The fruit of my labour

Behold the fruit of my labour! The photograph is of my tomato harvest for this year. While I did grow the tomato, this wasn’t actually the only one, just the biggest. But in away it was most of the harvest. As always, there’s a story to that.

Back in November, after the Labour weekend at the end of October had passed, I bought a 6-cell tray of little beefsteak tomato plants. I put them on my kitchen bench, under the Solatube skylight, and left them there—for months. By the time I was finally ready to plant them, only two survived (yes, I watered them, and I also rotated them periodically to make sure they grew well). There are a lot of reasons I didn’t get to them planted earlier, only some of which are kind of lame, but all of that’s kind of beside the point: It was simply the reality of what happened.

I planted to the two remaining plants in pots. As I have in previous years, but one of them didn’t survive the transplant. The one that did flourished and started producing—but time was running out. I was turning into autumn as the plant grew, and while we had a very mild autumn, it was still autumn. I left the plants to grow as long as I dared, but when nighttime temperatures started to get close to freezing, I picked the tomatoes green and put them in my fruit bowl with some store-bought tomatoes that weren’t quite ripe.

The tomato in the photo was the first to start growing, and was the biggest of the harvest (there were five in total), and it was also the first to start turning red. I had the first one over the weekend, and the others are all now ready, too.

The crop, small though it was, was quite good—sweeter than other varieties of tomato, and nice. Unlike the previous years I grew tomatoes here in Hamilton, I had no issue with blossom-end rot. That may be because of a change I made this year.

After the second year with blighted tomatoes, I did some research and read somewhere that calcium deficiency can cause or aggravate the problem. I also read that ground eggshells mixed into tomato soil increases calcium for the plants, so, I ground up egg shells in a mortar and pestle and mixed it that into the soil before planting the seedlings. I can’t know if that made the difference, but I do know the plant that survived was quite healthy and the tomatoes were as they’re supposed to be (unlike previous years), so when I next grow tomatoes, I’ll again mix ground-up egg shells into the soil.

The economics of this year’s harvest were not ideal, as Kiwis put it in their understated way. Each tomato that I harvested was more expensive than supermarket tomatoes in season—but they were also much better in every way. I like to think of this year’s tomato crop as being “Premium Tomatoes”. My garden, my rules!

For the next season, I plan on doing what I’ve wanted to do every year, but never have: Plan the next growing season while it’s still winter. That way, I’ll know what I’m going to do well before time, down to starting seeds so that the seedlings are ready to be planted-out when it’s warm enough (that method is also cheaper than buying plants…). That’s the plan, and maybe overly optimistic, but this year was an unusual deviation from even my worst years of gardening, so I think some optimism is warranted.

That’s the tale of my mini-harvest of tomatoes this year. All things considered, yes, it wasn’t ideal, but I still learned things, which is always a plus because I always like to keep growing. I just hope that my garden will next season, too.

April was a… month

April may be “the cruellest month” in the Northern Hemisphere, but here downunder it’s in the middle month of autumn—no longer summer, but not yet winter, so maybe it that makes it the cruellest month for us, too? At any rate, this year’s April certainly wasn’t exactly the kindest month.

The first big storm to hit New Zealand was the remnants of ex-tropical cyclone Vaianu, which struck the upper North Island the second weekend in April. Right up until it arrived, we weren’t sure how bad it would be, so preliminary watches and warnings were issued so that people could prepare. Having learned the lessons from 2023’s deadly Cyclone Gabrielle, many local governments declared preliminary states of emergency so they could respond faster to any horrible weather—well, apart from one charming fellow from the corner of the country hit the hardest by Gabrielle who refused to issue a “woke” state of emergency. Bet he’s a lot of fun at parties.

I planned on taking the same precautions I’d done for Gabrielle, and by Thursday the ninth, we were being urged to “take preparation seriously”. So, on Friday the first thing I did was to I put my rubbish and recycling wheelie bins in the garage (they were both empty, so prone to being blown around by the wind). I also put my patio table and chairs back under their cover because the wind was expected likely blow rain under the patio roof, and I felt that the cover would keep the table and chairs dry. That also gave me a place to stash the plastic bag of weeds I’ve been clearing from around the patio (off an on…) for weeks. I also did a quick check of my gutters (especially where the downspouts are) and the drain in my back lawn. I was 99% certain they’re all clear, and they were.

On Saturday, I got together with some of the family for lunch, and it was a mostly beautiful day. When I got back home, I moved the plants and doormat by my front door into the garage (for Gabrielle, I moved them into my entry way because at that time I didn’t have enough room in the garage). And that was it.

It was evening before the rain started, and it frankly wasn’t too bad. That’s because the storm was tracking further east than some projections showed, than that meant we were spared the worst of it. Even so, the entire North Island and the top of the South Island were all under some sort of watch or warning, something I don’t remember ever happening before.

That night, I woke up a bit after 1am and could hear what sounded soft rain. I could’ve thought to myself, “That’s it?! Pfft, why it’s just a bit of ordinary rain!” And that’d be the “common sense” reaction, wouldn’t it? Trouble is, storms have their own ways.

I woke up a couple more times during the night, same sort of more or less ordinary rain. I let Leo outside around 8:30 or so, and the rain had paused. I noticed that all the wood fence boards were thoroughly wet, a sign that the rain had been steady all night: When it’s not steady, parts of the fence will stay dry. I also noticed how warm it felt, warmer than the actual 21 degrees (69.8F). So, yet again, I was reminded that “it’s not the heat, it’s the humidity.”

After that, the rain started and then paused many times, but always remained “ordinary” in its intensity—nothing like Gabrielle was, or even as bad as severe “ordinary” storms. This figures: Waikato was under a “Heavy Rain Watch” until 6pm Sunday evening, and that was the lowest level of warning.

The rain became a bit more intense around 11:30pm or so, but the biggest concern in the area I live wasn’t the rain as much as the wind: We were under an “Orange Strong Wind Warning” (where Red is life-threatening, Yellow is possible damage, and Orange is between the two). That was scheduled to last until around 3am.

The issue was that the winds change direction and intensify as the storm moves south, because the winds hitting us start coming from a westerly origin. That was expected to happen in the Hamilton area later Sunday afternoon.

