De-furnishing

We're definitely getting under way with the packing.  After getting an alarmingly high quote from a moving company we decided to sell as much furniture as possible and only take things that we need, or which are efficient use of space.  For example, the legs come off the kitchen table so it doesn't take up so much room.  We're also going to get more quotes.  One option is to register our load with Backload, an internet thing where companies with empty trucks can hook up with people who need things moved, to save an unpaying trip with an empty truck.

The sitting room has boxes piled all round the place and we've sold most of the bookshelves.  The wall unit is going (I put it on trademe for $1 reserve - it only cost us $6) and then we'll be able to make a large pile of boxes against the wall, out of the way.  The house hunt continues...

Toothless

High Score

We've discovered a game called Geoguessr, where you have to find places on the map based solely on Google streetview, and whatever internet research you can come up with.  Today, recovering from a tummybug and too wobbly to do anything much, I managed to beat my previous high score by 1 point:
http://url.geoguessr.com/7nDy

It only took me about 3 hours...

Packing

So we are moving house.  The packing has started, even though we have probably 8 weeks at least until we move.  I've been dealing with the piles that form in corners when no one is looking, and have thrown out bags of rubbish, some to the Hospice shop, some to the dump.  We've listed quite a few things on Trademe, David is currently helping some people load up our 5 most budget bookshelves onto their trailer.  I bought them on Trademe and resold them for the same price so I'm happy about that. The people who bought them are pretty happy too.  We also sold our old yurt for the same price we bought it for on Trademe, maybe 6 years ago.  It sold in less than 24 hours, to some people who need it for temporary accommodation while they build 3 yurts to live in. Next challenge is to empty the wall unit and get rid of that...

Tomato Psyllid

This year we had a bumper tomato crop, I was able to put over 24kg into the freezer to be turned into puree later.  But near the end of the season, we noticed what looked like salt on some leaves, then the leaves began to turn brown and shrivel up.  I blamed it on the dry weather - no rain for a month.  Then one day someone suggested it might be Tomato psyllid.  I looked it up, then inspected the plants:

Completely infested.
So the curly new growth at the start of the season may have been caused by this bug too, and I'm sure they are the reason why my eggplants never thrived.  Psyllids attack the solanum family, so eggplant, capsicum and potato plants are also affected, although the tomatoes and potatoes catch it worst.  I haven't dug any of our potatoes up yet but I'm not too optimistic as the plants have been looking crook for a while.  Many of my later tomatoes were a bit tasteless too - apparently the psyllid sucks the sugar out of the plant, making the fruit a bit of a waste of time.

 Eggplant crop 2014

So I picked all my capsicums, and they've been ripening up nicely in the garage

 They had these wee grey flies all over the leaves, which might be the adult psyllid.

 The good news is that this pest doesn't live in the South Island, which is where we'll be living by next year.

Zoo trip

The main reason for going to Wellington was for a sleepover at Wellington Zoo.  My cellphone ate most of the photos I took (well, it tricked me into deleting them :( ) but we still have a few.
We arrived at 7pm and went round the Zoo with one of the keepers.  She got the kids to make "enrichment" for the sun bears - a toilet roll filled with raisins and porridge, with the ends tucked in.  The next morning we threw them over the fence so the bears could eat them.

The kids were pretty excited to be able to throw the roll they had filled themselves and see the bears break it open and lick out the porridge!

breaking camp

Eventually we had to pack up our gear and head off to Wellington.  That was the only day it rained, but although we had to pack up wet tents, it didn't really rain during the packing.  When we got home we spread them in the garage to dry out, they weren't too soggy.

Eva helped, of course