You better watch out there may be dogs about (Pink Floyd)

I wrote in the previous post that we recently welcomed Coronation Street back into our lives and that theme has continued with the return of Dookie from Fanfa's care in Wellington. She's off to the city by the bay in a few weeks time and Jade did the mission of mercy trip to bring the Dookster back to the farm.

The menagerie is back to full strength. Time for a round up of the whole crew.

Bazie and Dookie

Waffles

Zen

 Max

 Meg

and the sheep 

x11

( plus the 2 rams who are cooling their heals in a different paddock as we await the lambs)

Speaking of expectant mothers...I think she's carrying a few.

Rest assured I will post pictures of the newbie lambs when they arrive (and survive - unfortunately I've had to bury a couple already).

Love and peace - Wozza

Oh you are such a pretty one (Leonard Cohen)

A couple of housekeeping matters to take care of in this post as I respond to some of your questions.

1. What does SWMBO mean? And for that matter LOML? I refer to Jacky (the person I celebrated 28 years of marriage with recently) in a variety of ways. She crops up in these posts from time to time as 'She Who Must Be Obeyed' (SWMBO), and/or 'Light Of My Life' (LOML). It's simple when you know right?

2. Where on earth are you both? We now live on a 12 acre lifestyle block of land near a tiny little place called Otane (has a general store, a cafe, a few houses, a primary school,  a pub, a memorial to those who died in the First and Second World Wars and a great garden centre called Tree Guys). This is about 40 mins southwest of Napier on New Zealand's east coast of the North Island. We are also close to a slightly larger town called Waipawa (which somehow appears on the map below for some bizarre reason).

3. So how is it being back then? Well it's definitely different. The trees are all starting to change colour around us and that's a real treat again. The food on the supermarket shelves is now recognisable and the idea of having alcohol available in the foodmarket is just surreal. I'm struggling with watching Arsenal play at 1.45 in the morning and having little spare time to write blogs, read, or practice the guitar is also annoying. But balancing that are all the green hills, autumn weathers, blue skies with clouds, and other familiar things I've grown up with.

4. Samantha read my last posting and said - yeah good but what about Waffles??

Waffles (a.k.a. Wafi, Mr Waffles, and sometimes even Waffle) is our new cat.

Jacky wanted to wait until I got back to Nu Zild before going 'cat shopping' as she called it. I think it was about three days before we (Jade and Samantha tagged along as well) duly went to the SPCA in Waipukarau (a town a little further south from Waipawa - I hope you're keeping up!). They had about 100 cats from tiny kittens to full grown cats.

I'm a firm believer in cats choosing you (rather than the other way around) and a very sweet ginger cat immediately made a bee line for me and Jade. It helped a lot that he was not a young kitten so he was toilet trained and he thinks dogs are great fun.

I've named him Waffles (or Wafi for short after the Wafi Mall in Dubai) and he's turned into a very smoochy cat. He follows me around the farm all day and is pretty fearless, he took a swipe at Jacky's horse when the horse wanted to see what the ball of fluff at his feet was doing.

Waffles joins a growing menagerie. We currently have SWMBO's horses - Zen and two horses that are kindly being lent to her - Meg (for Jade to ride apparently) and Max (from whanau member Margie in Hastings); Samantha's dogs - Bazil and Dookie (although he is currently in Wellington for a few months with Jesse and Sam); and 13 sheep.



Dookie, Jade, Bazil and Fanfa



Jade, Zen, Mabelle and Max



Love and peace - Wozza



I'm just a soul whose intentions are good (The Animals)

This one is about our animals. Sometimes it's tough to keep track of them all but here we go.


The before restoration Jimi front

 Starting with Jimi, or as Adam calls him - the dumpster cat!

The before restoration Jimi back

The story so far - you will recall that Jacky rescued Jimi from a miserable fate a month ago. He was lying in our garage looking next to death's door. His tail had been shredded, he was malnourished and dehydrated and was maybe a day away from systems failure and a painful demise. He looked miserable!

He spent a week at the vets, had his tail amputated and then we've spent the last three weeks restoring his health (on NZ beef, cooked of course).

Our aim has been to find Jimi a good home here with a western family. An aussie lady called Peta has been working on that and she's found an animal mad South African couple who have adopted wee Jimi.
He now looks fatter and healthier and we can feel good that we gave him a second chance at life. We said farewell to the lad today and wished him our best.

Here are the latest images of him. As you see he has come a long way.

The animals we left behind in Nu Zild with friends and family while we took off on our crazy adventure in the sandpit are still on our minds.

Our cavoodle called Dookie is being looked after by some of Samantha's friends in Wellington until she returns from San Francisco in a few months time.

Bazil, our border collie with a dab of springer cross, is back at his second home with Sallie after a brief stay with Jade. Baz loves walks through Sallie's farm, lounging in the Hawke's Bay sunshine and rain. He especially loves the dead things found on the farm from time to time. Here he is visiting my Buddha shrine which Sallie is also kindly minding for us.

And that's it for the NZ contingent. Sadly Soda (my cat) has been a casualty of our overseas adventure. Entrusted to in-laws, Soda unfortunately ran away to freedom. I hope he found his own Jacky like Jimi did!

But wait...there's more. The latest addition to this menagerie has joined this weekend.

Jacky has bought a horse back in NZ. His name is Strike Irish and we are busy thinking of a new paddock name for him.

Love and peace - Wozza