s e v e n i s a j o u r n e y

Last Saturday Tam and I took a little walk. We hopped over the fence, cut across Steve’s gum plantation, then hopped the next fence onto Stuart’s sheep farm (it is nice to know the people and have permission!). Stuart has a nice farm road up into the hills, so we set forth to see what we could find. At the top of the ridge we hopped a locked gate onto John’s farm (a pine plantation). I wanted to find the “mysterious pit of doom” that Stuart had once mentioned. Somewhere in that pine plantation is a big ~10 foot deep hole, with sheep bones at the bottom. Something you would not want to fall into in the middle of the night. No luck finding it, but we had fun exploring the roads through forest.

A series of “I wonder what is around that corner” explorations led us into the Belmont reserve, and from there it was only logical to climb to the top of Blemont Trig, right? Well, it was a heck of a view. Also a fairly good climb, as we ascended about 350m in total. We thought about taking photos from the top, where you can see Wellington harbor on one side and the Porirua inlet on the other, but realized that the camera just wouldn’t capture the true image. So no picture this time. By the time we got back (calves aching from the climb) we were joking how this was much like our climb of Round Knob last November- an expedition where we would have hesitated to make such a grand hiking plan, but it all happened by accident.

Considering how many forks in the path we crossed along the way, it would be well worth it to go back and explore more of the forest and reserve on some future weekend. Maybe we will yet find the pit-o-doom.

In other news yesterday I had a visit from the Rural Fire Inspector, and she gave me a licence to BURN! Hahahaha! For the next year, no less! Hopefully this weekend the weather conditions will be right and we will destroy that gorse pile. You can be sure we will get photos of that!

So, the side yard between the kennel and the house has slowly been getting muddier. With winter coming on the sun no longer hits much of the ground there, and the wet weather has produced an ever-growing mud-bog. So Tuesday we had 3 cubic meters (about 6 tons or so) of gravel dumped into the bog. I am now spreading it out, and carting bucket-loads to some of the other potholes around the place. It is amazing how quickly it is all getting used up! But until the mud swallows it all down, we have a dry and llevel side yard again.

At some point we may need another big load of gravel to deal with some of the gates that have gotten “scooped out” by having stock standing by them all the time. Have to talk to someone who is expect in the secrets of fillling holes. And we may need a front-end loader to drive the material into position.

This weekend was an entertainment whirlwind. On Saturday we hosted the Two Sisters Cast&Crew party. We had no idea how many people would show up, guessing 10-40, so we got enough food for about 20. In total 15 people showed up… BUT they brought enough food for another 20-25 people. After stuffing ourselves silly we still ended up with a fridge full of food. Today I do creative repacking in the fridge and freezer, but I know that sausages are going to be a dinnertime staple for some weeks to come.

In the “The World is THIS SMALL” department: that evening we were listening to Broadside Electric as nice background music. Liz commented how the music remindered her of another American Folk band, one whose lead singer had been visitng them just a few months ago. But you know, we had probably never heard of (wait for it!) Einsteins Little Homonculus. (For those of you how don’t know, Broadside and ELH are friends with other, and have played together in Boston/Philadelpia crossover tours. Tam went to college with many of the orginal members of BE. Go 10,000 km, and be only 2-degrees of separation away from Club Passim! Weird world.

So, Sunday was our first “SCA-Day-O-Fun” with fighting, archery, and other stuff planned. The weather made fighting less than palatable, so we bagged it. Illness and real-world commitments also cut down the expected number of participats (and those that did come were force fed leftover food from Saturday). In all we had 7 people, and a great time was had. We gave the new archery target a go, and I got to use (for the first time) my new Yumi “Hubris Bow”. I found that I can pull a 78# bow more easily than when I got it 8 months ago, demonstrating the conditioning power of farm work. But after 24 shots my fingers and shoulders were complaining. I did discover that 25 meters is too short a range, as it was damaging the target (blowing chunks out of the target vinyl where the 50# bow was just punching nice little holes). At 45 meters it was an easy nice shoot. And from 80 m it was still following a nice flat tragectory. I want to give it a go at 150-200 meters, as I have never had a chance to target-shoot at that range- and that was the whole reason I got such an overkill bow! Plus an 80# bow is about an average “war bow” from midaevel times, so it is interesting to get a feel for what such weapons were like.

Tam and Jennifer spent much of the day working on Heraldry-things, gently proding me along towards getting a name and device registered.