Weekend social 08/06/2012
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2:00 pm, June 8th, 2012 - 27 comments
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Weekend social is for non political chat. What’s on for the weekend, gigs, film or book reviews, sports, or whatever.
No politics, no aggro, why can’t we all just get along?
27 comments on “Weekend social 08/06/2012 ”
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Massive CIA internet project reaps rich rewards . . .
; )
Perhaps the SIS can now be downsized. Thanks Facebook.
You just watchin Brook aka Suzanne lol
As was I..
http://www.uefa.com/uefaeuro/season=2012/matches/byround/index.html
Saturday sport could be the first wet one this winter, what a great autumn we have had, then first AB game ever for most of the family perhaps 1st for the Irish as well đ
Yep, hubby and I had arranged to go and see two of our grandchildren play football tomorrow morning at Keith Hay Park. We may get to have a lie in after all if this rain keeps on!
TAB is paying $7 on Ireland to win.  Worth a flutter, given both finalists in the European Heineken Cup in May  were Irish teams: Leinster and Ulster.
It has not happened in 107 year. Has to happen sometime before the end of time……
Yeah Scotland Beat the Aussies
Ireland beat the Ab’s I need another good laugh, the scotland laugh ran out Thursday.
the goodness of cold winter
moved
Fairly emotional myself.
A great selection of Nutritious Fresh Attracitive foods at Great Prices at the Avondale Market in Avondale his Sunday morning. Â Come, see and enjoy the prize Assets of New Zealand presented for your pleasure.
Bracing a brisk northerly whilst packing and organising for a very BIG move next weekend to our first ever home! After renting for 23 years it’s finally happened and only thanks to family involvement in the purchase. So its goodbye to this damp and draughty old house and hello to sunny, new double glazed highly insulated heaven. Can’t wait to establish an edible garden, herb garden and plant trees. it will however be a challenge on clay soil and on a site that the council deems “very high wind risk”.
Hope you mainlanders are getting to enjoy your winter wonderland this weekend.
Just walked around the south coast this morning and the Kaikouras were resplendent in snow and pale light. Looks cold down on the mainland.
Rosie, Hope your garden goes well, clay is a totally under rated medium: once used properly it will yield great results. The key is to only dig very occasionally, add seaweed, sand, compost and mulch and let the worms do the rest. If necessary drain it but it is often better to raise it up a little. In the summer mulch like mad so it does not dry.
Trees…most important bit is the type of root stock grafted to the tree, some like clay, others dont. Talk to the nursery people before purchasing.
With the Wellington wind I cannot stress enough use wind cloth (well secured) across the south and north west, its worth its weight in gold till you get lines of wind breaks established. Remeber wind chill really stunts growth. There is a good book by Jacob De Reuter in the city library about wind gardening at Houghton Bay, the man is a gun on the wind. Enjoy.
Congratulations Rosie.
A year ago I made a very similar move. Life will be so much easier you won’t know yourself. And it’s so cool moving somewhere warm and sunny in winter.
Learning about windreaking is fun. Plant shrubs close together, including some with a short life span, or that you will be happy to eventually remove. Tie shrubs and trees together where they sit in the teeth of the worst winds. Expect a high death and dormancy rate.
Try a few apple trees if you have a wind tunnel. You might be surprised. I was.
Great stuff Rosie.
I brought in a trailer load of soil mixed with compost called I think Pottinger Mix.
For great advice on creating an edible garden talk to Kath at http://ediblebackyard.co.nz/
Talking about winter wonderlands, this is what Te Wai Pounamu looked like from space a couple of days ago.
Thanks Bored and Just Saying for your hot tips on wind proofing the section and the additional tips on clay. Thats very helpful I had heard about that author and wind expert from Houghton Bay, so I appreciate having his name, so now I can follow up. It WILL be a wind garden lol.
The last two rentals bar this one have been in exposed places and we’ve had to put up sturdy wind break mesh to protect summer vege and had varying degrees of success but now we will be really committed to making it work.
I have heard that some residents have managed to get the Wgtn city council to provide them with plants for the council strip of land in front of their house and the residents just do the planting up. We hope to get some Harakeke going on along the road facing side of the house. We also have lots of cabbage tree sprouts around the garden here (its a cabbage tree and pohutakawa forest!) so hope to transplant some of those babies.
I always used to get slightly annoyed at the abundance of fallen dead cabbage treee fronds but a while ago on this site someone, might have even been you Bored suggested to someone that they just tie them into a knot and dry them and use them as kindling in their log burner. That has been a really valuable peice of info because it has determined the outcome for going ahead with planting cabbage trees at the new house. We’re installing a log burner there so theres our supply of kindling! Just wish I had known about that trick in the last three winters at the rental we’re in now! So who ever that was – thank you:-)
Have a great weekend everyone
My congratulations also, Rosie. There is such a difference between renting and owning your own property, especially when it comes to gardening etc.
Here is the link to the WCC free plants information if you don’t already have it. http://www.wellington.govt.nz/services/prksgrdnsserv/freeplants/freeplants.html
There is also an application form on the WCC site, although I note that applications are now closed until Jan 2013. Their Berhampore nursery also has open days when they sell plants at very low cost, so that might be worth checking out. The contact details are in the link above.
De Router also has open days to his wind garden from time to time, which could be worth a visit.
Look forward to hearing how the move goes and the gardening efforts in the future!
PS – I was also surprised at that great hint re cabbage tree fronds, and are now bundling mine up for the neighbours as I don’t have an open fire. Waiting to hear how they go!
Can I say thanks to all of you gardeners. Not a gardener myself, but I do enjoy reading about your gardening adventures. Very impressive.
I too am surprised – and encouraged – by the way in which gardening seems to be a constant theme in Weekend social. Our garden is a neglected mess at the moment – stuff happened – but we shall return!
Think I might catch Prometheus. Anyone seen it yet?
Update: Well that was, ummmm. Mmmmm. Not his best work.
Try Game of Thrones on DVD/bluray. Pretty standard fare for good fantasy if I’d read it. It isn’t as deeply rich as Ursula Le Guin, but it isn’t as ridicuously self indulgent as something like Robert Jordan’s work ( I’m not a great fantasy fan – the limited storylines bore me ). Whoever wrote these books has clearly spent a lot of effort with the background history pulling in quite a lot of cultural history and not just that European medieval period.
The HBO series is extremely effective once you get used to the more gradual pace than the usual episodic TV series. Watched the first series over this week. Kept getting deeper into it.
I’d love to see the same production values used in something like the Earthsea books..
Now a good screen production of the Earthsea series I could probably watch. Haven’t bothered with Game of Thrones – just can’t seem to grok the books so not watching the series.
Just finished the last of the books to date “A Dance with Dragons”. For me the most interesting is the first with the last drifting and not as compelling (as many have commented on blog sites dedicated to the saga). Yet I have invested so much time into them will see the saga out to its conclusion. Only 2 more to go, whenever they will be completed by Martin is another question, and at the pace of the last 2 the remaining books will be huge in volume or (I hope not) a quick and unfulfilling conclusion.
HBO have done a great job in translating from book to TV.
Last thing MAXX and H&E buses did a great job in getting people to and from the game last night. Great service in being delivered & picked at the steps of Eden park. Public transport by bus can work ;-).
Huh – my son tried to start us on the first episode of GoT before we went off to Prometheus together. Must be some kind of conspiracy here!
Agree about Earthsea – love that world.