Quote for the day sent in by Sue:
“When the house of the world is dark, love will find a way to create windows”. by Rimu
Another stunning day – we certainly can to be thankful for that. End of daylight saving tonight, sure looking forward to the lighter mornings, are you?
When chatting to one of my readers yesterday, I realised I’d failed to include a link to the previous day’s comments so you can read what other people have been up to. Here is the link to Day nine, you do need to scroll down to comments section. Also you can comment on a blog/post and ask “not to be published”.
Today has been a great day
Today was full of surprises and at this stage all good. While out cycling this morning I had an epiphany of some sort relating to this blog. I realised for my creative mind to work effectively I need open space, no distractions, just me on my bike cycling along enjoying the country side, and preferably with the wind on my back. My mind is then free to go where it likes; no filtering of thoughts, new ideas popping into my consciousness, problem solving, dreaming, planning etc, the list goes on. I got excited with some of the ideas that popped up. The problem I often have is I forget to write down the ideas when I get home – and those ideas seem to disappear into outer space!! But not this morning.
I want this blog to be more than just a place where I record daily activities and reflections. One of my ideas is to introduce my residential, and non-cycling readers to country scenes around the Waikato, especially so as we are lock-down.
I’m so pleased I’m allowed to cycle and walk in our surrounding countryside, this ensures my mental health needs are being meet. How is your mental health? How do you keep yourself balanced and in sync?
Small rural business
While my mind was coming up with many ideas, this idea I thought was particularly good. Telling you about the small rural businesses I pass on my rides and stopping off to take photographs. Today’s small business is Alexander Organics, 133 Flume Road, Cambridge. They sell raw milk and are a MPI Registered Raw Milk Provider. What was really interesting was chatting to the woman in the photograph below. (I apologise for the quality of the photograph, the sun was in the wrong position, but you get the gist.)
This woman travels over from Glen Massey (approx 50 kms away) about every three weeks to buy milk for her family, her mum and her grandmother. She said “It’s the best. It deep freezes well and we love it. We always travel the back roads to here, just love the drive. We used to buy our raw milk from a place near Gordonton, but that has closed down”.
Alexander Organics also provide the reusable glass milk bottles, chilly bag and free range duck eggs. Their farm is organic and their herd is made up of mainly Dairy Shorthorn and Ayrshire with some Friesian and Jersey X cows.
While at The Shop these old milk cans also caught my eye. You have to born in a certain generation to remember them! These cans were on the left of the building.
Signs of Autumn
Another idea I had was to include a section titled “signs of autumn”. Here I’d love you to send me your photographs (along with little story about the photograph) of any “signs of autumn” you see in your garden, while out walking or in your neighbourhood. Please send the photographs to my email hdwickham@gmail.com. I’m looking forward to receiving them.
Below is my favourite ‘sign of autumn’ I saw today at Te Mire Mountain Bike Park. Last Saturday there were quite a few vehicles parked up but thankfully today I only saw two young men who had cycled over from Cambridge.
To-do lists
Only one item on my to-do list has been partly completed today, painting first coat of paint on my garage door. What have you crossed off your to-do list?
How has your day 10 gone? Anything exciting happened?
That’s it for another day, take care and stay in your bubble – GoldGold Gal 🙂
Afternoon Heather, another beautiful day to enjoy a bike ride around our area. How lucky we are to have such a delightful place to cycle around. Thank you for the photos especially the one of the milk shop, great innovation going on in this country and we will support them next time we venture out to Cambridge. My to do list has a few inside jobs but as the days are so sunny and warm they can wait until it rains while we will just enjoy being outside. Our peaceful surroundings make the lock down much easier to handle than some people who do not have the space to just be, we are extremely thankful. We do miss the family get togethers and have realised just how much we enjoyed the opportunity to be able to be together especially for dinners. I have found that I am using the tinned goodies at the back of the pantry to save family having to shop so that has been a very good thing. Enjoy this beautiful autumn not sure how to send through photos so will just enjoy yours. Thanks for taking the time to do this every day you are a gem.
