Mr and Mrs Bear have escaped Warblers Cottage for Easter

Mr & Mrs Bear have escaped Warblers Cottage for Easter

Covid-19, Day 16, Good Friday, 10 April 2020

Well, it would seem that Mr and Mrs Bear have packed their bag, they have left the safety of the Cottage and have gone walkabouts, for Easter. FOUND, in the garden, with a couple of yummy hot cross buns! There’s lots of places to picnic in the gardens at Warblers Retreat! In fact there’s over 16 seats around the gardens to sit on, and that does not count the outdoor seating in the main Lodge entertainment area. The reason we have so many seats, is that there are so many places that are quite nice to just sit and to enjoy the surroundings. It’s ideal for couples.

The seat Mr and Mrs Bear are on, is an upcycled ex North Shore Council seat that overlooks a Rimu tree we planted in memory of my brother David. David was always trying to give me seedling Rimu trees that he had grown on, having collected them when hunting in the bush. Rimu trees look amazing with their beautifully drooping foliage and are one of our most prized trees in New Zealand.

Easter 2020, in New Zealand is like an Easter we have not experienced ever before. With the country in full lockdown, there’s no going out for family picnics or barbecues, unless the people who you are with are in your bubble. There’s no restaurant dining either. The weather has been fantastic, which means many Kiwis will be outside enjoying the sunshine which is incredibly hot for this time of the year. Dave and I? We are back at what we love, working on our outdoor projects.

Composting toilet

Dave’s been clearing out the sheds to make way for our new composting toilet. The little tin shed is to be the new WC. We have done quite a bit of research on composting toilets, and it would seem as though the ‘simpler the better’. There’s a wealth of information on the internet, especially from New Zealander’s experiences after the Christchurch earthquakes. If done properly, it can be very effective. I know that in New Zealand, some of our septic systems are so un-environmentally friendly it’s not funny. We use precious water to flush away our excrement, and it is purely wasteful. If allowed to compost naturally, there is no waste, and no smell. It makes me wonder if in the future with worldwide water shortages looming, and that includes Auckland, whether there will be some changes made to toilet systems.

Composting is a very simple process and we are looking forward to making our composting toilet into a place of great notoriety on the property! It will be installed into a shed we bought to store some gear in while we spent a year living in a caravan. The shed did travel with us as we had the crane truck to easily move it. Hopefully now the shed is in its final resting place!

Steady progress is happening with the caravan project, Dave doesn’t muck around.

I had a ball down in the bush all afternoon on my bush gardening project. Pare-dise!

Covid Wrap

Today we reluctantly went inside to watch the 1pm news release on coronavirus, as the weather was fantastic. We have been making a bit of a habit of this over the past couple of weeks. One could say it has become our new norm, well for the time being!

We lost another elderly lady in her 90s to the coronavirus today, and our rate of infection rose again to 44. It would seem as though we still have a way to go yet. Dave has been religiously keeping up to date with what’s been happening, while I have been working studiously on our website. I often prefer to hear it from Dave, as I don’t want to get caught up with it all, however I am still keen to know what is going on. I have had some really early starts, like 3am and 4am in the morning where my brain is so active that I can’t sleep, so I get up and do some office work. I find this time fantastic, I am like the early bird that got the worm! I have achieved a lot before the day even starts, so then I can go outside and do what I really enjoy doing!

Wrapping up for Good Friday, 2020, the weather was magnificent and for us it was a fantastic day, ending off with our friendly driveway drinks. To achieve something in a day makes us feel really good, and today was another very satisfying day...in Pare-dise!