Fun in the Sun!!

The weather is not the reason we moved to Nelson... but it certainly helps!

Here's a typical day in the Wonderful World of the Whitakers...

B got up early and walked the dog (still with his lamp-shade on unfortunately!) around the leafy streets of Nelson. I got up a little later and had a nice long bike ride up into the mountains around Nelson and listened to many of our favourite birds sing as I wound through the forest for hours. I got back home, showered (I was literally drowning in sweat!) before heading to the bike shop of the guy who sponsors me - he services my bikes for free and is a good guy to know when getting gear. B did a bit of shopping in town - buying bits and bobs for Xmas before we head over seas next week. I headed to school and cleared out the forest of tomatoes that were growing in the hort yard at school - the tomatoes are grown in a perspex walled shed in order to get plenty of light and to trap the warmth - it was 38.5 degrees today! I also harvested blackcurrants, carrots and loquats, which are nice, juicy orange fruit I had never heard of before http://http//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loquat Bernie and bump picked me up and we had a good yarn with a few other teachers about our various holiday plans, making plans for adventures in the new year - we're so spoilt for choice! We were then going to head to the outdoor pool again, but there was a 'code brown' the day before - somebody used the pool as a toilet so we headed to the sea instead. Below is a screenshot from Nelson's webcam which is at http://www.takeabreak.co.nz/accommodation/nelson.asp (click on the webcam icon and when it has loaded you can scroll across the page to see pics from the previous 10-12 hours) and goes a small way to show how gorgeous the sea is - we literally parked on the side of the road, walked down about 5 steps on the sea wall and jumped into the clear, warm sea: We drove home after our refreshing swim and Bernie helped me cut my hair... I kept telling her to cut all the white / silver ones, but she didn't seem to differentiate!

I now sit at the computer with a well deserved Brandy and Coke whilst Bernie bakes homemade bread in the oven... A few more jobs ticked off the long holiday-to-do-list and there are another 3 hours of sunshine to keep my bees busy! We were given 30 scallops (in exchange for some of B's delicious mince pies!) caught by a friend yesterday and will be enjoying those for dinner c'est soir!

We might go fishing off the kayak tomorrow, big Snapper have been reported throughout the bay so it would be nice to hook into those...

So, another action packed day in Nelson! Today marks the end of the 22nd week of B's pregnancy! I'm incredibly proud of the way she is walking, swimming, baking and keeping me and Bobby out of trouble. I have to fight to make her sit still some times, but she does listen to me... eventually!

Living the dream,

C&B! x x

Spring Honey!

We just had our first taste of the delicious honey our bees have been indefatigably collecting over this amazing Spring! I had taken out a frame of drone (the males which live solely to have sex with a queen - during which time their genitals get ripped off!) eggs as a natural method of controlling varoa - a mite which can cause a hive to die if left alone. The larvae were fed to the chickens and today I needed to replace the frame - in its place was a nice slab of honeycomb filled with delicious honey!

I am becoming more confident when working the bees - I must admit that they still get my heart racing, but I felt a bit panicky on my first few hive inspections. I now feel a lot calmer and take care and time, making it more enjoyable... for me not them of course!

I still haven't seen the queen, below I'm checking to see that the honey frames are capped - meaning they are full and... capped off with wax!

If only you could see all of the bees - there were a few thousand checking out what I was doing! My colony are very placid apparently (doesn't feel like it some times!) and I only get a few trying to find a way into my suit - they make a distinctive high pitch buzz when on a mission to sting!

Here's the honeycomb I robbed - after brushing off the hundred or so workers who were desperately trying to devour it during the theft!

I look drunk, I'm not! I always get really hot inside the suit... the taste of honey was sensational - a slight bitter taste to it which I really liked.

If only you could taste it...!

An extra incentive to come and visit us here!

Making hay...

Whilst the sun continually shines, we have been harvesting loads of veggies from the garden and also the school horticulture (hort) yard. My Y13 hort students grew hydroponic tomatoes (nothing else I assure you!) to sell to the public... unfortunately they only fruited after the seniors left, so I have been harvesting kilos of fruit over the past few weeks. Stir fry's and salads go some way to using the veggies, but we have both been toiling away in the kitchen experimenting with our own pickle, relish and chutney recipes... we check for a recipe on t'internet, but ignore what we find and make it up as we go along, which is much more fun!

