Park Plans...

A first draft for the overview of the main part of the park

Autumnal Dinner party...

With every change in season we throw a small dinner party for our closest friends at Eden, our Edwardian villa in town. It is a chance to get together and celebrate with good wine and seasonal food, and also an opportunity to try out new table-scapes and ideas. This year it was also our first chance to 'test-drive' the newly redecorated dining room.

We decided to try to catch the falling leaves of autumn in a still-life cascade. We collected various deciduous leaves and touched them up with a light coat of gold paint. We then strung them on thin nylon and draped them from the chandelier in the dining room.

We scattered the remaining leaves over the centre of the table and added some nesting 'quail'.

For the invitations we used some metallic bronze card and copper ribbon, and gold paint on a rubber stamp of an Acanthus leaf:

Making hay while the sun shines

Today (after the many initial outlays in setting up the company), we made our first small profit. We baled and sold 72 bales of hay from the site.

As we will not get much growth over the coming winter, we plan to get the lake dug and the orchard planted over the start of winter.

The Landwarming Picnic

Today we had a small picnic for a 'land warming' party. Mainly champagne and nibbly things.

Ballooning...(another aside)

One of our friends, Abraham, bought us a balloon ride over Hamilton. We set off at 0600 and met the other ballooners at The Lake. It took about an hour to get the balloon set up and inflated. We then took a lovely trip across Hamilton's western suburbs and farmland towards Mt Pirongia, finally landing just short of the foot hills. It was very peaceful and quiet up there (the occasional blast from the butane excepted).

Our friends Timothy and Stephen had come up from Havelock North for our land warming, so they 'chased' the balloon in their 4x4 and took some of the photos.