Did I mention exercise? Down in Waihi

I did decamp from Red Beach more or less on schedule the day before yesterday and took the long route via Maraetai to visit Jeanette & Ben.  So I arrived in Waihi much later than expected even though I didn't stop at the Hunua Falls (will do so on the way back).  Yesterday wasn't much of a beach day as we were copping the tail end of yet another tropical cyclone (insert sarcastic comment about climate change being fake news here).  I did need some exercise, though, and as Georgia had the arborist coming to deal with some undesirable trees (a rotten willow, a leaning gum and an evil bloody bunyabunya (a kind of armoured monkey puzzle), that seemed like good exercise.
The lady with the chain saw had the fun job of climbing the trees and chopping them into bits while Georgia and I carted the bits, by hand and with two ancient wheelbarrows, into a  number of sorted piles which got progressively less organised as the day went on.  Once that was done, we unleashed the sheep onto the leafy bits to convert the leaves into - ahem - natural compost.

 We were both a bit slow moving this morning, the overnight rain, which continued all day, making us disinclined to leap into action.  We eventually dragged ourselves out of the house shortly before midday and went to Oo and Ah at the local swollen rivers. First stop was the local petting zoo (picture of ginormous swan plant to the left) to have ourselves mugged by chickens and slobbered on by llamas.  We also spent quite a while removing a log jam from one side of a bridge only to have it rebuild itself 20 metres downstream.  This had the added fun of crossing a fairly raging torrent on a perfectly solid but slippery swing bridge.  In the pic below you can see the rebuilt log lam forming on the right of the river - photo taken from the bridge.

My own laptop is doing an excellent job of pretending to be knackered but I will bring it home to see if it can be fixed.  The collection of very similar simple fixes I found on the internet all turned out to be written by people who found that their fix worked once and didn't bother to check if it still worked the next day.  So thanks, Nonx & Dave, for the loan of this one.



This is what Georgia's yard looks like now.  Note the almost carefully sorted piles of sheep-edible willow leaves, bonfire material and winter firewood.  Glad I won't be here to help split and stack it.