Well, this has been an interesting month!
Early in the month I was worried about all the standing grass in the orchard, so got the Slopemowing man out with his radio-controlled beast to cut it all.
Thank goodness I got Xaver out when I did, because now that type of machine activity has been banned until we have some rain. We have had 13mm of rain in over two months. It is very dry, and humidity is very low - about 36%.
Many of you may know that we had wildfires burning in the Nelson area from 4 February onwards. However, our property is fine. The fire danger for the Pigeon Valley fire passed for us on the second night, really, when the fire covered 20k in one night (over halfway to us). That was alarming, and we were ready to evacuate (first photo is on the first day from Nelson, from the Stuff website).
A colleague of mine (in the next door ofice) lost his cottage in the fire... and all his outbuildings, farm machinery, fences and roads. They got their stock out, and the main house was OK, though he and his wife are pretty shaken by the experience. Much less dramatic for me: for five days the Subaru was parked outside the front door, because the garage door won't open if power is knocked out by flames. I filled it with precious things like Jan's viola, hard-drives, clothes that can't easily be replaced such as our wedding clothes, original artwork, shoes, tools, food, water and dog supplies. Ready to go at a moment's notice. There has been a lot of smoke which has made for some interesting photos.
Luckily, I have been a mover and shaker for digitisation so all family photos from the late 1800s onwards have been scanned, and are in the cloud, along with all family documents. I store all business files electronically, and my computer is backed up weekly with backups are stored off site. That represents a huge pile of stuff that does not need to be moved. Amazing how that simplifies things.
Each morning I got up, showered, cleaned my teeth, then bundled up my bedding, and put that and my toothbrush in the car. I fed the dogs and put their bowls in. All I needed to do was grab the dogs and keys and go if the word was given to evacuate. The neighbours down the road were going to evacuate to Motueka, where their Mum lived. They had generously invited me to go there as well (and I could take the dogs, as Hugh would have his farm dogs there too). It also meant that we didn't have to cross the fire front, which I would have had to have done if I were to head into Nelson.
However, since the second night the fire retreated from this end, instead pushing out the southern and eastern boundary into Wakefield and towards Wai Iti. The entire village of Wakefield was evac'd, with traffic being re-routed through the Kohatu Valley via Dovedale or Motueka. So by the 9th of February I started thinking about unpacking the car, and finally did so. We have a fire fighter who lives in the valley and we had a get-together one evening. I checked with him before unpacking as he said we would now get a full 24 hours warning if we needed to evacuate.
The wind stayed steady, so now that fire is under control. They are still working on putting it out (all the trees have to be felled and the root balls dug out to be sure it has stopped burning underground).
Of course, the region is still so dry that fire danger has been extreme, and there have been a few cases of idiots lighting fires to see what might happen. There was another fire outside the fire area, and closer to us, but the teams were onto it really quickly, and despite very strong winds, the fire was out by the next morning. Evacuees from that fire were allowed home by the end of the second day.
I was talking to a landscaper about what to plant on a slope in front of our house, and he suggested grasses, but I was considering flax, because it brings the tui in (and we already have flax by the garage). I heard an interview with one of the locals who thought they had lost their house - but didn't - that they had gone to a fire safety course where they had been told to plant flax: they are very hard to burn, and were one of the things that helped to save the house. This was later written up into an article here, with a list of safer plants here.
The day the fire started, the plumber came out to fix the hot water system, and to stop the 500 litres of water that was bucketing out onto the roof each day (thank goodness he was able to come that day: he lives in Pigeon Valley and drove past the fire as it was just starting). So that is all going OK now. He came back a couple of weeks ago to replace the seals in our pump, because the pump we had installed had all been recalled several years ago. We obviously got missed out. The seals he pulled out were not in a good state, and the day he came to replace them, it had just started to go, with quarter of a bucket of water having leaked underneath it. I saved what was left of the seals to show Jan when he gets home. We were lucky.
I mentioned digitisation earlier: I was doing a PC back up early this month when my external backup failed due to my PC HDD crashing. It brought down my backup as well as the PC (luckily, I have several backups so I only lost a maximum of a week's worth of data in some areas, as I have synchronised cloud storage for some things). So after 7 years I have had to get a new PC built, and have had to upgrade from a very stable Windows platform (Windows 7) to one I like much less <sigh>. I was limping along on an old laptop - which I had been planning to replace this year - with sticky keyboard keys, too small a harddrive and limited battery for two weeks while the new build was being done. However, now I have most things set up and am back working well again. I am still finding software that won't work, though, having to find new solutions. But having three screens is lovely!
With Jan away I have had to do some investing in new tools to do things like changing light bulbs. So I have got a nice set of high steps with a pocket at the top to put things in. While this is far too tall to fit in any of my kitchen cupboards, it does go nicely in the hot cupboard.
Lovely hot days, though you can see the rain bypassing Nelson in the distance with the rain clouds all on the Marlborough side of the Richmond Ranges.
I am walking the dogs in the evening and early mornings when it is cooler, though the temperatures are starting to fall to more 'normal' New Zealand summer levels. It is 10am here as I am writing, and 27 degrees (but the low humidity makes it quite pleasant).
I have been enjoying the sun from time to time though, listening to my iPod, wearing a big hat to avoid sunburn - all on the 'new' outdoor furniture :-)
Teaching has started for me, with the first week done. The next three weeks will be manic before it all settles down and students get underway with their projects, but after that it should be easier. While I have an all new team, all but one of the team are experienced supervisors from previous papers, so that helps. I also have had a lot of industry interest, so there are quite a few internships running, for which I have an internship supervisor for all the liaison. She will be a real plus!
Jan continues to freeze his butt off and work long hours in the wop-wops in Grayling MI.
He is coming back to NZ mid-March, which will be good (but not for long enough, of course, before returning to the snow-mines in North America at the end of March). I won't see him again until 'sometime' in May: we are hoping that perhaps we might be able to meet in Toronto. However, as he has no date yet for his next time off, which means I am unlikely to be able to organise cover in time for NMIT and AUT, which is a great big pain in the marital relationship. Hopefully we will know soon enough to do something about it...!
Next month Warren is coming to stay, my sister is coming to stay, I think Justine is coming to stay (but don't know dates yet), and, as mentioned, Jan is coming back for a fortnight. It will be a busy month, and hopefully without any burning!
Sam
