Daily Prompt: Eat, Drink, and Be Merry… | The Daily Post

Posted on 19 December 2013 by SJPONeill

Photographers, artists, poets: show us DINNER via Daily Prompt: Eat, Drink, and Be Merry… | The Daily Post.

Random dinners…some flash, others expedient…

Fish cakes, corn fritters and poached eggs

Sausage and eggs of cheese toasties

Meatloaf and veges

Baked omelette

Bangers and mash

Not sure in Brussels

Can’t remember in Brussels

Steak @ Chez Vincent

Vegetarian gadogado

Gadogado and Sausages

Salmon and curried kumara fritters

Crushed coconut chicken on rice

The week in review

Posted on 18 December 2013 by SJPONeill

Well, all in all, it;s been a pretty challenging week apart but at least the weather has been summery…

We use an old drop-saw to chop firewood up to about 5-6″ in diameter into fireplace-friendly lengths…it is actually a very efficient and effective way of doing it as you can use one hand to raise and lower the saw while using the other to control the wood…after many years of faithful service and right in the middle of a job, it gave up the ghost. I think that it is the bearings and probably not a big job to repair (by someone with the right tools that knows what they are doing) but until I can afford that, I have reverted back to using a hand saw to slice and dice wood for next winter…

It is actually not quite as bad as one might think and I find cutting wood by hand quite satisfying. I do have a bow-saw but I find that the best saw for the job so far seems to be a stock standard pruning saw that rips its way through anything including quite hefty manuka branches…

Then, right in the middle of a job, Mr Mulcher just gave up the ghost…on stripping it down, I found that the problem was that the screws that hold the engine to the chassis have worked loose and two of the four had already vacated the premised with a third bent in place after catching the edge of the chipping blade mount. Normally this would be another quite quick fix…except…that the flywheel is rusted onto the crankshaft and can not be removed so any repair has to be an indirect route. What I think has happened is that the last guy that tried to remove the flywheel has loosened the engine mounts and not retightened them after giving up on it – that was over a year ago and only a guess on my part so not much that we can do about that.

I am hoping that it may be possible to either get a shorter bolt into the gap between the flywheel and the chassis; or that it may be possible to drill a whole through the flywheel thought which new bolts can be inserted – not sure what this might do to the flywheel balance thought…In the meantime, I have all this mulchable material mounting up and have had to designate this area by the main gate as the disposal area for that which would have been mulched. The little maple in the foreground has been relocated to make room for the trailer – it never really liked it much there anyway – and this was an area that needed filling at some stage anyway…

What is annoying though is the loss of mulch at this time of year as it is damn useful for putting on the garden to reduce water loss…

…and I have been doing a lot of clearing this week, my summer project being to clear a metre wide clear area on both sides of the fence around the house to prevent the bush consuming the fence…

I thought that I had better mow the front lawns before they got onto of me but I got halfway up the main drove before one of the belts that drive the blades died…great!!!! It never rains…

I have started to clear some of this waste land down the driveway past where the woodpile was…it gets a lot of sun while still being relatively sheltered and I am hoping to transfer some of our vegetable production down here…

Phase one has been shifting some of the self-seeded zucchini from the box garden before they take it over…They seem to be doing OK here and now have some of the remaining mulch over the soil to hold in the water…

The terracotta containers we got for a song from the Te Kuiti Warewhare have finally died……but I think that this long-suffering little maple will be a lot happier actually in the ground by the rock garden…the crimson leaves are a nice offset to all the shades of green…

And after much procrastination and waiting for the ‘right day’, I finally dragged this from here:So that I can continue to reorganise the punga trunks and backfilling behind them (which is whether the mulcher is so damn useful!). By next summer, this area should be pacified, possibly with a pond fed by the drain from the driveway in the immediate foreground…

And to wrap it all up last night, I swept the drive of all the accumulated detritus from the week’s work…with that done and the lawn’s all mown, this place looks pretty choice…