As it happens, the storm’s easterly track meant it headed back out to sea more quickly than originally expected, and that, in turn, meant the wind warnings were cancelled well before the original expiry. While there were a few strong gusts, for the most part there was really nothing more than a bit if a stiff breeze around my house.

Most other areas of the country fared reasonably well, though not totally unscarred. There was surface flooding in the hardest-hit areas, and some land-slips and damage to roads, but no one was killed and, apparently, there were so serious injuries. The storm’s track, and rapid weakening, meant it wasn’t as bad as it could’ve been, but the warnings were heeded, and people (inlcuding me) were prepared. I hope this can be a model for future cyclones—because, thanks to climate change, there will inevitably be more.

That wasn’t the end of the weather woes, however, because the next week the Wellington region was hit with a huge storm that pretty much stuck over the region. The flooding was extensive, and a life was lost. The storm was so bad that it was compared to the 1976 Wellington Storm [see also: What made Wellington’s deluge so intense?, 1 News].

So, yeah: After the Easter weekend, April wasn’t exactly kind to New Zealand. Cruellest month? Well, that’s probably a bit premature: The year isn’t even half over yet.

A welcome warning

Most people get warnings, alerts, advisories, etc., and often they can be useful, like warnings of approaching storms, for example. Earlier this month I got an alert about something happening early next month that was important to know about—and that alert was something I can’t recall ever having received before.

This story begins with an email. On the evening of March 7, I received an email from my electricity provider that said:

WEL Networks, is planning to turn off the power in you area for routine maintenance work between 09:00 AM Thursday 02 April 2026 and 04:00 PM Thursday 02 April 2026.

A little background: WEL Networks distributes power from the national power grid to consumers throughout the Waikato region, which includes Kirikiriroa-Hamilton. The company is owned by WEL Community Trust, and the Trust, in turn, returns an annual dividend to consumers in the form of a credit on their electricity bill.

What made the email so unusual is that I can’t remember ever getting one like it. In the past, WEL would drop notices in our letterboxes if there was going to be a planned interruption in electricity supply, but I think that was back when most of the area I live in was still under construction. It’s been a very long time since I received a leaflet about interruptions, and that’s probably why they’re quite rare now. If my electricity supplier hadn’t sent that email, I might well have ended up surprised when the power is switched off in April, with no idea why it was off. Because I don’t get power bills by mail anymore, an email was the only way the supplier could warn me.

When I read the email, I hoped that “9am and 4pm” means sometime between those hours, and not the entire 7 hours, but I have no way of knowing. They also advised, “Before the planned outage, please make sure you disconnect all electrical equipment,” which really just means switching them off at the wall (in New Zealand, power points/wall outlets all have individual on/off switches for each outlet). That’s good advice for sensitive things like TVs and computers, and anything that’s always on, like fridges. When the power has gone out unexpectedly, usually because of storms, I always switch those items off at the wall to protect them when the power comes back on.

Another part of the email was for households where someone “depends on electricity for critical medical support”, as the email put it, and such folks were advised that they can contact their electricity company to see what their options are. I'd have thought that people with critical medical equipment would already have a contingency plan (I certainly would), but power companies are required to help those who don’t.

Hamilton City Council doesn’t send any kind of notices of work being done in the area, like tree trimming, weed spraying on Council land, or, even worse, when the water is going to be shut off for any scheduled reason. HCC hardly ever even posts alerts on their Facebook page, so pretty much everything they do is a surprise, which isn’t ideal.

I was glad that I was sent that email, and it’s even better that we got nearly a month’s advance warning of a power outage (when I say “we”, that’s mostly because I posted about this on our community Facebook Page, partly because I have no idea whether other electricity companies sent notices to their customers, nor whether others read such emails). I added the event to my calendar, of course, so I can remember it’s happening, because I’d certainly be unlikely to remember otherwise. This way, when it happens, I can be prepared—devices fully charged, coffee made before 9am, those sorts of things, because my solar panels don't have battery backup.

So, thanks to that unusual email, I should be set. I guess knowledge really is power.

Update – April 2, 2026: This post has been updated.

Being prepared is a journey

Three years ago yesterday, on February 14, 2023, two days after Cyclone Gabrielle had left Kirikiriroa-Hamilton behind, we lost power in my neighbourhood, something I mentioned in my treatise post about the cyclone a week later. It turned out that the power was shut off in order to repair a fallen cable, which is why it was only off for a couple hours—though I didn’t know any of that when I made the Facebook post up top.

In the part of my post where I talked about the power outage, I talked about what I did to cope, thinking the power might be off for a couple days. I mentioned going to one of the hardware home centres to buy a shop light that runs on the same 18v batteries I use for my power tools (and that now also powers the stick vacuum I bought last year). I later misplaced that light during one of my millions of failed attempts to tidy the garage, but, fortunately, I haven’t needed it since.

I also mentioned that I got an LPG (propane) bottle for the BBQ so I could cook, and that I couldn’t get it to work. That’s still not working. However, I didn’t mention that I’ve never actually used a gas BBQ, because that had always been Nigel’s job and I never learned). However, I still have the full gas bottle, and now that I’ll be able to actually use the patio I want to get the BBQ going again. Failing that, I also still have an LPG table-top outdoor heater that was the only thing Nigel wanted for his 40th birthday, and it may be more useful to me, particularly with Autumn only two weeks away. Or, not.

At any rate, I blame sleep deprivation three years ago for my lame jokes in the post. Coincidentally, parts of the country, especially the east coast of the North Island, have been experiencing a big (but non-cyclone) big storm, and that includies areas that got hit by a fatal storm three weeks ago. Kirikiriroa-Hamilton’s weather wasn’t too bad, though, fortunately.

In the three years since that cyclone, I haven’t done anything about electricity reslience, like adding a battery bank to my solar power system or getting a battery back-up that I can use to keep my fridge running it the power goes out. I still think a single back-up is a better option than a whole-house battery backup, but it’s a huge topic and researching it has require far more time than I’ve had available. Finding the right solution is still on the agenda, though—alongside so many other things.

New Zealand, like most places, has been experiencing more bad storms more frequently than, say, 30 years ago when I arrived in New Zealand. That trend will only continue in the years ahead, and we all need to do what we cane to prepare doe “severe weather events”. Despite everything, I’m actually better prepared than I was in 2023. That’s a good start.

