Birthday excitement

It's going to be a lazy today in honour of my birthday. It will be minimal chores and hopefully time doing things that I wouldn't normally do.

Although our morning routine didn't change that much I did manage to open my pressies before having to get the boys up for their ablusions and breakfast. It was a bit of a struggle though as they were rather enjoying playing with the paper from the present they'd bought me - a striking possum beanie hat and pair of gloves.

It's never easy basset photoblogging but here's my best efforts!

Opphs, not quick enough to get both in shot!

Hmm, at least two boys in shot although Mason was heading for closer look at the camera!

Residential definition

It's been months since I started my search for a fencer and after a couple of false starts with two people I finally found a fencing contractor that would come to take our hard earned cash.

Hugh and his mate finally turned up a week late but in a few short hours they've reinstated the deer fencing from the side of the house up the drive, put in the posts for the new gate and created a door through the fence to the soon to be chicken run.

It's amazing how a bit of fencing can give such definition to an area. It is of course not just aesthetic benefit when complete the house area will be secure for Bassets to roam a little more at their will.

They've loved having the fencers on site. New feet to get under, smells to sniff and something other than me to stare at from the veranda. Little do they know that it's these entertainers that are to contain their wanderings which I am sure they won't like at all!

More work to be done but here's some interim photoblogging for you to enjoy!

Bassetblogging: a new indoor arena

It's been a long time in coming but we've finally sorted out an indoor play arena for our pampered pooches to enjoy when the rain comes down.

After much headscratching and design work by our respective father's I decided to take an easy construction route to partioning off part of our barn for Fortnum and Mason to play in. We made use of two old gates - one we had and one I scrounged off my neighbour Jim.

We've now got a solid and secure area for the boys to go instead of them getting cramp from sitting in their dog house when it rains.

They had their first outing in their today and suffice to say they are not really that keen. There was lots of new smells and although they could see out and I left the barn doors open for them they were decidedly not sure about being caged in.

I'm sure they'll get used to it and in time will come to appreciate the enormous effort and thought gone into getting them somewhere new to potter around. Admittedly it looks a bit sparten at the moment - a couple of mats and a bit of carpet but I'm sure when they put up their posters, bring out their soft toys and let their bones lying around it will be just like things are in the family room in the house!

"Really not sure about the view from here"

"Let's see if I lie down I might see an escape route?"

"Perhaps if we spread out it won't seem so empty?"

Morning chills

We've been getting lots of dew for weeks but gradually it's been getting chillier and chillier overnight and it's only a matter of time before we a ground frost to contend with.

With the dip in temperature and torrential rain this weekend we've been making use of our central heating and also got the wood burner on the go. The beauty of burning the wood is that as well as heating the house we are also heating the water and have had lashings of boiling water as a free bi-product. It's this winter water heating feature that when combined with the solar for the sunny days it makes you feel much better about how you're using the planet's resources.

The mornings are full of mist and mellow light. It's quite something to see the changing weather as I do the commuter run or simply pottering around outside with the dogs.

They were dead pleased it was 2 degrees on the roof today as this set the tone for whether I'd make them go out in the pen or whether they were allowed back in the house for their post breakfast snooze. As you might imagined our spoiled bassets are now snoozing in their duvet beds in the utlity rooom!

Basset blogging: breakout again!

The danger of running a puppy bootcamp is that you need a totally secure and contained area in which to keep the puppies when one is on the parade ground going through their paces.

Our puppy pen has served us well over the last four months with only one breach of security when Fortnum realised that if he pushed hard enough at the bottom of the gate he'd be able to get out!

Now we tied the bottom of the gate together making the pen secure again. Or so we thought.

Today I was up at the top of the drive trying to persuade Mason to walk nicely by me. I was still in sight of the pen when all of a sudden Fortnum's barking stopped. Always a suspicious sign. And lo and behold when I looked there was Fortnum bounding up the drive with his ears flapping and a smile to die for.

I knew as soon as I saw him that his breakout capabilities were again brute force but this time simply jumping, leaning and putting as much weight on the gate panel had led to it splitting to a low enough level for him to leap over the top to freedom.