Weekly Photo Challenge: Inside | The Daily Post

Posted on 22 November 2013 by SJPONeill

Inside the box…these are a bit hard to find so I was a bit miffed to learn that the reason that it had been all sealed up inside a plastic bag was to conceal that one of the wings was missing…

Hidden away inside the bush… Inside the prototype Concorde…

What builds up inside the mulcher…actually this only started to happen when we shifted to a new servicer and stopped when we (finally) moved to another…

The ‘nice’ lounge lights inside our home when we moved in…

Inside a very cool shop in Brussels…

…a good day to be inside…

via Weekly Photo Challenge: Inside | The Daily Post.

Weekly Photo Challenge: Layers | The Daily Post

Posted on 20 November 2013 by SJPONeill

Weekly Photo Challenge: Layers | The Daily Post. Layers. Layers can reveal, conceal, and make something more complex. They can vary in size, texture, color, or functionality. Each layer can have its own story, meaning, or purpose. They can overlap, blend, or be distinctly separate. A layer doesn’t have to be a part of a single object but can even be a slice of a multifaceted image or scene. In a new post specifically for this challenge, share a photo which means LAYERS to you!

I don’t know if anyone else uses the term but I use ‘Shrek’s Onion‘ frequently as an analogy for the necessary process in a lessons learned or continuous improvement system to peel away the layers of opinion, policy, agenda, fog of war, inadequate training, etc etc to reveal the core issue that needs to mitigated to address the original OIL (observation, issue, lesson). It’s been so long since I actually watched the original Shrek movie before it got all franchised up that I can not actually remember the context in which the onion appears in the movie, or even if it actually does or whether it is just something that I extrapolated from something in the movie…

I felt though that I could do something a bit more than an onion for this challenge and kept an eye out when I had to drive over to Whakapapa on Saturday to look into a possible part-time position at the Department of Conservation Visitor Centre at the base of the Mountain.

It was an overcast day and my first thought was of a sequence depicting below, through and above the cloud layer…

I set off up the road from Whakapapa Village hoping that the cloud would be low enough for the desired effect…

…unfortunately it was not to be and I probably would have climb (on foot) another thousand odd feet to get above the cloud…

…but I did not the significant layering that is a result of the numerous volcanic eruptions over the last couple of thousand years… …and on the drive back…

…I was able to get a more micro look at this geographic layering in the big cutting just up the road…
…not being a geologist, I’m assuming that the rockier layers align with some of the bigger eruptions…

…with more recent accumulation along the top layer…

…and looking back north down the hill towards the village…

Daily Prompt: Life Line | The Daily Post

Posted on 19 November 2013 by SJPONeill

You’re on a long flight, and a palm reader sitting next to you insists she reads your palm. You hesitate, but agree. What does she tell you?

Photographers, artists, poets: show us HANDS.

I went to see a palm reader once – cost me about $30 and at the time I thought she was pretty on to it but as I learned more about such things, I came to the conclusion that she was just a good artist and the truths she came up with were not much more than a game of probabilities and reading ‘tells’ – she was probably a pretty damn good poker player too…

To follow the cue I took from Caron’s post I, Robot or, “Danger, Will Robinson! “Exterminate! EXTERMINATE!) in my post “…the scariest things ever…”, I needed some hand pictures…

I also found….

…no hands…

…helping hands…and that…

…many hands make light work…

via Daily Prompt: Life Line | The Daily Post.

Daily Prompt: Toy Story | The Daily Post

Posted on 18 November 2013 by SJPONeill

What was your favorite plaything as a child? Do you see any connection between your life now, and your favorite childhood toy?

Photographers, artists, poets: show us MEMENTO.