My last photo for 2025

The photo up top is my final photo of 2025, like what I’ve done before, like last year, for example. I guess it’s a tradition, like staying up to see in the New Year. I’ve done that for as long as I can remember, and I expect to do until I can’t anymore, for whatever reason that may be.

My caption on Instagram/Facebook said:

Leo and I are eagerly waiting for 2025 to end in less than 90 minutes, and he thought we should take another dual photo as the last one for the year. But he got momentarily distracted right before the shutter, so he didn’t get a chance to smile. Next year? 😁🐶

Meanwhile, that’s enough of this year. On to 2026!

A cool thing?

This week a cool thing may have happened. Or not. But, at the very least, it was good at the time.

I mowed all the lawns this past Wednesday, which itself is indicative of an important change this year: I’m mowing the lawns every week, though the specific day depends on the weather. My hope has been that by mowing every week I can make each one easier on me. So far, I’ve been able to do the whole thing on on a single battery charge, which is something I couldn’t do when mowing every other week. Live and learn, I suppose, though when the dryness of mid-summer arrives I (probably) won’t need to mow every week.

Even so, every time I’ve mowed the lawns, I inevitably feel awful, especially when doing the front which I find challenging, I think, because the property slopes downhill from my house to the footpath, and because there’s a lot of kikuyu grass (Cenchrus clandestinus), the devil’s spawn if ever there was such a thing, because of how thick and difficult to mow that shit is.

This week, I used the line trimmer on all the edges (front and back), and while my arms started to get tired, I noticed that it didn’t make me feel wiped out. Then came the mowing, which I did immediately after doing the edges, and I felt pretty much as bad as ever. In fact, when I got back into the house I returned a missed call from my sister-in-law, and I joked about planning my funeral.

This is where something changed.

I still had the oscillating fan sitting on my dining table, so I fixed it (no oscillation) on the spot where my chair is, plugged it in and turned it on and then sat down. Because of the new air conditioning, it was cool in the living area, and that fan sent a lovely, constant cool breeze on me. In a relatively short time, I actually felt I’d recovered. This was significant enough that I couldn’t help noticing it, especially because it was maybe half an hour, not the considerably longer time it took when I had no air conditioning in the living area.

The thing is, I have no way of knowing whether this was a one-off—maybe I was just lucky that day?—or if the cooling really made a significant change, one that make my life dramatically easier. I may find out when I mow the lawns next week (right now, it’s looking like Monday my be my only option…), or, maybe not.

I’m hoping that this does represent a change—or, more accurately, a return to the way things were a couple years ago, with a reasonably/comparatively fast recovery time for me. However, I still intend to start handing off the mowing to contractors, beginning with the front, not the least because it’s the most physically challenging part of the mowing for me. This would also mean that the front of my house would always look tidy, and if the back sometimes gets a little too long, no one will see it except for me and Leo. I’ll eventually have mowers do the back, too, so I guess I’m planning for the time ahead when, perhaps, I can’t do as much physical stuff as I can right now.

Even though this may not be a permanent change, it was cool—literally and figuratively—when it happened. I’ll take it.

Hot as heck

We’ve had a bit of heat here in Kirikiriroa-Hamilton lately. The days have been beautiful, with blue skies, sometimes with puffy clouds, sometimes with none, and often with a gentle breeze. However, the daytime temperatures have been 5 to 7 degrees higher than is normal for this time of year, which, to use a typical understated Kiwi phrase, is not ideal.

I’m not going to sugar coat this: It was pretty miserable at the end of this week, from Wednesday onward. This is because I have no air conditioning in the living area, and it gets hot in there from early afternoon, and doesn’t get better until early evening.

Here’s what I mean: On Friday, it hit 25 degrees (77F) in my neighbourhood, which is already reasonably hot by our standards, but, worse, it hit 29 (84.2F) in the living area of my house, and that was awful. The next day, it hit 26 (78.8F), but it was “cooler” inside: 27 (80.6F) . Today it was back to 25 outside, and still 27 inside. I learned my lesson, and by Saturday started closing the curtains when the sun hit the stacker doors in the living area. 

I’m well aware that this is the sort of thing that some people derisively call “First World Problems”, and I’m also well aware that what I’m experiencing is nothing compared to heatwaves that people experience elsewhere, however, I’m not there, and I’m acclimatised to this area, not elsewhere, and by those perfectly reasonable standards, this has been rough.

There have been times in my life when I had no air conditioning, and I dealt with that using fans or whatever else I could think of. I spent one summer in Southern Illinois, and it was utterly brutal, far worse than anything I’ve experienced—before or since. I used to walk to the air conditioned Student Center to sit in the cool, possibly the only reason I got any studying done that summer.

This year, in this place, I have fewer options. I put an oscillating fan on high (no help) in the living area, plus a more powerful fan on the floor in the hallway, blowing air toward the living area. I’d noticed the hallway was cool, and figured putting a fan there would draw cooled air from my bedroom, and it did, but the cool didn’t actually make it into the living area. I suppose that at least I got a nice cooling breeze when I walked down the hallway to my bedroom.

Fortunately for me, my bedroom air conditioner is working well, and the past couple days I went back there to cool down (I knew Leo would follow me to cool down, too). But I also have things I want and need to do, and I didn’t want to stay in my bedroom all day. And so, I cooled down when I could, and endured the heat when I needed to.

All of this has reminded me of what I experienced much of my life, but an experience that time and technology eventually made uncommon. Now, after all these years with cooling, I find it very hard to do without it. At the same time, the weather is becoming more intense due to climate change, and that includes high summer heat and bitter winter cold. I’m aware that as I continue to age, temperature may well become a bigger problem for me. Still, where I live the winter cold is not as severe as the heat in summer sometimes is (so far…), and I’m thankful for that.

And yet, adaptations are necessary for us all. Many of the changes I’ve made to this house—the solar panels, window coverings, and even the patio cover and the ducted air conditioning—are to make the house comfortable even with harsher weather and temperatures, and to look after me as I get older.

I also recently did something unusual (for me) that helped. Last weekend, when the temperatures were still okay, I took a pair of jeans with holes in both knees and made them into cut-offs, the first time in around 50 years I did that (I think). I wanted them to wear around the house, not sure that I actually would, but having them as an option definitely helped.

