It's been a good year for the roses...

I know, because I've been out pruning them lately. We have a guarded relationship roses & I. They tear big lumps out of me while I'm mowing the lawns & I wear a pair of welding gauntlets when I prune them. I dont know a lot about pruning roses. I probably do it all at the wrong time. I take off the dead head heads & cut back fairly hard on the low growing suckers that threaten to take all the skin off my ankles when I go to cut silverbeet to eat. They never get sprayed, or treated with the special stuff that you are supposed to anoint them with when you prune them, but they still grow & grow lustily. I've always liked that word & wanted to use it, now I have. I will admit though, that there is something that soothes the soul with puddling about in the garden. Pruning is a fairly low effort job for me & is about as close to nature as I care to get. The beech tree is in full leaf & the Starlings that come to the nesting boxes high in the branches are in full song & look absolutely beautiful. Throw in the dulcet tones of a tui & its just about as good as it gets.

If you are wondering, the rose pictured above is one of ours & is called Anna's Love. Jude planted it when our darling grand daughter Anna was born. Aside from the look, it has a most beatiful scent as well.

So yes, it HAS been a good year for the roses, which I guess is some consolation for Jude, because it's been a tough year in other respects. Not just for us either. A dear friend, Peter, otherwise known as Cwnda lost his wife Jean on Friday morning. Pete, we love you & mourn your loss along side you. Our prayers & thoughts are with you. Jude has had a couple of visits to the doctor this week because of an infection in her stoma. Apparently, its a yeast infection & tonight it was that tender & swollen I elected to take her to the hospital to get it checked. Hopefully, the medication will do its thing in the next 2 or 3 days, but we will be watching it closely I assure you.

Our medical practice, or the board running it, have bought the Brian Boru Hotel, one of the older watering holes in town.


They are going to keep the upstairs as accomodation & turn downstairs into a licensed restaurant & art gallery. its going to need some quite extensive renovation & repair, as nothing has been done to it for 10 years or so. We have been invited to the blessing ceremony, which is going to happen at 7.00 AM on Monday. Nice to see the old "Briney" stay in local hands. Just looking at the calendar is scary. damn we have had a lot of places to go & people to see & be seen by this month. To think we naively hoped to be in the South Island by now.........