The prompt above was quite timely as I was already thinking on a post along these lines after reading Caron’s post last month Odd Things I Own #1…

This is the study…

…it lives at the top of the stairs…

…it’s full of books so you can guess I like books…many of these books are old friends that I either read or had as a child (some were lost along the journey so I have replaced them)…

The big ship on the top shelf has a chequered history…it started life in a model shop opposite Far East Plaza and a mate of mine brought as he was going through a phase of wanting to own the biggest of each sort of plastic model e.g. biggest tank, biggest ship, etc. I’m not sure if he got as far as the biggest aircraft but he had the biggest tank, a 1/16 King Tiger. I remember we all sat around the barracks courtyard for a morning helping him link up the steel tracks and once it was running, he could spin it up and the tracks would chip the tiles on the floor…

The ship was only acquired as we packed to come home in 1989 and he paid some guy in Palmerston North $600 to make an (at best) average job of building it (I would have done it for the cost of materials!). This guy was also into sports cars and bought a Corvette when we got back to New Zealand – the ’73 shape – but it needed so much maintenance so that there was no vibration that might crack the fibreglass body that he had to sell the Yamato on. One of our company commanders bought it for some hundreds of $ for his son but when his wife commented “He’s only 2, idiot!“, it feel into my hands for a lot less than either of its previous owners paid for it…

It was remote controlled – it used to terrorise the sailing boats in the Esplanade before I acquired it – but I ripped all that gear out and sold it when we moved here and my intention is still to restore it as a static model – one day – but in the meantime, it remains up high away from little fingers and performing a valuable function keeping dust off the shelf…

…it is also home to my funny hat collection (you can only see some of them here) – over to you whether they are funny hats or it is a funny collection……and many of the figurines and models I have collected…most are not worth much except to me…I remember this Renwal Skysweeper from advertisements in magazines when I was really little but it has never been rereleased so tracking it down was a mission: I now have this built one that I found in Foxton of all places and another unbuilt in the my stash…the Batman figure was with the inaugural (and thus enticingly less expensive) issue of a super-heroes magazine…where possible and where the subject matter grabs me, I like to buy just the first issue, just for the figure or model…

…in the case of these guys, I so liked the inaugural Hawker Hurricane, I subscribed to the series …I quite liked the excitement of waiting each fortnight to see what the next one would be but after a year I went off them because there were too many missed issues, the scales varied between 1/72 and 1/100, and there was consistent damage to the models at the packing end…

This is a Dinky USS Enterprise…I never even knew that Dinky made an Enterprise – I thought I would have as the rich kid up the road from us had most of the Dinky models – until I saw this sitting in a gaming shop in Vancouver for the princely sum of $10: the shuttle is missing (it would normally live in the at the bottom of the nacelle where you can see one of the open bay doors) and the disk missile launcher needs work (and disks) but I think it’s pretty cool. Alongside is a special piece, a Micro Machines X-Wing…it is special because my wife (who is not that into such things) bought it for me on a whim one day…Up here is a Hasbro Star Wars ship…what Google tells me is Dash Rendar’s Outrider…I found this in a great junk shop in Florida just down the road from Eglin AFB and barely managed to squeeze it into my bag for the long unwind home…it has lots of moving parts but no pilot – certainly no Dash Rendar whomever he might be? – but it strike as I type that I very well may have a suitable figure in one of the actions toys I bought while living in Singapore. The book that the Outrider is sitting on is a 1947 New Zealand telephone book – one country, one book! – that the kids got me for Father’s Day in 2007 or 2008…it is treasured not only for its age and rarity (who keeps old phone books?) but also because it has a listing for my grandfather’s farm at Ngapara in North Otago…sadly this book was stolen when the house was broken into during one of my periods working overseas…

…and, courtesy of my Mum, who has kept and stored so much of our childhood books and toys, this collection which still languishes in a wardrobe…mainly Matchbox, with a smattering of Dinky, Britains, Tonka, and Corgi toys, all eagerly awaiting the day that they will be dusted off, repaired where necessary, and displayed in the light of day once more…

Until such time though, I think that I can offer them more dignified accommodation than this box and will rummage around to see what I can come up with…

via Daily Prompt: Toy Story | The Daily Post.

