Pack up your fork and spoon (Carole Bayer Sager)

I like shedding a skin.

I mean, I like the idea of shedding a skin - throwing old clutter away, being mindful of what's important to keep, and packing that up to move to a new location.

SWMBO and I do it reasonably often.

It'll soon be goodbye to the 13 acres of 'Red Phoenix Farm' in Otane and hello to the 8 acres of 'Rochdene' in Waipukarau. Ten minutes further south in effect.

This means a week to pack your toys away, your 45s away, your alibis away, your Spanish flies away, your one-more-tries away, your old tie-dyes away.

SWMBO has been in full swing while I've been living the death throes of an end of a school term. 

Ends of terms are always like that - the walking dead; the sick and the lame; school shows to sit through; goodbyes farewells and hearty well done everybody's get us done and dusted - now it's just see ya soons and we're outta there.

So - lettuce raise a glass to the packing and the moving and the unpacking of the next two weeks! To the shedding of skin!!

Love and peace - Wooza (in a fit of lethagy) 

You can count on me (Bruno Mars)

Loads going on in Wozza's world lately. 

Stuff I don't write about on Wozza's Place usually.

I used to - right at the start of writing this blog I reported on all the weird and wacky stuff that consumes all of our lives from time to time. So in that mode, this last week was about:

• Buying a new mattress for SWMBO and me
• Selling Red Phoenix Farm (we hope to go unconditional next week)
• Buying a new place for the horses, dogs, cat, sheep, birds and us (we hope to go unconditional next week)
• Marking student work so that the reports I need to write today are as up to date as poss.
• Presenting stuff to the staff about Twitter, Blogging, and my Year 12 students
• Buying the new Ringo Starr album (I'm a completist remember)
• Seeing Jade, here for a visit after her holiday in the Pacific with William
• Continuing to not eat junk
• Dealing with lawyers, real estate agents and their PAs (see buying and selling a house bullets)
• Being a coffee hag for my friends (servant leadership y'all)
• Reading as much of Tune In as I could (It's AWESOME)
• Reading as much of Walrus Gumboot, Vox headlines, The Guardian, Medium.com as poss
• Watching as many stock piled episodes of Silicon Valley, Location Location Location, Grand Designs, FIFA Under 20 World Cup and Women's World Cup as I could

There's more but you get the gist.

We all live lives like this, don't we. 

I looked up from my keyboard  a second ago and looked outside.

The sun is just up. Long shadows. Bit windy. But beautiful.

You've been updated!

Love and peace out - Wozza

Yeah, tomorrow may rain, so I'll follow the sun (The Beatles)

We're in the late summer/ early autumn vibe on Red Phoenix Farm.

I love this time of the year. Autumn is like a boss!

That means the grass is about to need mowing again, the shadows are lengthening, the winter wood supply needs addressing, and the trees are looking lush with the recent rain but getting ready for the change of seasons.

This time of the year also signals that school's back in session.

My summer routine - 8 am lazy start/outside physical work/late nights, has been replaced by school mode - 5 am alarm/brain work/cream crackered by 9pm.

Like the start of a new football season, the start of the year is exciting every time. Students are super keen to embrace a different circumstance, and it's the same with teachers. We're keen to embrace the new signings - bring them into the team culture; get out onto the practice field and get ready for game day.

Speaking of football: pity about the Superbowl result. I felt sorry for Pete Carroll and the Seahawks but I felt worse for the smug New England Patriots. Nothing like a success to prefigure a giant fall.

The Seahawks will be better for the loss (they are already the bookies favourites to win it all next year), the Patriots will always be smug.

As for my other teams: Arsenal are in their usual January situation - poised ready to break into the top four (I'm trying hard to ignore the loss on the weekend to the old enemy),the F.A. Cup is still a target, and they are about to get knocked out of the Champions League play offs; Rochdale are doing superbly - just out of the play off teams which is perfect. I wouldn't want to see them in the Championship - they would change - and not for the better; and Stephen Curry and the Golden State Warriors are doing well in the NBA.


Love and peace - Wozza

When the heat's got you down...get yourself in that cool cool water (The Beach Boys)

Summer holidays on Red Phoenix Farm contain some routine elements:

• A project (this time it's been trimming trees and gardens on RPF's 13 acres)
• NFL playoff games leading to the February first Superbowl (these are always closer than the regular season games - more focused eyes on the prize now)
• 35 degree heat (crazy)
• The silly season on TV and in the English Premiership goes into hyperdrive (Arsenal doing okay - currently 5th; Rochdale spectacular in League One and FA Cup)
• Books - Lee Child seems to produce a new Jack Reacher adventure on cue (and others like Pete Townshend, Neil Young and Ray Davies autobios)
• Brown fields and hills (keep reading)

Red Phoenix Farm is rebranded as Brown Phoenix Farm about now until autumn rains kick in. 

We're not alone as these snaps show:

SWMBO lunges her horses in this paddock looking north-west

Looking north-east from our house 'lawn'

South-east-ish and our sheep have slim pickins (treeline on right is our
boundary)

The road east to the beach (middle ground tree line is our boundary)

House on the left (northwards)

Treeline again our boundary. South hill paddock with some green at the
bottom

A yet to be harrowed paddock also looking north - dry!
Middle ground treeline is our boundary

Love and peace - Wozza (Go Seahawks!)

Baby, sometimes I think of you (The Only Ones)

A big welcome to Red Phoenix farm for LOML's new horse - was 'Jimmy' now renamed 'Neo' (by me). Why Neo? Neo is the ancient Greek word for 'young' but more relevantly, Neo in The Matrix is also The One. 