Fortuantly we have some matching coloured rope - bright orange - and with some weaving I've managed to not just repair the rip but also strengthen the panel such that it will take quite a bit more jumping and leaning to break through the nylon rope.

Who knows how long it will be before he finds another way to breakout. Hopefully the fencer will turn up as promised tomorrow and we'll get their pen in the barn sorted out so that they will be more secure with steel gates to keep them penned in.

With the breakout adventure and two lots of visitors today they had a ball. Even if they did scare the children and drag MT's friend along when we took a stroll around the land. The only bonus was that they settled down early at my feet under my desk and had to be put to bed in a sleepy haze. If only they could be that cute all of the time!

Baking mania

This weekend we're having a social fest - we've got two sets of friends visiting. Not only is this momentus because this indicates we have a kiwi social life but it marks another moment of baking mania to provide for our guests.

So tonight I've been baking and preparing for tomorrow's brunch that will follow a walk with my girl friends and afternoon tea for a friend of MT's. I'm relying on Nigella to see me through so fingers crossed the catering will be stressfree.

It was a real joy to be pottering in the kitchen with a podcast playing on our magic radio and a glass of wine on hand to add to the evening pleasure. For such a long time I'd be imagining me baking in my big kitchen designed to please me and there I was actually doing it. How cool is that!

Now to complete the evening, I'm going to settle into the last episode of Cranford to see if anyone else is going to die or whether there might at last be a happy ending!

Nocturnal residents

For the last two nights I've had to swerve in the lane driving up to the house. This was to avoid squashing one of our country residents - a hedgehog. Fortunately it moves pretty quickly across the road so doesn't cause delay but it's still a worry to know that one day it might not be so lucky.

It's nice to know we've got new neighbours but not sure what Fortnum and Mason would make of this spiky little creature. Might be nice to coax him or her down to our land and make them an official part of the Treanor menagerie.

You can read all about hedgehogs and their habits here.

Away from almost running over a hedgehog it's been a busy week with work in town in the afternoons and preparation in the mornings to be done. Not to mention the usual round of domestic routines. I am at least getting into more of a rhythm although I don't think it's a routine that the puppies like much - early lunches and late dinners. I'm meeting with a Pet Angel soon as I there are a few full day gigs coming up which mean that I'll need to have someone to come and make lunch for the boys and make sure that they aren't fighting too much.

It's clear that if you leave them for too long on their own they start to turn feral and ignor you completely which isn't a good thing. So, it's back to puppy boot camp from tomorrow as I've got a home day planned and then we can continue to ramp up the training over the weekend.

Personal reflection - is it all it's cracked up to be?

I'm half way through my first major coaching assigment, coaching to members of a senior board on the results of their 360 degree appraisal. Its been a real eye opener to see how people have approached the session - body language has been fun to see how it evolves and what happens when I start asking them questions which challenge their thinking.

It's quite something to be independent and feeding back evidence from others. I've certainly go no agenda other than making sure that the message is heard. Some of the messages being sent are hard for some people to hear. This is made worse when they act like they are hard of hearing and I keep having to repeat the message in an an ever more persistent way until they finally get it!

There is no doubt that personal reflection is tough to do when you're being forced through an organisational process. As one of my clients pointed out "All this personal reflection is not all it's cracked up to be. I'm quite happy the way I am, it's other people need to change and get used to it!" Let's just say there was no way that person was leaving the session early for good behaviour!

I've no time for personal reflection this week - I'm motoring on Domestic Executive adrenalin fitting in all the chores, work and home cooking to put me to bed in a state of readiness for sleep!

Basset blogging: it's a hard life being a dog

Given their behaviour recently basset blogging has been in abeyance for a while. This blog is dedicated to Leonardo, a declared basset blogging fan!

Fortnum and Mason are continuing to thrive. They are growing daily and their antics never cease to amuse (well apart from then they chew furniture). They are much easier to live with as they can settle down sometimes and allow you some peace and quiet to get on with things.

