Belated New Year post... circa Feb 2007

I hope the New Year has been treating you all with kindness. It started off well for us with a short trip to NZ (North Island), but has proved rather challenging since then. For the last month or so we've been in the business of putting up fences - negotiating with neighbours, tracking down tradies and trying on the work boots ourselves. The weekend just past was quite eventful - there are now a dozen 45cm deep holes, part of a fence erected along the driveway and a handful of chicken feathers strewn over the ground.
The feathers can be explained by the next door dog - yes this is another dog that has moved in next door - pushing into our yard through a hole under the wire fence and taking a mouthful of chicken and shaking it around with much gusto. Luckily the hen in question survived, but we were all traumatised for the rest of the evening, fowl and humans alike.
The holes are not quite as exciting, but represent bucketloads of perspiration and muscle ache. We hired a post hole digger and proceeded to dig holes for the fence which will become the boundary fence between the two house lots and part of the driveway border. The heavy rain did a great job of softening up the ground and also meant we experienced the all-too-familiar sensation of walking around on mud platforms. We have reused the old pool fence for this purpose - we only had to buy two extra panels to fill in the gaps. We have erected part of the fence and now have to wait for another free weekend to finish the rest. And in case you're wondering - the fence the dog got under is another fence all together - that we were hoping to leave in place. It now looks like we have no choice but to install a new fence on that side of the property as well...