Thank you ‘Carly of Tamahere’, you are always so positive and guess that is partly because you are thankful for so much! And rightly so, we are blessed! 🙂
Hello: Recently I went to supermarket for the first time since lock down. I noticed some differences::I was greeted by a security guard who told me to take my bags back to the car. I was then handed a recently cleaned trolley and told to keep my distance from other shoppers and only handle items once. There were not many in the shop. Everybody was going about their business and being very careful.I had a list that contained 30 items that was prepared by management and myself. There was room for freelance items but this must be strictly limited. (And a really good deal). The first thing I noticed was the shop selves had been changed.So the baking paper had disappeared@?. I didn’t find it: I also did not get fork handles and pies.I was unset with the latter because the local favourite: Jimmy Pies : was very much being looked forward.I also missed out on a power board which we had overloaded during a recent frosty morning. After what seemed many hours (it was one) I proceeded to check out. So you stand way way back from the friendly check out girl. You put you goods on the counter and she processes. Another places the goods in a freshly cleaned trolley. You only approach the ppe geared person/s when paying. I would normally say a few words to this person and the packer but felt this time I better not. I then left the store, thanked the hand picked security guard (excellent people manner) and proceeded to the car (essential travel) to put my supplies in three supermarket bags. I went to the new New World. It employs many new arrivals to Wanaka. In fact one bought our kayak we had for the kids. We took it to her place because she did not have a car. So today it’s Sunday so a day of rest@! Tomorrow I will trim the trees. Particularly the ‘vanilla’ tree (Azara microphylla; Googles good) and the beloved will go back to the virtual world. The trees are not too bad but with the vanilla tree we agreed with the neighbours to keep lower: it can grew to 6 metres: so it doesn’t shade their backyard. Our other 3 neighbour, on our side of the street, are from Dunedin and Ashburton and only appear 3/4 times a year.This afternoon we are catching up with no.1 son and family in Australia. Until then : I-Solution Wanaka 😊
Great to get your news “I-Solution” from Wanaka. Your supermarket shopping sounds far more controlled than my experience at New World, guess they’re trying to do their best. It is frustrating when shop shelves have been changed!! Guess that is the only thing constant these days – “change”. Hi to the ‘management’. 🙂
Hello Heather,
I do enjoy reading your blog, it sort of makes up for my lack of communication 😂
I show Lize all the pics of the different variety of flowers that you’ve posted.
I am currently fishing every Saturday off the rocks with Raj & Bucko. Lucky we take Raj cos he catches the fish while Bucko and I are there to feed them. I’ll send you some photos.
Will try and give you a bell tonight.
Be safe
Stay healthy
Thank you Rafer of Byron Bay. You could send some photos of your fish! Look forward to chatting soon. Luv n hugs 🙂
Interesting read to get up to this morning Heather.
As you know Cynthia is a night person and I am early morning.
Your musings reminded me of when Brendan was sick and I would get up in morning with nobody to unload too. So I would write an update to our families–often with tears flowing down my face –but felt better after it.
Certainly still if there is office work to do, I need to get on with it in the morning, rather than disappearing out the farm.
Highlight for us yesterday was an afternoon outing.
Friends take strawberries to the market, which is very sick at present, and so brought home a ute load of fruit and vege,s for staff and we got the leftovers.
For $100 we got box of banana,s 20 punnets Tommy tomatoe,s, oranges ,apples and kumaru.
This we were able to distribute to half a dozen friends and grateful people.
This morning the cows don,t know the clock has changed-nor does my body clock–so off for a drive to shed as usual
love Geoff
Thank Geoff. And thank you for sharing some painful memories. Have a great day down in Levin. 🙂
I really look forward to finishing my day reading your column. I was thinking today that i could do something similar, but with training my horse..Do a weekly session on what o wanted to achieve and how i was going to achieve it. It would have to be short video clips of my training sessions. How do.you go about setting up something like this?
Thank you Floss of Taranaki! Sounds great idea, you need a domain name and then set up a blog/website. 🙂