They are still on their gourmet diet - cereal and milk for breakfast with homecooked lunch and dinners. It's been a battle to get them to eat commercial food but slowly they are eating it when it's mixed in with their tastier home made meals. We've cut out the snacks morning and afternoon although they are still partial to a bone to chew. It will be a relief when it can just be biscuits in the morning and a meal at night - it will reduce the amount of floor cleaning needed (they smear everything on the floor) and mean that the our lives won't require us to be on hand for midday feeding.

It's hard to believe that our little cute bundles of fluff are growing into such big dogs. They are definitely two people lifting material now to get them in the bath or the car. However, when they bed down at the end of the day (around 7.30-8pm) they are as cute as puppies - until Fortnum starts to snore!

Bassets bounding up basset alley

It's hard work all this running around!

"If I stick out my tongue do you think I'll look cuter?"

Basset bone heaven

Oooh, those legs are going to hurt

With two beautiful sunny days we set to again this weekend to see if we could reveal more of our land. The main challenge was to clear the area where the fencers are coming to build the chicken run but MT couldn't help himself to test out his mower again.

The Bassets were not best pleased to be losing yet another basset alley - a long grass area where they can run and play without being seen (or so they think, their white tipped tails are a bit of a giveaway!).

Slowly but surely we're starting to reveal more of the land but its a small dimple in the overall area. Still you've got to start somewhere and if we keep plugging away we'll get there in the end.

The conclusion after two days of strimming and mowing is that those legs are going to hurt in the morning!

Crop circles do you think?

Chicken run alley

Site of future kitchen garden

The sun dipping down behind the trees at the end of a long hot day

Domestic Executive tensions

Being a Domestic Executive is not always as simple as people might think. The dream was an idyllic lifestyle pottering around at home, doing a few chores and fitting in a spot of paid work occasionally.

Seems that the pressures to complete both Domestic and the Executive are not that dissimilar from how it's been in my past employed life. There is always more to do than there is time to do it.

Having struggled a bit in the last three weeks to get on top of my massive to do list I've decided I need a new way of tackling things. As you might expect from a list obesssive the key thing is to find a new way of organising the list to make it seem more achievable and enable you to tick more things off.

Has it worked? Partly. I've actually got through more of the list this week so it feels like more progress but it doesn't get away from the fact that the days still pass in a flash and the list gets added to each night making the list the same length as the day before.

So the plan from now is to actually get the chores done as early in the day before I sit down to work through the office work. If I don't it can be lunch time and the day is running out.

I'm also trying out a new routine for catering. Taking a leaf from Nigella's express cooking techniques I'm trying to get ahead of the arrangements so that it doesn't seem like such a rush in the evenings to feed and walk dogs, do commuter run and get a fantastic supper on the table that would be worthy of a TV series.

So bloggers it's a poor excuse for getting behind with my blog posts this week but blogging comes after washing, cleaning, office work but before ironing!

PS - I start the new blogging routine next week!

Sleeping with a rodent

Mus musculus - House Mouse

Bloggers will remember that we discovered we had a mouse a few weeks ago and I invested in some mouse traps to try and catch them. Seems it didn't work.

At around 3am this morning we were woken by our Mus Musculus who was playing in the curtains in our bedroom. We opened the door to the veranda letting in an arctic blast and then tried to get the mouse to come out and be chase out the door. All that I managed was to get him to peak boo out of the curtain stick his tongue out and say na, na, na, na na... catch me if you can!

MT thought it then rushed off (Did you know that mice can run up to 8 miles an hour? True - check it out here) under the door to the hall so I gave up being a mouse hunter in the wee hours of the morning.

Intent on finding the little rodent tonight I went to fish out the mousetrap from under the cooker and lo and behold what was there? Yes, you guessed it a not so alive mouse.

Whether this is THE mouse that kept us awake I'm not sure but I'm not taking any chances. The mousetrap will stay in the hall for a few nights yet. Hopefully if there is another it will fancy a snack of peanut butter and we'll be able to sleep in peace.

