. My companion's guess is that it was a bucket of hot water. Whatever it was, it pretty much destroyed about half of our Bok Choy and a couple Beetroot plants. We're hoping that they can bounce back from it, but we'll see. Other than that, our potatoes still haven't come up, though if you dig em up they are growing, just excruciatingly slowly. The Tomatoes are pumping, along with the beans. I can't picture myself having a garden back home, but I'm super stoked about having one here. It's cool being able to see the progress every week.
Didn't get much done over the past week. Christmas was good, and there have been heaps upon heaps of townies coming to Kawhia that we've been able to talk to. Though, honestly, nobody really wants us around during the holidays, which I totally understand. Everybody has their families around doing all sorts of stuff, so I'm not too fussed about them not wanting us intruding. Apparently President Rudd is thinking about taking away the Christmas call next year if this week is as unproductive as the week after Christmas was last year. His theory is that calling home gets everyone too home sick so nobody wants to work. I can see where he's coming from, but I don't think home sickness is the issue. Not that it matters to me though, since I won't be here! haha. Sad.
That ought just about ought to do it.
Arohanui!

This took AGES to clean out. It's all that devil grass that I told you about. 

We had to till it up three or four times, but when we finished the dirt was B-E-A-utiful. 

Tiny plants

The Tomatoes are on the left with the bamboo. The beans are climbing the thing on the right.

Where we're standing there's still a lot of open space, so we plan on planting a couple rows of sweet potatoes there. Probably today in fact.