Weekly Photo Challenge: Habit | The Daily Post

Posted on 16 November 2013 by SJPONeill

This week, show us something that’s a HABIT. We look forward to the glimpses into your everyday.

That don’t call these challenges challenges for nothing and I had to think into this one for a week or so about my habits (as opposed to quirks and eccentricities which are, of course, totally different!)

I did identify that, although it is well into summery weather here, I am still in the habit of putting the ‘lectric blanket on an hour or so before bedtime – not because it is particularly cold here at night but because I just love the feel of a the hot mattress on my back as I slip between the sheets…

We had a drought earlier this year – three months with no rain – and we only got by at home because we put an extra water tank in a couple of years ago. Even so, we were glad when we finally got some decently rain in April and heard the steady gurgle of tanks refilling. Once it became clear that this drought thing might last for a while, we started to be a lot more aware of our water consumption and I reverted back into old jungle habits of re-using water as much as possible, especially that water normally wasted running a tap waiting for hot water to come through, and when rinsing pots and other containers after use.

Rather than buy ready-to-eat yoghurt, we make our own from packets that have a much better shelf life and which also provide more yoghurt per $. Even the hot water used to activate the process doesn’t go to waste…it’s about a litre…

…than can be poured onto one of the developing plants (L-R: chestnuts, raspberry, kaffir lime and pohutakawa)on the deck outside the front door…

DSCF7348

…or, with a slightly longer trek, irrigate the box garden opposite the garage which seems to be self-planting as seeds left from last summer start to germinate around the broad beans and others planted this year… DSCF7349

The twenty metre journey each way to the box garden all adds up over a day, a week, a month, into regular exercise, even with only a couple of litres per trip…so in addition to the water conservation, this is probably a good habit to stick with…?

via Weekly Photo Challenge: Habit | The Daily Post.

Daily Prompt: Standout | The Daily Post

Posted on 14 November 2013 by SJPONeill

When was the last time you really stood out in a crowd? Are you comfortable in that position, or do you wish you could fade into the woodwork?

Photographers, artists, poets: show us STANDOUT.

These guys have some pretty impressive camouflage for moths but it only works when they stay on their patch and don’t come swarming around the house at night where a. the camo doesn’t work anymore and b. there is a great big Lulu dog who just loves to snap things out of the air…the month or so when these things are prevalent is Lulu heaven…

Lulu (Left) and Kirk (not interested in hunting things) getting cuddles

via Daily Prompt: Standout | The Daily Post.

Daily Prompt: Mid-Season Replacement | The Daily Post

Posted on 15 October 2013 by SJPONeill

For many of us the seasons are changing, bouncing unpredictably between cold and warm. Are you glad to be moving into a new season, or wishing for one more week of the old?

Photographers, artists, poets: show us SEASONS.

via Daily Prompt: Mid-Season Replacement | The Daily Post.

Although autumn (fall to those than shunned the Empire) usually hits quite late in the year, we always has three or four months of winter where the garden is a bit of a wasteland…in nine years we still haven’t figured out what the trigger is, or even if there is one, but some time in October or November, there is an explosion of color across the ‘wasteland’, heralding the change of seasons…

The one sure sign that winter is over is when the ponga shoots start to extend into the light…usually we wouldn’t expect to see this until late November or even early December but this week they all lit off together.

This is our citrus triumph – a little kaffir lime that not only has survived nine winters on the Mountain but which also produces some fruit each year. It probably wouldn’t be bigger but it has had a few knock-backs over the years…unseasonal snow or frost, sometimes just not being good enough with the frost cloth.

The scorched earth area in the background is an area still under development that we’re still deciding what to do with. It will probably be a pathway up to the boundary fence through a developing ponga grove…

Mr Maple’s a bit slow off the mark this year but in a few weeks should be a blaze of crimson. You can see why the terra planter (it’s mate has gone the same way too) was such a good deal a few years back…the walls are simply too thin to take the internal weight of soil and tree. A summer project will be to build some more robust wooden planters to replace these ones….might have to get these guys in to give me a hand…