Property easier to manage with helpers

The weather has been fantastic and its planting time... with Jorge's help, and now Erina from Sweden, lots has been happening.  Erina is 21 and has been working and travelling three years since she left high school. She's come to NZ after living in Aberdeen, Scotland and Amsterdam, then  travelling through Australia, India and Nepal, with friends. She is a vegetarian and we've been having yummy meals and its nostalgic for me to recall being 21 and a vegetarian, so I've shared with her recipes I have from back then plus got her baking bread.  Her first focaccia was fab!

Yesterday we moved some dahlias and created a planting bed for salad greens up near the house.

Today's feature in the Northern Advocate will be a story I wrote about Freddy Wilkinson who grew up in Waipu in the late 1930s, studied horticulture and floristry and went off to England 49 years ago where he began working as a gardener with the Constance Spry Flower School.  Google her, she was very cool, and Fred, though he arrived two years after Constance died, is still with the organisation and does flowers for royalty, amongst other things. He did flowers for Lancaster House for Prince William and Kate's wedding (that's where dignitaries had dinner the night before and were collected to be taken to the wedding) and for Di and Prince Charles's wedding, for Princess Anne and Mark Philips and for the Queen's residence. He has met the Queen many times and thinks she is a marvellous and very hard working woman.

Today I get to cover the unveiling of a commemorative monument for the HMS Puriri, which was sunk by a Japanese mine  planted during World War II, the only ship sunk with loss of lives in NZ waters. It was hushed during the war and family members started agitating recently through David Wistrand, a Waipu friend and VP of the local Returned Servicemen's Association (RSA). I helped them get some press and letters went to the NZ Navy and now, 70 years to the day the ship sunk, Chief of Navy, Rear Admiral Tony Parr will unveil the monument at Ocean Beach.

Then I'm off north to Okaihau for the retirement of their Chief Fire Officer Colin Thomas, after 34 years as CFO and more in the Brigade. This picture is Colin Thomas, a kind and dedicated man!

So.. got to go, will post more pictures next time. Ciao