A man and his mower

Last weekend MT set to with his new lawnmower bought in the sale. It's not quite the ride on mower he dreams about but with a lawn that's refusing to grow and thistles growing on most of the land we figured it was too soon to be investing the amount of $s it would be at this stage. I think he's more inclined to get a quad bike and trailer instead so we can go off roading in the forestry!

Still, what little grass we have in the lawn felt so much better after it had the snip. Glowing in the success of that he thought a little trim elsewhere was in order. Complete with Bassets in tow he set off to mow his pasture. Fortnum and Mason were not too sure about the red, noisy moving thing (all the things that send them scuttling) but they braved it to get a bit closer to the action.

As for MT, he got a good garden workout pushing the mower through the long grass up and down the hill. Good job that the mower is designed for tough stuff as it needs to be.

Although it's only a small dent in the land it does make it much nicer to take the dogs down the garden for a potter. I'm not sure that the bassets agree as they like nothing better than running through the long grass.

This weekend we've got to get the strimmer and bush cutter in action to clear the area where the chicken pen is being built next week.

Slow progress for Mike and Andrea

It's hard to see from the outside the progress inside on Mike and Andrea's place. There aren't many white vans visiting that often so you have to wonder how much progress is being made.

From the outside some stone cladding has gone on but the main render seems conspicuous by it's absence. Having spied through the windows it seems that first fix, insulation and gib boarding is in progress but it seems a long way from becoming a habitable dwelling.

They are due to get handover at the end of May so it will be interesting to see if the white vans start multiplying soon.

View from the Pylon Loop Track

Rambling the pylon way

When we were building the house we'd often scoot up to site have a snout around and then head off for a walk on one of the trails close by. Since we've actually moved here we haven't been out walking so decided yesterday that today was the day that we were getting back into the habit.

For a change we decided to cross the state highway and take one of the Kaitoke Regional Park trails on the other side of the road. There was a choice of two - the Pylon Loop Track and Kaitoke Hill Track. We decided that the Pylon Loop sounded intriguing so set off up hill into the forestry.

After an indyllic start through the forestry we finally found the pylons across the valley that make the track name so appropriate. We headed off towards the water treatment plant in hope of spying the water resevoirs but instead found ourselves back on the Kaitoke Hill Track that was a painful reminder of the fact that what goes up must come down!

It wasn't what I'd call the most attractive of walks but it was a good way to stretch the legs and work up a sweat. Not sure that the Bassets will relish it as a walk when they're old enough to go out even though they have four paw drive to make it easier for them.

No it's not a hobbit hole but the underpass off the Kaitoke Loop under the state highway.

A bit of a more artistic pylon view

Looking down to Te Marua towards Upper Hutt

Turning the clocks back

We've been up real early this morning. The clocks went back so it was an hour earlier than our body clocks were telling us. Mental note for those of you in the northern hemisphere, this means we're now 11 hours ahead of the UK.

Still getting up early means there is more time to look at the view. Well you could if you could see it!

The mists are forming in the valley at this time of year and they create some spectacular sights as they move from thick pea soup, can't see a thing but a blanket of white to some fantastic formations as they rise and clear.

Photoblogging weather is never easy and it doesn't really give you a full sensory feeling of the damp in the air. Still, thought it was worth sharing with dedicated Domestic Executive bloggers.

Dog house blues

Our butter wouldn't melt in their mouths puppies are well and truly in the dog house. No joke.

They disgraced themselves by chewing up the new veranda furniture that MT had slaved over making over the Christmas break. Although a bit of sanding, filling and repainting will repair the majority there is no getting away from the fact that there is a bit missing from one of the chairs.

To say that they were not very popular today is an understatement so they've been banished back to their playpen and dog house and their free ranging days are over.

The chewing extravaganza followed an evening of bad behaviour when MT was in charge and I was out living it up with some friends in town. They ran away up the drive and didn't want to come back and then proceeded to fight and chew their leads making it impossible to walk them with any semblance of control. All in all it sounded awful.

If there is any admonishment it has to be mine for leaving them unsupervised to chew on the furniture. I can tell you it's a tight squeeze for three in our little dog house and with the damp and wet it's not pleasant putting up with the doggy smell.