Too much heat is exhausting, but I’d forgotten how true that is. With some luck, I’ll be able to forget again.

I made more sunshine

Everyone knows that to make electricity, solar panels (often formally called “photovoltaic”, or “PV” panels) need to have daylight, ideally full sun. This is why solar panels don’t produce much electricity on cloudy days—and none at all at night. The number of daylight hours matters, too, which is why the panels make more electricity in the summer than in winter. And, of course, bright sunny days are the absolute best days for solar power. But, what if the amount of sunshine, whatever it is, is shielded? I just took steps to increase the amount of sunshine hitting my panels, and so, the amount of electricity they make.

Not for the first time, I learned about the existence of something through Facebook ads. In this case, it was about the importance of having solar panels cleaned in order to maximise the amount of electricity the panels create. Last week, I had a specialist company clean my panels, and yes, it was worth it.

The company also cleans large banks of panels for commercial operations, so I had confidence they knew what they were doing—though the reviews I checked were also all positive. They do a thorough check of the system, for example, making sure none of the glass is cracked, that the mounts are secure, and that the inverter (which converts the DC power from the panels into AC power used by the house or sent to the grid) is functioning properly.

The specific thing that caught my attention in the ads was about removing lichen—something I’d never considered. A few weeks ago, I looked at my panels and realised they had lichen growing on them, which is like little pads of shade all over the panels. I also noticed they were dirty.

At first, I thought about getting an extra long-handled washing brush, the type typically used for washing windows on upper floors while standing on the ground. I realised, though, that I’d probably still have to climb a ladder, something everyone in the family thought was a bad idea. Hiring someone was the alternative.

The Before and After photos up top are part of what I posted to social media, and the ones at the bottom of this post were taken by the person who cleaned the panels, looking down the roof toward the ground, an angle I’d never seen before. The whole process took a couple hours or so, and I didn’t need to be at home for them to do it.

And, yes, it was worth it.

I looked at the information my inverter logs to see of there was an obvious difference in electricity production, but I needed to figure out the best way to compare, given that this is Spring, and the weather is so changeable. So, I just looked at the four highest-production days before the cleaning and the four highest afterward—but not including the day they were cleaned—and averaged them for both periods. After cleaning, the panels were producing just under 20% more power than before they were cleaned, which is quite significant. Before the panels were cleaned, the highest production day made 26.30 kWh of electricity, and the highest after they were cleaned was 31.51 kWh.

The more power that’s generated, the bigger the potential financial benefit—obviously. I benefit mainly from getting free electricity to used in the daytime, and anything I don’t use is sent to the grid, earning me credits to reduce the amount I pay for electricity thre rest of the time. This is where the inverter stats became unreliable—but still interesting.

The inverter tracks all the electricity I produce, of course, and the software estimates my “savings”, which is an estimate of the amount of money I’ve saved from using the solar power myself and from the credit I get for the power I send to the grid. However, to be accurate, they need to use an accurate rate—called a “tariff”—to make the calculations, and I don’t know whether the rates are accurate or not. So, with that rather huge caveat, the estimate on the fourth post-cleaning day was that from the date the system went live three years ago until the fourth day after cleaning, my savings totalled $5,955.30, of which $1,121.57 was just for 2025 to that date (and October’s savings to that date were $87.53). While I doubt those numbers are accurate, if they were, it would mean that the savings have recovered nearly half of what I paid to install the system. Regardless, the free power I use on sunny days does save me a lot of money.

I clearly take all the information about savings with a huge grain of salt. I plan to try to work out how accurate their calculations are, but that’s a project for future me. In the meantime, I just think it’s interesting.

The bottom line—literally—is that keeping the panels clean means more electricity generated, and that, in turn, means more savings for me (whatever the amount is…). Most importantly, all this also means that I don’t “waste” any electricity I use in the daytime, which was really the main thing I wanted, because it achieves my goal of treading more lightly on the planet. Everybody wins—including the planet.

Oh, look! It’s NOT raining!

This afternoon, I shared the photo above on my personal Facebook page and Instagram, and the headline of this post is how I captioned the photo. It shows, of course, the tree on my street that stars in so many of my photos. It’s still putting on its summer clothes, and I’m so very ready for it. The weather has been pretty awful lately, so I also said: “But first, back to our regularly scheduled Spring programming: Rain and more rain.” I wasn’t kidding about that.

It rains a lot during New Zealand’s Spring, though not necessarily every single day, of course. Lately, however, we’ve had a lot of rainy days that included heavy downpours (including yesterday, when I went to the Waikato Home & Garden Show). That;s not going to change any time soon. Take for example today’s 10-day forecast:

Despite how it looks, right now only Wednesday and Friday are expected to not have at least some rain. Actually, aside from those two days, right now there’s expected to be rain at least part of every day from tonight through to Tuesday, October 14. Oh, well—I guess it’ll give me time to get some inside stuff done.

Show time again

Yesterday, I went to the Waikato Home & Garden Show with my cousin-in-law, and it was the first time we’ve gone there in a couple years. The weather was awful, but the show itself was good. Naturally, there’s more to the story.

It wasn’t as crowded as in past years, and that may well have been because the terrible weather kept people away (there were heavy downpours in the mix…). However, there also weren’t as many exhibitors as usual—maybe that was because of the poor state of New Zealand’s economy? Dunno.

In any case, I was still able to request quotes for several different things I want done to, which was part of what I wanted to go to the show, so, mission accomplished. Even then, however, the fact that there weren’t as many exhibitors meant also meant there were fewer opportunities to arrange for quotes. So, I’ll have to arrange more quotes through research than I’d expected.

First and foremost, I arranged for three quotes for a cover (pergola) for the patio. As I’ve said many times, in summer the patio is way too hot to use from around midday onward, and in winter it rains too much to use it when the weather’s warm enough (which it often is). Because Kiwis love outdoor living, the cover ought to add enough value to the house to pay for itself—as long as I don’t go nuts, of course. I’ll have more to say about the options later, after I’ve made my decision.

