DOUG'S WINDMILL

Doug built this windmill from scratch when he moved here.  It is fully functioning and can be turned into or out of the wind.

Here are some photos with me to give an idea of size.  I am 5' 6" tall.

When our nearly 4 year old great-grand daughter visited on Thursday the first thing she had to do was check if anyone was inside (Note the door and windows).

CARTOON

This is the cartoon from our local paper yesterday.  For those who don't know her Jacinda Ardern is our New Zealand Prime Minister and is currently in Europe.  She has just had a meeting with Theresa May about Trade after Brexit.

Our view

Yesterday when I posted photos of our Sunflowers and the huge cosmos At Rivercrest Cottage commented that it was nice to look out and see green so I thought I would take some photos of the view from the front of the house.  The houses on our side of the road are higher than those on the other side so we look out over them.  Admittedly, we do look across at the houses but I enjoy the greenery.

It has been cooler for the last few days but is forecast to go back to 27 and 28 degrees for the rest of the week with the possibility of some  much needed light rain on Saturday.  I  wont hold my breath though.

SUNFLOWERS AND COSMOS

Last year I grew some sunflowers from seed obtained in a promotion from New World Supermarket.  I collected some seed but planted it fairly late this year because of a cold snap.  They are flowering well (more are behind the cosmos).

The cosmos, on the other hand, we bought as seedlings.  The one on the left has behaved as we expected - not grown too big and has flowered.  We are not sure what is going on with the others - they just keep on growing and, so far, not one flower. They are taller than me and take over most of the flower bed.  I can just see some small buds forming so hopefully there will soon be some flowers.

AN APPLE FOR A TOMATO

Doug always feeds the birds.  He buys a bag of wild bird seed every week as well as dog sausage for the seagulls and fruit - citrus or apples.  Recently, when I suggested I should pick the tomatoes before they were quite ripe so that the birds wouldn't get them he said to leave them as the birds would eat the apple he gives them instead of the tomatoes.  

Yesterday, I didn't get around to picking our vegies until about 7 p.m. and was shocked to find two half eaten tomatoes on the ground.  It turned out that with Doug starting a new project yesterday and finding an unexpected problem he had forgotten to put an apple for the blackbirds hence them eating the tomatoes.  

He remedied the situation straight away and no more eaten tomatoes.  It obviously works.  

WONDERFUL SERVICE.

I had a couple of incidents of great service yesterday.

The first involved my smart phone.  As the motherboard was recently replaced I have to re-install all the apps that I had on it.  I was installing one of the apps when I got a message from Samsung that I did not fully understand or know what to do about.  

I looked on the service sheet for the recent work and phoned the number on it expecting to get through to the New Zealand Service Department.  Instead I got through to a lovely man in the Philippines.  He was able to solve the problem remotely and also sorted out a couple of small issues I had not yet tackled and said that if I had any other problems to give them a call.  I didn't realise that such good service still existed.  (This was all on a freephone call).

The other instance started several months ago.  We often use chopped tomatoes from a company  called  Della Peruta Vincenzo S.p.a , we also found some baked beans from the same company that Doug found delicious but I wasn't sure whether they were gluten free or not.  I emailed them and got a prompt reply saying they were checking and would get back to me.  I heard nothing until yesterday morning when I got an email from a different lady at this company.  It appears the first lady left the company and she was going through the contacts and emailed me their brochure thinking I was a commercial customer.  I emailed her back telling her I was a consumer wanting to know about gluten free.  She told me all their products are gluten free and asked for my phone number.  Just as I was going to bed last night she phoned from Milan.  She had excellent English. She also sent me another email today with more information.  I have not had time to open this yet.

Unfortunately, when we were in the supermarket today we looked for both the tomatoes and baked beans and neither were available but I am quite sure they will come in again some time.

CREPE MYRTLE, TOMATOES AND AN ABUTILON

We have two Crepe Myrtle plants and the first of them is in flower at the moment.

The tomatoes have also started to ripen.  We have several varieties in different beds.  These are the first ones

At the recent Garden trail we went on we purchased several plants.  The last one to be planted is the Abutilon which has only just come into flower.  The lady we bought it from couldn't tell us the colour but we are very pleased with the colour we have got.  The little plant is only about 8 inches high.

The forecast is only 24 degres which is much more pleasant.