It had to happen....

Oh Christmas!! 

yes it had to happen. GHIU went to feed the chooks yesterday morning. "Cherry" he yells to me "How many chooks do we have'

"Five" I yelled back

"nah theres four here"

Well, with that he raced one way to the park, I raced (to get dressed) the children fled to the neighours and general pandemonium ensued. Alex came back saying that the neighbors had seen Christmas walking past their place (park side) a while back. So we all raced to the park. The park is 20 acres long and has a zillion trees, usheds a huge duckpond, many stray dogs wandering through, tame dogs and tame people and not so tame people. The chances of Christmas being found at all or alive were slim.  The opportunity for Christmas to be in a dogs mouth, or in the pot by the night were fairly assurred if we we couldnt find her. Fortunately Alex has her bionic vision and found her a few hundred metres away. She was very friendly and you could just about hear her saying that the flight had seemed a good idea at the time.  Following her arrest and return we realised that there were only three eggs. I rashly thought I could go and search for an egg but as GHIU pointed out finding a egg in a 20 acre area of land would be stretching things. The thought of our precious egg lost in the park though was pretty awful!!  GHIU clipped one of her wings ut she is still today flying to the highest point in the garden, although a bit wonkily. She is the chook that thinks she is a rooster.

This is a little area in the pool area that I planted with perpetual spinach a while back. I covered it with mesh and put all sorts of sticks and deterrrants in it, but each morning I was alarmed at the disturbing scene of a brown chooky head poking up over the top. So yesterday i completley redid it. I remeshed it, put in heaps of sticks to deter downward flying chooks, reinforced the sides of the mesh with blocks of rick so the girls couldnt squash themselves up and under and into. I spent AGES on it. AGES. Then I went to the organic shop and bought punnets of mustard salad and  NZ perpetual spinach. And I had won the war. Oh i didnt doubt that they would try, but I would win. The this morning, Christmas flew up and over and landed amongst the sticks and managed to clean up half of the spinach, dig up the sticks and leave a big hole.  So now i have thrown a whole number of objects, mesh like and others over the top in an effort to get this [project growing. Tomorow i think I will buy some cheap netting material to throw over it. I AM SO FRUSTRATED!!!!!

This week is going to  a sad one as the end of last week was. On Friday We lost our School social worker. He was only aout 38 and maried to one of the teachers and all his children were at School. even tho he had kidney failure he was one of the few people around who was trained to do his own dialysis at home. The day before he had happily been helping  out at out Maori week on the Marae with the children.and coaching the basketbakll team. Then his wife woke up to find him gone beside her the next morning. AS you can imagine the School is in shock. GHIU went to school with him and they had just had met up again at CHristmas which then menant I was on friendly terms with him having that mutual thing. On Friday he came back to the marae (My born and bred place that I LOVE in fernhill) and we went to the eginning on the Tangi. Tomorrow (monday ) the whole School is going to the tangi and then on Tuesday GHIU and I weill be going to the funeral. It is so sad and frankly seems unbelievalable. He had helped so many in our school and now he is gone.

Love Cherry