The second thing I wanted quotes for was having a ducted heating/cooling (heat pump) system installed, something I’ve wanted to do since I bought the house. Again, I was able to request quotes from three companies. Doing this won’t add value as such, but it will should with re-sale because anyone who’s lived with ducted heating/cooling will prefer a house that has it—or, at least that was true for me.

Unexpectedly, I also decided to get a quote to get fitted window screens (usually called “fly screens” in New Zealand). For some reason, the vast majority of NZ homes I’ve been in don’t have screens, and this one doesn’t. It’s not cheap to add screens, but it could make a big difference to how I live in the house: Being able to leave my windows open in nice weather, without having any of Hamilton’s legendary flies coming inside for a visit. From time to time I’ve thought about doing this, but until yesterday I’d never seen anyone offering the sort of solution I wanted. Besides, I was focused on the patio and ducted system. I’ll comment more on this if anything comes of it.

Finally, I said I was considering possibly adding a battery bank to my solar electricity system. I say “possibly” because it’s very expensive to do, and I’m not likely to be in this house long enough to get a decent return on the investment. I may be better off to buy a (MUCH cheaper) portable back-up battery bank that I can recharge on mains power to use in the event a severe storm knocks out the power, as happened with the cyclone a couple years ago, and a deliberate temporary blackout the year before (this is mainly about keeping my fridge running). Still much research to do on that one.

Meanwhile, I still have those relatively minor decorating changes inside the house to do, but none of that will be affected by the things I’m going to have others do. If anything, much of it could give me something to do while I have to be home as they do their work—assuming I go ahead with any of the quotes, obviously.

After leaving the Show, my cousin-in-law and I went out for lunch, which was really nice (I don’t do that as much as I used, for no reason, really). I arrived home to a very happy Leo, as always, and a big rest from all that activity.

There’ll be more to this story, of course. In a sense, this was just the first chapter.

A new month with old (and new) things

October means the middle of Spring, and that means it’s time to plan for summer. New Zealanders love living outside, even if it’s just in their own yards—maybe even especially then. That’s true for me, too, but I’ve never really been able to do that at this house. October is where that begins to change.

The Waikato Home & Garden Show is on this week (Thursday through Sunday), and I bought my ticket online last night, so I’m ready to go. I didn’t go last year because at that point I still wasn’t sure what I wanted to do with/about my house, and so, I didn’t see any point in going. This year it’s completely different.

The point of the show is to see all sorts of new and/or interesting products and services for the home and garden—which is kind of obvious, yes, but it’s a very general category that includes stuff for the house (like renovations, garden sheds, patio covers, landscaping products, ventilation systems, even spa pools and swimming pools), stuff to eat and drink (food ingredients, spices, gin, delivered meal kits, craft beer, various kitchen gadgets), and, well, other stuff, like miracle gadgets, vacuums, etc.

I’ve always thought shows like that are really interesting, and over the years I’ve gone to various versions both in Auckland with Nigel, and now here in Hamilton. In every case, I’ve kept my eyes open for products or services that would be useful for various projects, and this year is no different—in fact, I’m going back to my mission during my early years in this house: I’m looking for providers of stuff I want for the house.

First and foremost, I’m interested primarily in two things: Patio covers/roofs and whole-house ducted air conditioning. Companies that do those things will be at the show, and they often offer “show specials”, a price discount or some sort of perk, for people who attend the show. There may be providers of batteries for solar power systems, but I kind of doubt it, and it may not matter because I’m wavering on whether that’s a good idea or not (once I decide, I’ll definitely talk about whatever I decide and why).

There also may be decorating ideas/products/services that could be useful to me inside the house, which would be nice. There will definitely be other things I’ll think are interesting, too, but whether I buy anything or not—who knows?

There’s one last bit of business left from last month: September is now my new Number One, “most-blogged” month of 2025 (by one post…). Because this is now into the weeds of statistics and data, I realised that if I achieved 183 posts this year, it would amount to one post every other day, on average. While that’s still not as good in previous years, it’d be better than both 2024 and 2022, but, is it even possible? If I did an average of only one post per day for the rest of the year, it would amount to 173—better than 2022, but fewer than 2024. Good, bad, or indifferent? I don’t know. Still, if I managed to add just four more posts over those three months, the total would beat 2024, too, which is something—ignoring every other year since 2018, of course.

So, here we are: Nearing the midpoint of Spring, and I’m on the verge of launching into my various projects for my house. This year, for the first time, I think I may actually be ready for summer when it arrives, and that’s something I’m very happy about. And, for the record, wherever my blogging output lands will be fine with me.

Equinox at the door

The September Equinox arrived in New Zealand at 6:19am this morning. Leo and I were still asleep at the time, although he waits for me to stir, and never tries to wake me up. He’s a good boy. At any rate, it’s now universally accepted to be Spring here—even by certain people who insist that seasons can only begin on equinoxes and solstices. Leo, of course, couldn’t care less about such things.

Spring is a season of change—although, one way or another, all seasons are. Nevertheless, there are some things that are unique to Spring, like pollen, for example. I never used to be bothered by pollen, but over the past decade or so I’ve been affected more and more, and it’s been particularly bad for me this year. Add to that the rainy and awful Spring weather New Zealand can get this time of year, and, well, it’s not ideal. Still, none of that lasts forever, right?

Over the past few weeks, I’ve been busy planning out exactly what I want to get done to the house, and the order it needs to happen, because some things can’t happen until other things are finished. As it happens, the Waikato Home and Garden Show is coming up, and it may be a good opportunity to organise quotes for various things, especially because there are often “show specials” to reduce the costs a bit.

While there’s a lot of work that I need to organise others to do, there’s still a lot I can do in the meantime, like cleaning. Rearranging the living area will mean moving heavy furniture that's been in the same spot since I moved into the this house more than five and a half years ago, and those areas will need some cleaning. I also want to clean the carpets using the cleaner I bought back in 2022. So, technically, this means I’ll be doing a major “spring cleaning” of the house, though because all of the work on the house will be sone in phases, some of that cleaning may (will?) extend into summer.

So, no matter how one determines the start of such things, it’s definitely Spring in the Southern Hemisphere. It also means summer in the Southern Hemisphere is officially closer, and, to me, that’s a very good thing, indeed.

The December Solstice arrives in New Zealand at 4:03pm on December 22, 2025.

