The good life continues! We've just completed a full week's work at Dean's Nursery, and have come back to our cosy little cabin, pleasantly tired, and treated ourselves to fish and chips from Mapua Smokehouse, washed down with Ross & Helen's Peach Summer Wine, whilst listening to more of Sue Gee's wonderful book 'Reading in Bed', which is a very nice way to end the week, thank you very much!

And what a lovely week it has been. At work we've done 4 more days of grafting Sauvignon Blanc grape vines, bringing our total of grafted vines to about 27,000 (of the 90,000 we have to do). The first vines, having been in their hothouse for over a week now, have just started to grow, and there is a distinctive white growth around the grafted area, where the vines are starting to bind together, and a definite sprouting of the buds beginning to appear from the end of the box. Next week we move onto Pinot Noir buds, which to be honest means very little at this stage, although the buds are apparently smaller, thus a little more difficult to join up! And today, the end of the week, we have been following in our Mum's footsteps and working in the nursery grounds, weeding in preparation for the sale that starts tomorrow.

The week has passed quickly. Suzanne and I, settled into our lovely little home, are enjoying playing house for a while and feel nicely settled. Suzanne is in her element having had the kitchen returned to her control and she is glowing in her role of domestic goddess, planning and preparing incredibly tasty meals on a very tight budget, while my shades of domestic goddess come in the clearing up, washing of clothes, washing the windows of poor Shadowfax who was covered in road grime, and, quite bizarrely, sweeping the floor as there is a little patch of dirt just outside our porch which means we tread dirt in whenever we come in, which apparently upsets me???

Last weekend the clocks went forward for spring, bringing with it, ironically, a brief return to winter! Our mornings have been freezing this week; one morning was so bad we actually had to defrost Shadowfax's windows before driving to work! And the first few hours at work have been so cold, our feet and fingers numb, hot water bottles being passed around and our breath visible in front of us although, with the exception of one day, the days themselves have been beautifully clear and bright, the sun hot, as long as you are sheltered from the chilly southerly wind. Our brief return to normal life has been further enhanced by our joining of the local Richmond Library, which we are using both to plan the rest of our South Island exploration and journey home, and to borrow spoken word books as we have taken to listening to books whilst grafting in the shed, and to begin with we are having a couple of murder-mysteries, beginning with Sherlock Holmes and 'The Hound of the Baskervilles' - a very pleasant way to pass the time. And when not listening to Derek Jacobi bring Arthur Conan Doyle's book to life, we are listening to Helen, a lady who really should write a book of her own. She comes out with the most amazing stories of her life, having grown up on a sheep station in the Chatham Islands and she has the most outrageous sense of humour, but I think I am most amused by the way she tells these stories as if they are perfectly ordinary! Plus, she cooks. After our first exceedingly cold morning she went home and made a tray of homemade scones, which she brought in the next day, along with some freshly made homemade raspberry jam (of which she brought a second jar just for us). And then Susie made some chocolate peanut cookies, so we basically coped with the cold by stuffing our faces and adding some extra layers of fat to keep us insulated! It's a hard life!

We are joined occasionally in our shed by the most gorgeous little female fantail, who flies in, perches above our heads, and chatters away to us non-stop in her adorable little fantail way, and a starling appeared yesterday and made rather less friendly noises - we suspect s/he started building a nest in there the previous night and was telling us where to go! And outside in the nursery Su & I were watched by a pair of beautiful song thrush, whom we hear singing here much more than back home, and there are also a pair of Harrier Hawks nesting nearby, who are often seen circling overhead, and in fact all along the coastal highway on our route to and from work. Which, by the way, is staggeringly beautiful. The road is surrounded on 3 sides by mountain ranges, The Richmond Ranges to the east, the mountains of the lakes to the south and the Arthur Ranges, from the Kahurangi National park, still capped with snow, to the west. To the north is Tasman Bay, with Rabbit Island and its estuary before it. And in the middle distance on all sides are rolling hills and pine woods, which look all the more dramatic in the early morning and late afternoon when we are passing, the low sun emphasizing the shadows. Not a bad drive to work!

And you know, we are getting paid for this life, and I can't tell you just how relieved we were to get our first paycheque as our funds have been stretched a little thinly since Wellington! But as our first pay didn't clear before last weekend we stayed close to home in a pathetic attempt to conserve our low petrol supply! But we had a truly wonderful day on Sunday, another beautiful bright sunny day, where we did a few little walks, all close to home. Firstly we drove inland to the Riwaka Resurgence, which is in the Kahurangi National Park. This is a sacred Maori spot, the beginning of the Riwaka River, and was just a short walk through vivid lush new greenery, past crystal caves, to the point at which the water flows out from the mountains above. It's a magical, spiritual little place, where we stayed for some time, just enjoying the loud gushing noise of the water, the stunning surrounds and occasional sighting of a Harrier circling above. We then moved on for lunch which we ate on Kaiteriteri beach, well, just because we could, before moving up the coast a little way to walk to Split Apple Rock, described as an icon of the Abel Tasman National Park, which is an apple shaped rock which looks as though it has simply fallen and split in two. And, sorry, but this is set offshore of yet another stunning beach upon which we sat for a while enjoying the golden sand and aquamarine blue sea. And finally we came closer to home for a little walk along the beach at the McKee Memorial Reserve, a pebbly beach looking out at Tasman Bay and back to Rabbit Island and our campsite at Mapua, where we've both now found a piece of petrified wood, millions of years old which has become stone but retained the grain of the wood. So we enjoyed a lovely day of pottering, quite perfect for a Sunday!

And this weekend, despite the fact that Shadowfax actually has a full tummy for only the second time since we bought her, we will probably also stay relatively close to home as the forecast is not great so it's not worth a trip to Nelson Lakes which was our original plan. Saturday we are off to Nelson, to join their library too, as well as have a look around the Suter Art Gallery, free on Saturdays, and then we've been invited to Ann & Bob's for an evening of pizza and Doctor Who. And as for Sunday, who knows, we'll try and get a book of local walks from the library and find one we can do in between showers!

And that's all from the top of South Island for the time being. Lots of love to you all, Jo & Su, xxxxx

(One quick thing - I've noticed that when playing the slideshow on our albums page all the portrait pictures show as landscape, thus cutting off the top or bottom of the picture, so if this is how you're viewing our pics, you may be thinking we are terrible photographers! It seems to play ok when opening the picture and just pressing next though…)