}

Sunday, March 22, 2015

Pleasant autumn weekend

We had a quiet weekend this week—we didn’t really do much, just relaxed. Everyone needs a weekend like that every now and then, and we had a very pleasant one.

At this point in autumn, temperatures are starting to cool, there’s a bit more cloud and rain around again, and the mornings are very dark. We go back to New Zealand Standard Time (NZST) two weeks from today, and by then it’ll be dark until after 7am—well, 6am after the clocks change. But, then, it’ll be dark earlier in the evening as the days continue to shorten until the shortest day of the year on the June Solstice.

All of that still seems far away right now, with usually pleasantly warm days, like today (it was around 27 at our house today, about 81F, with a cool breeze). For a little while this afternoon, I sat in my chair in the lounge with the deck doors open and just enjoyed the sunny, warm, peaceful, and (mostly) quiet afternoon.

Looking out the doors, though, meant looking at the gardens and how much work I have to do. Would be helpful if I was actually good at it, or, at least, really keen, wouldn’t it? At any rate, even I can see what needs to be done.

I’m a bit worried about one of our two olive trees (photo up top), which has been losing leaves and thinning out. I’ve never seen new leaves grow on a branch when it loses leaves, so it’s a concern.

This is ironic, because last year I blogged about how our trees were starting to produce more olives, after mocking the tiny harvest the year before. This year, I don’t actually remember seeing any blooms on the trees, though maybe I just didn't notice them because it happens every year—well, it used to, anyway.

On the other hand, I noticed that the rosemary I originally planted to keep Jake from jumping up on a part of the garden retaining wall is now well and truly overgrown and needs to be drastically cut back or even replaced. Maybe I’ll take some cuttings first so I can get some “free” plants to replace them with, if necessary.

On the other hand, the rosemary is VERY healthy.
I walked around and snapped a few photos in the nice afternoon. I don’t take and share enough photos, I don’t think. So, this post has some visuals of some of my day today.

It was a nice day, and a nice weekend.

The view of bush from part of our deck. In the middle of Auckland. Nice!

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