Activity unknown

I mowed the lawns yesterday afternoon—yes, I still do that, and no, I seldom mention it. What made yesterday unusual was that I used my watch to measure how far I walk when mowing both the front and back lawns in one session (not including edges). It turns out, it was 2.96 kilometres (1.839259 US miles), which kind of surprised me. Even more surprising—well, shocking, actually—was that my average pace per kilometre was 8:45, *much* faster than my “personal best” (which from memory was around 10:30 per KM?). Maybe that was because the path is straight line after straight line with no obstacles? Also, since the grass hasn’t grown much with all the cold temps we’ve had in recent weeks, I could walk quickly (and, of course, I probably moved fast because I wanted it to be over…).

At any rate, all the mowing took 25:56 (depending on how thorough I am, line trimming all the edges can easily take that long, too). My average heart rate was slightly faster than a normal walking workout , but my peak rate was quite a bit faster, so clearly it was an actual workout. Which means that two or three times a month, every month, I’ve had a pretty decent workout and I never realised it. All my planned workouts this year are on top of that.

Back to the commonplace: It’s a good thing I mowed the lawns yesterday because I was busy today, and then the rains returned this evening. Some things don’t change.

A good month begins

Welcome to August! This is a very exciting month because it’s the final month of winter, and that means spring and better weather is on the way. It’s been a challenging winter, one I’’l be glad to see go away.

It’s safe to say that complaining about bad winter weather is a behaviour I’m drawn to, primarily because because that weather that can be aggravating, annoying, or even just a massive inconvenience, and I no longer have much tolerance for that. I may not be able to do anything to change the weather, but at least I can still complain about it.

All that said, the weather really has been pretty disgusting this winter. Last month, I wrote about June’s weather, and I said in that post that the temperatures in Hamilton were more or less aligned with historical averages, but we’d had a lot of rain. In July, the avearge high temperature was slighly higher than the historical average, but—yet again!—the rain was significantly more than the historical average. Turns out, though, Hamilton got off lightly.

In July, parts of New Zealand received three or four times the average rainfall, leading TVNZ’s 1News publishing a detailedrport on it: ”What was behind New Zealand’s wet and windy July”. Worse. 1News meteorologist Dan Corbett said that the rain “would be returning — with a vengeance”, so,we should "keep that raincoat handy. There is going to be more wild weather coming." Oh, yay.

Apparently, we’re getting all this rain because the surface water in the Tasman Sea is much warmer than usual (and yes, that's related to climate change), and that means that ordinary rain storm systems passing over it draw up lots of that evaporating moisture and then dump it on New Zealand. That won’t last forever, of course.

Despite all the rainy weather, we still get sunny days, sometimes a few in a row. Today was a sunny day, for example, and I got three loads of washing done with free electricity, though I could only dry two of them (I dried the third load when the rates went down at 10pm—winter days have fewer hours of daylight, and that affects how much power the solar panels generate, and so, how much free electricity I can use).

This particularly rainy winter has given me a new pastime: Frequently checking the extended weather forecast so that I can plan things, like doing the washing and charging the batteries for the mower and line trimmer (as well as working out when I can use them). I actually think this sort of constructive planning is a good thing —usually? At any rate, it makes it possible to get things done even when the weather isn’t cooperatimg.

Yeah, sure, all of that, BUT, spring is now only a month away, and for me that’s a great reason to celebrate—unless spring and summer also throw up, so to speak, bad weather. If they do, though, I’ll plan around that, too. Maybe I’m more predictable than the weather?

Certain for now

I think it’s possible that one of the main reasons for some people’s unhappiness in life comes from uncertainty. Add the confusion that comes from not knowing how, precisely, to move beyond the uncertainty, and it can make for a very unpleasant time. That’s something I know far too well.

I’ve mentioned before how last year (and into this year) was a rough journey for me. When I talked about it this past February, I strongly affirmed that 2024 was “absolutely NOT unrelentingly bad,” adding that it was, “in other words, a period of time with good as well as bad—pretty much like every other time in one’s life.” Indeed.

And yet…

For at least 18 months, I was stuck in a never-ending loop of existential—actually, residential—uncertainty. I tried to answer specific questions, like, where, precisely, did I want to live? What, precisely, did I want to do with my life?

The real reason I stalled and struggled was something I wrote about barely one month into my journey, when I wrote about a stop at the supermarket, of all things:

We went into the Te Rapa New World supermarket in Hamilton, which was a store Nigel really liked. As we walked in, I was imagining going there to do my weekly shop and then I had a sudden thought: “This isn’t fun any more,” I said to myself.

The specific trigger was that I realised that’d I imagined doing a weekly shop like I always have—for the two of us. After all these years living with someone else—the majority of them with Nigel—I don’t actually have any idea how to shop for one.

For 24 years, everything in my life was about being half of a “we”, and every major decision I made was either a “we decided” thing, or, at least, something I talked over with Nigel first. Now I’m faced with numerous possibilities about my life, including its direction and, more specifically, my location. It’s been hard for me to find a way out of that.

Over the past year and a half in particular, give or take, I’ve considered any number of possibilities, including moving back to our home on Auckland’s North Shore, something I ruled out after my visit in February of last year. I also considered selling up and moving somewhere else, maybe near other family, maybe rural, maybe even an apartment, but none of the options felt right to me.

This indecision also kept me from making any improvements to my current house. Even so, I decided some months ago that I’d rearrange the furniture in the living area of my house to make it flow better and to freshen it a bit—but I did nothing about that. I was facing a sort of existential and residential stalemate.

After a LOT of thought, and also talking it over with family, I decided to commit to my current house for the next five years: I like my house itself well enough, Leo loves the yard to tun around in (one of the largest in this development, actually), and the area where I live is convenient to pretty much everywhere in Hamilton I need to go regularly. After those five years, I’ll reevaluate my situation and decide what I want to do from that point on. Cynics might say I’m just kicking the stalemate down the road to deal with later, but even if that’s true, I’m fine with it.

This decision means that I’m going to make some changes to this house to make it more of what I want it to be—including some of the things I might otherwise search for in a new house. There are two separate parts to this. First, I’m doing a bit of a refresh of the interior of my house, including that delayed rearranging of the living area, but also some relatively minor decorative changes, too. The bigger deal with be things I plan to change about the house itself, both inside and out.