It's not that they haven't played today - they've run riot across the lawn, bounded up and down the newly mown area in the lower area of the garden and investigated the barn during a clearing out operation. It's just that they've not been able to run around the flower beds, hoon around the house and play tag up and down the veranda. It's just not the usual level of independence they've enjoyed in recent weeks.

Whilst we can "blame" Fortnum and Mason the truth is their behaviour is the outcome of that of they carers. Their training regime has been reduced when the visitors were here and since I've been trying to catch up with all my chores they've not had the investment that they need to turn them into disciplined and well behaved pooches.

So our basset cherubs are back in intensive puppy school and banished from the house and veranda until they can behave. They were a little confused about being kept under so much control today and Fortnum was particularly sulky when he went to bed.

Pity he has no idea what awaits in the Basset Bootcamp tomorrow!

Perhaps we need some Poles?

It's been one of those frustrating weeks where I spend ages chasing up people who we'd like to pay them to do work for us. Nothing earth shattering just fencers, landscapers and the like. It seems that here in New Zealand there is simply too much work for people of this kind and nailing them down firstly to a price and then a time is proving as difficult as it used to be in the UK to get a plumber or builder, before the Polish immigrants arrived.

I'm being to experience the butt end of the kiwi skills shortage and I can tell you it's frustrating in the extreme. I also feel like I've turned into a bit of a stalker ringing to get hold of people and decided that it's not worth leaving messages as they never return the calls.

I'm going to have to tackle this another way next week if I'm going to have any hope of getting the drive finished, trees order, fencing constructed and keep my sanity. I though that moving to live in the country was going to take away the executive stress. I'm beginning to see that it's not quite as stress free as I'd imagined

Still it's the weekend and hopefully the rain will hold off long enough for us to get the new lawn mover into action.

Snogging for work

Talking to a colleague about the best techniques for winning business we strayed into the merits of snogging for business. Now before you start thinking this is a way of spicing up my blog, I'm talking about metaphorical snogging not the physical type.

It's true to need to kiss a lot of frogs before you find your prince. I've done a bit of that recently by labouring over the dreaded RFP - request for proposals in English - favoured by public bodies that have to be seen to be fair and accountable. These RFPs take an age to read (just imagine the level of Government gobbledegook there is) and when you think you've understood what they want you start to interpret it and put together the world's most fantastic solution to their problem that they are bound to leap at buying from you. Yeah right!

Let's just say you need to be selective about responding to RFPs. They so rarely deliver the rewards that the glitz of their paperwork suggests. Even when you might win the business those curly clauses in the contract always provide for them to back track and scale down the project till profitibility starts to seem away.

I'm pleased to say that I kissed a prince this week. It was a word of mouth referral to the company for leadership coaching for the top tier of a major professional services firm. How cool is that! And not an RFP in sight. Just simple clear request - one page proposal - a quick smackaroo on the cheek - and we're in business.

If only winning business was that simple all the time!

Fruit's of Bob's labour

My father in law was a determined gorse exterminator when staying with us. He'd dress up in long trousers and long sleeved shirt despite the hot weather and complete with baseball cap, gloves and mask he'd head of to the bottom of the garden with his spraying backpack on. A while later he'd trog back up the hill, refill the sprayer and set off again. He'd repeat this operation many times in his determination to attack our pesky gorse.

It has to be said that this was no round up he was using. It was the real farmers assault bio-weapon which turned the gorse a little queasy within a few days but after a couple of months it's turning from green to brown in a much more determined way. It's such a relief to know that all his hard labour is paying off - it could be a few more months before the plants start to rot away and then we'll have to start spraying the second row of gorse.

Gorse is a real bio-pest in New Zealand brought in by the British colonials to make hedges. Now we're over run with the nasty, prickly, invasive weed. We need to clear the gorse to be able to reclaim some of our land, in particular to allow the development of our kitchen garden which should enable us to start to grown our own food and live a more self-sufficient life.

Here are some pictures to show the demise of the gorse in action!