To date we have pickled beetroot and onions, made two red tomato relishes and a green tomato chutney, using about 10 kilos of tomatoes:

Bernie likes to grow various shoots and beans for our stir fry's and salads too with the help of this funky contraption:

Further to this, I have had to buy another honey box and will shortly be spinning off two boxes worth of Spring honey from my bees. I have a new queen to introduce soon too as the current one is over the hill - I can still smell at the moment and I am putting it all down to being stung - I actually quite enjoy the buzz of being stung - no pun intended!

We're enjoying the start of our long summer holiday - we're off swimming soon in a lovely outdoor 50m pool this afternoon and I've been getting into the hills on my mountain bike - I found a cave network t'other day, deep in some native forest which was equally stunning...

Bernie is growing nicely and baby is moving around a lot still. She will be 22 weeks gone tomorrow - she will have another scan after 34 weeks due to the placenta being over the cervix in the previous scan. This is very common and usually moves as the baby grows... the worst news would mean a cesarean, but in our mid-wife's expansive experience, the baby nearly always moves it naturally over the next few weeks. We're still set on a home birth and ante-natal classes begin in late Jan which is exciting! We've been looking at names and like Adolf at the moment.

We're really excited about meeting up with Phil and Margaret in Sydney - they are still waiting for their furniture etc from the UK, but we will be out and about a lot - seeing the city, urban beaches (and surfing!), we're going to Margaret's parents for Xmas and heading down the coast for a few more days of rural beach life!

I hope all of you in the UK are enjoying the wintery feeling - listening to Xmas songs here is still bizarre, it is nice not having it rammed down your throat like it is in the UK!

Love and best wishes from C&B!

Merry Christmas!!

It definitely doesn't feel like Christmas, but that isn't stopping Bernie from baking mince pies - to her Mother's recipe of course!

Temperatures have been in the mid twenties for some time now and thoughts of stockings by the fire seem a bizarre activity to pursue despite Christmas cards here depicting the traditional images befitting a northern hemisphere celebration!

Bernie, as you can see, is doing remarkably well, and is showing remarkably well too! Young Whitaker keeps bouncing around, much to his/her mother's delight as can be seen below (recipe in hand Liz!):


Bernie isn't knocking out as many as Liz and Georgie (her Mother and Aunt respectively) do each year, but she is working single handed due to me going for a blast on my road bike with mates instead of slaving away in the kitchen - horses for courses right?!

Tomorrow is the first endurance swim - a 2km swim from the beach towards the top left of the next picture, to the point from which the picture is being taken. In Feb there is a swim from the same beach, around the island to the right and all the way back to the far beach - 3.8km!

The garden is churning out more spinach, lettuce and Pak Choi than we can consume. Beetroot has been pickled, peas, tomatoes, rhubarb, broccoli, cauliflower etc etc all coming through too in various waves... I've still got a long way to go to match the steady stream my father produces, but I'm getting there slowly!

Poor old Bobby had a freak accident - so freaky nobody knows what happened! He ended up with a couple of dozen stitches and an inevitable scar - we think he wants to shake off the reputation his boyish good looks has earned him in the neighbourhood!

Just to add insult to injury, he has had 4 days recuperating inside and was taken for a check-up today, only to be rewarded with a lampshade to impede his ability to move around... the hyperactive behaviour has been replaced by an inability to move more than 6 inches without getting caught on a piece of furniture!:

You can tell that Bobby-Dazzler (as uncle Mike calls him!) is having a great run-up to Christmas!

We have 3 days of lessons next week, followed by a prize giving morning, followed by a drunken golf session, followed by a drunken leaving speeches / BBQ day.... then school's out for seven weeks of summer!!

As if we aren't enjoying enough sun, sea and summer fun, we're off to Sydney in two weeks time - we fly from Christchurch so it will be interesting to see the destruction down there first... we are staying with the friend who seems to be the only person who was unaffected by any of the quakes... which are still occuring!

Love and festive cheers to all family and friends - we hope that you have an awesome Christmas... we'll try to remember to update this from Sydney but if not have a great time! We're both sorry to be so far away from most of you... you'll all just have to make sure you come and visit soon!

Love from Chris Bernie (and bump) and Bobby-Dazzler X X x X