The first thing will be changing the heating/cooling. Right now, I have one split-unit heat pump in the living area, and another in my bedroom. This means that rest of the house has no heating or cooling, and the two other bedrooms—the guest room and my office—are hot in the summer and cold in the winter, and so, much of the year they’re unpleasant to be in. Nigel and I had a ducted heat pump system installed in our house on Auckland’s North Shore, and the whole house was comfortable year around. That's probably what I'll do here, too.

I also plan to add a battery bank to my photovoltaic system so that I can take full advantage of the solar panels, especially by having free power at night. This will probably be a later wave of changes.

Outside, I plan on having a deck built over the existing concrete patio to raise it to the floor level of the house, because right now there’s quite a step down. I will also have a roof structure (pergola sort of thing) built over it, too, so I can use the space pretty much year round—and I won’t have to have my table and chairs under cover anymore (apart from helping to keep it clean, maybe?). This is also why changing to a new heating/cooling system will come first: The outdoor unit for the living area’s heat pump is located smack in the middle of the existing patio, and it needs to go before the new deck can be built. This is the one thing I know for certain will add value to the property.

At the moment, I think I may put raised garden beds between the lawn and the bank along the side of the property, but I’ll hold off making any final plans until I talk with the builder. I'm sure there will be other things I’ll do, too, as I get going.

So, now that I’ve (finally…) made a decision about where I’m going to live, I’m moving forward with a plan. I plan on talking about the whole thing as the parts unfold. Right now, though, the important thing is that I have a plan, and I’ve even started getting the bits and pieces I need for the house refresh.

Onward.

Sunny side up

It’s been extremely rainy in New Zealand lately—shocking news, I know. As usual, I had work-arounds. Eggs among them.

Early last week, I looked at the extended forecast, and saw it was supposed to be rainy until this past Friday. But, we had a run of a few days without rain, so I mowed the lawns on Tuesday—and that went well, fortunately, and on one battery charge.

It was fortunate I mowed the lawns when I did, because the extended forecast kept changing, and the sunny days kept moving farther away. By Friday of last week, the entire week was supposed to be rainy, then by this past Monday we were warned of big storms, especially for the top of the South Island. I decided I wasn’t going anywhere that day.

I started the day by making fried eggs (photo up top). When I shared it on my personal Facebook, I wrote: “My brunch today, the only 'sunny' thing I’ll be seeing today. 🙁”. I then added:

Kirikiriroa-Hamilton is under an Orange rain storm warning, with the potential for very heavy rain and strong winds until the wee hours of the morning. The top of the South Island, however, is under a Red Warning. Basically, an Orange Warning means “be prepared” because storms may be bad, and a Red Warning means “take action” because the storms WILL be bad.

The weather Monday was truly awful: Sometimes heavy rain, strong wind gusts, and steady rain even when it wasn’t raining heavily. I definitely made the right choice to stay home that day.

The extended forecast has pushed out next sunny day out again, to one week from today—July 20. There’s like to be sunny periods over the coming week, but rain is predicted for at least part of every day/ So, yay.

I’ve fully embraced my winter adaptations: I run the dishwasher, washer, and dryer only after 10pm whne the power rate drops to the lowest amount. I need to do this because there aren’t enough sunny hours to get free electricity, both because of all the rain we get in winter, and because the daylight hours are still pretty short.

I’ve also felt cold much of the time this winter, more so than I have in many years. I have no idea why, since the daily high temperatures, while cold, aren’t particularly unusual. Maybe all the rain has made things unusually damp?

Still, one does what one must to cope, and for some folks—like me—it requires a bit more effort. Sometimes even something as simple as well-made “sunny side up” fried eggs can help, too. Just another of my winter adaptations.

Further down the road

Two years ago today, I was literally celebrating the opening of a new (short) road directly connecting my area to the rest of Hamilton. Two years later, I’m still happy the road finally opened—and yet…

In late 2019, when my brother-in-law and I stopped at a realtor open home to check out what’s now my house, the agent told me about the road that would be built “soon”, and how it would have a small commercial area with some shops. It was, in fact, one of the reasons I bought this house.

The fact it actually took three-and-a-half years for the road to finally open isn’t the agent’s fault, obviously, nor did she in any way promise it’d be open any sooner—though she also didn’t stress that the construction hadn’t even started yet, let alone that at the time of the open home it wasn’t even scheduled. In late 2019, we were all blissfully unaware of Covid and all the disruption that would cause to—well, everything, really.

It’s now two years after that road finally opened, and it’s also now some five-and-a-half years since I moved into my house. I’m still glad for the easy connection to anywhere in Hamilton I might want to drive to, and it really has been a huge improvement to the quality of my daily life. But the story stalled yet again.

The commercial area still hasn’t been started, and there haven’t been any signs whatsoever that it’s even a glimmer in a developer’s eye. Meanwhile, traffic has continually become heavier, especially around rush hours (in late afternoon, for example, I sometimes have to wait several minutes for cars to pass through the roundabout at the entrance/exit to my neighbourhood that I use, including to get to that road. That’s because, first, in the two years since the road opened, a lot of new houses have been built in the two developments close to the one I live in, and because people living even further away have realised using the new road is much faster for them, too.

Even with the increased traffic, it’s apparently not enough to attract developers, but there’s more to it. New Zealand’s economy has been in terrible shape for a couple years now, with high interest rates, rising construction costs, and a shortage of tradespeople, many of whom have moved to Australia for better pay and opportunities. Add it all up, and there was no way the commercial area could have been started, let alone finished.

The missing commercial area, then, is disappointing, but not surprising. The same could be said for the fact that this entire part of the city still has no public parks: A large open are for sports is supposed to built between our development and the next one down the road—some day. I’m not a sports person—clearly—but even I can see how having an open area like that would be a good thing. With no public parks, and no benches (aside from a bus shelter), this area is far from pedestrian-friendly, unlike older parts of the city (and in this case, “older” could mean less than ten years older).

Even so, despite the delays in starting to build the commercial area and the public park, the opening of the road has helped us all to drive to the rest of Hamilton much more easily. However, the optimism I shared on my personal Facebook two years ago, that I would “feel a part of the city, not adjacent to it”, didn’t actually happen—I felt able to get to the rest of the city, absolutely, but with so much still not begun, let alone completed (also including the final phase of the development I live in), I still feel at least somewhat set apart from the rest of the city. On the other other hand, I feel far more connected to the rest of the city here than I felt at our last house in Auckland, which is something.

All up, then, the road has definitely made things better for everyone who uses it, maybe me especially. Progress is progress, after all.

The clouds’ silver lining

Winter is not my favourite season, and while I don’t think I’ve mentioned that before, it’s definitely true. Now that we’re in the middle month of our winter, I can reconfirm my dislike of the season. Winter in this part of the country is often cold and rainy, and it seems this year it’s even more true than usual—maybe?

Last week, I wrote about the weather and how I’d felt yucky feeling, and I also mentioned that I’d found out that it had rained less in May than it seemed. Well, MetService reported that June was different in a couple significant ways.

June and July are the coldest months of the year (though very cold days can happen before or after those months), and the high temperatures in June were aligned with historic trends, however, the low was colder than normal. It also rained a LOT in June: The total for June was 192.2mm (approximately 7.57 inches), as compared to the historic average of 128mm (approximately 5.04 inches)—though in June last year the total was only 79.4mm (approximately 3.13 inches). So, basically, it rained a lot in Hamilton June.

Other parts of New Zealand, especially Auckland and Northland and also the top of the South Island, were hammered with rain. So, sure, it rained a lot in Kirikiriroa-Hamilton in June, but it was much worse in other parts of New Zealand. And yet, even that wasn’t as bad as it wounds.

As result of regular rain since April, New Zealand’s hydro lakes are at unusually high levels, and that means that we won’t have any rolling blackouts this winter, like when we had an unannounced rolling blackout on the coldest night of 2021.

The issue is that when winter begins, the lakes behind the dams are usually low due to low-to-no summer rains, and when the weather turns particularly cold, power use goes up, and if the hyrdo lakes are low, then we can face rolling blackouts as a “last resort.” We were threatened with the possibility of rolling blackouts several times after that infamous 2021 night, but none actually happened. It seems pretty clear it won’t happen this year, and the big storms we’ve had this winter have made sure of that.

So, all the rain we’ve had this year has had a genuine silver lining. There had to be something good about it. But I still hate winter. Have I even mentioned that?

Doubly under the weather

I was recently “under the weather”, both literally and figuratively. We had several weeks with few sunny days (though some cloudy days did have some sunny breaks), and lots of rain, often heavy rain. Then I had more on top of that.

The first week in June, I started feeling bad. It started as a very mild cold the first weekend in June, and that ebbed and flowed, so to speak, for around a week after that. I wasn’t particularly sneezy or have a constantly runny nose, though both have happened at times. Mainly, I just felt yucky, and sometimes my sinuses felt angry. I didn’t have a fever, though, which is part of the reason I sometimes thought it felt more like a bout of allergies than a cold. Even so, I felt pretty bad on a couple days.

I ventured out again on Thursday of last week, once I felt sure the affliction had passed. I used an abundance of caution because I went to visit my mother-in-law, and certainly didn’t want to pass a bug to her.

And then there was the weather, too.

In general, cloudy and rainy days aren’t that important, really, except that temperatures also dropped a lot (have I ever mentioned how much I hate cold temperatures?), and there seemed to be an awful lots of rainy days. The rainy weather is dreary all on its own, but it also means my solar panels make far less power on what are already shorter days (though, as I said yesterday, the daylight hours were two seconds longer than Saturday…). That affects what chores I can do—or, at least, what I’m willing to pay to do in the daytime.

At the end of May, there was a storm in Hamilton that caused a “mini tornado” in an area a couple kilometres from me, though the weather wasn’t as severe in my neighbourhood. However, at the same time that the suspected “mini tornado” struck, there was a torrential downpour in my neighbourhood, so much so that I had to turn the TV volume way up so I could hear it over the rain. The winds didn’t seem strong here, though.

That was only one of several storms with heavy downpours in May, so many, in fact, that I assumed it had been a rainy month, but apparently not. According to MetService, the rain accumulation in Hamilton in May of this year was completely aligned with May of last year and the historical data, too—which is a pretty good argument for not relying on mere perception, especially when the actual data is available.

Okay, fine: The amount of rain that fell in May was actually quite ordinary, even though it didn’t seem that way. Maybe it was the fact the days were shorter, and the fairly constant cloudcover—which isn’t tracked in data, as far as I can tell—is probably what affected my (incorrect) perception of rainy weather. Just cloudy, then.

All of which means that the actual rainfall in May wasn’t as bad as it seemed to me at the time, and my June disease affliction wasn’t as bad as a “real” illness. In fact, I sometimes still have times I’m a bit sneezy with a briefly runny nose, so maybe it’s just some sort of winter allergy, or whatever.

Winter is never pleasant for me, regardless of the amount of rain that actually falls in any given week, and this year has been no different. I’m glad I quarantined myself for my mother-in-law’s sake, even if my seeming disease affliction really were “just” allergies. The yucky feeling was real, even if my perception of rainfall may have been based on alternative facts. I blame winter

The semi-annual change. Or not.

By anyone’s reckoning, it’s winter in the Southern Hemisphere. The June Solstice arrived at 2:42pm NZST yesterday afternoon (June 21), and while we say winter began on June first, yesterday could be called “the Winter Solstice”. Regardless of the start date of the seasons, in this case it means that daytime will start getting longer again, which is a huge plus for me. The short days and cold weather are the reasons I dislike winter so much. Sadly, the warmer weather is many, many weeks away.

I went to a relative’s house for lunch with some of the family, which was a good time, as always, and that’s where I was when the June Solstice arrived. However, I was surprised that there was still a bit of fog when I left my house near midday, though nowhere near as bad as it was earlier in the morning. Still, fog and cold temperatures, are a big part of winter in Hamilton, so I’m kind of used to it.

It wasn’t the fog or cold temperatures that were negatives, though: That came later as I drove home. The radio host mentioned that daylight today would be two seconds more than yesterday. Yay. Winter still has a looooooong time to go.

The September Equinox arrives at 6:19am NZST on Tuesday, September 23, which is also five days before NZ Daylight Saving Time returns.