Neo has settled into the general scheme of things well and looks right at home; even the sheep have been keen to say howdy!

And now...back to poetry corner to finish off his Roctober post:

Born Alone
I met them at close of day 

when I had spread it all on 

the linen cloth he dropped - 

more sullenly than wearily - you know. 

The flax-clam festered in my heart. 

What is it to be born alone?

Love and peace - Wozza

All the comforts of home have been denied (The Only Ones)

I'm just emerging from a marathon marking session and I'm cream crackered. My brain struggles to remain on task for long periods of time generally but when faced with a continual stream of essays it overloads and turns to mush.

It's been a dollop of English internal standards for three year levels with multiple essays for each student followed by a plethora of benchmark practice exams which generated a whole new pile of essays to mark. Student reports were thrown into the mix as well.

Sadly the Wozza blog and the lawns suffer at these times as a consequence. As well as exam marking I also spent nine hours over the course of last weekend trying to tame the lawns at Red Phoenix Farm. 

Inconceivable.

We do have a study break coming up next week during part of which I am attending the ulearn conference in Rotorua. The break will, at least, provide some regular lawn cutting days, smiley face.

I feel like I've short changed you a bit with this post so here's a poem to tide you over.

This is a little something I call...

Discovery 

I awoke close

by the trouble on the bus.

Fuming alongside the conductor 

I discover 

the day inside my life.

Love and peace - Wozza

My heart is aching for you little lamb, I can help you out but I cannot help you in (Wings)

You find us having finished lambing season at Red Phoenix Farm. 

That always means life and death unfortunately. So far we've lost a ewe and, obviously, the lambs she was carrying; I've also had to bury five other lambs.

One seemed healthy - lasted a couple of days and then I went out one morning to find it had died in the night. Another one was part of triplets that didn't really survive the birth and the others have appeared fine but mysteriously have not made it.

Mother nature can be cruel and we had to give the remaining triplets to Sallie to try to hand rear because the mum is rather pathetic. I put covers on all three and I think that gave them the chance to survive but the mother ignored them and if left to her tender mercies we're sure they also would be dead by now.

The good news there is that Aunty Sallie has had success with two of the three lambs she ultimately had to foster.

The other good news is that the place is buzzing with a plethora of young bleats looking for mum. I tend to lose count after the first two or three. Needless to say they are cute, adorable little souls.

Love and peace - Wozza

It's like that and that's the way it is (Run DMC)

Been a little while since I got all nature on your nether regions so here's this morning's sunrise from our front door, with a token arty shot of it, and me, reflected in our front windows.

How's that serenity?

Love and peace - Wozza

The river keeps on flowing, but the banks are ever changing (Mostly Autumn)

ART courtyard - pergola, planter and trellis by Wozza

The projects around Red Phoenix Farm have been getting ticked off jolly smartly of late:

the pergolas are all painted and looking spiffy;

A.R.T. is now complete - both the inside and the courtyard (left) is done;

the summer sails are all up;

hedges and gardens are looking peachy.

Next big project for the summer is the carport (cool name - the place you dock your car!). I've been scheming and planning the carport for about a year - ever since we started to transform the garage into A.R.T. I'm also keen to work on a new aviary and chookhouse over the next few holidays.

View from ART

I love building projects - so rewarding and challenging for me and a complete change from the mental twists and turns of teaching. This year has been huge - returning to teaching in Nu Zild after so long away in Al Ain and then China was always going to test me.

I'm generally happy with how I went but I know there will be improvements next year as I become more familiar with stuff (the school, the girls, the curriculum, the staff, the expectations), but I'm excited about 2014 and the chance to build on this start. Teaching is weird in that respect - it's like a yearly cycle of rebirth.


Nature watch returns - the spring into summer transition means the cherry blossom on the cherry tree behind A.R.T. has turned into cherries. This has not escaped the notice of the hungry birds who have been helping themselves.

SWMBO's cunning plan

So SWMBO hatched a plan so fiendishly cunning you could put a tail on it and call it a weasel - simply go to Giant Spiders Are Us and buy the biggest giantest spider they had in stock to drape said cherry tree in said giant spider's web.

The results were...ah...good.

The hungry birds flew down, get caught in the web, became angry birds and were then devoured, pacman style, by the massive metre long spider!

Moral of that particular story - don't piss off SWMBO by trying to gorge yourself on cherrys before she can!

We've had some purlers of sunsets lately as well. As avid readers will remember - an Aussie wattle tree (this here is called the wattle, the emblem of our land, you can stick it in a bottle or you can hold it in your hand) fell down some time ago - damned unreliable thing - and opened up a window onto some of our front paddocks and across to some distant lands. The sun now filters through the gap in spectacular fashion as I'm sure you'll agree.

View through the wattle gap, Max and Meg in foreground

And in other news: I am no longer a beardy. I don't know how my friend Stas does it. He's had facial hair since he was about 9 and his beard is massive.

I must be a sook.

I lasted three weeks into Movember and shaved it all off this afternoon. I got sick of touching the whiskers, sick of hairs getting into my food and drink and sick of not looking like me.

Love and peace - Wozza (can you see the real me? Can ya? CAN YA?)

With the strength of a new day dawning and the beautiful sun (Uriah Heep)

A catch up post for y'all this time out. I get way out of routine when I'm travelling. This one comes to you live from the A.R.T. Room (Abbey Road Two).

We are back in Otane at the old homestead (a.k.a. Red Phoenix Farm, also called Southfork by Jan of Al Ain) at present.

The place is parched at present. The grass has all been burnt off by the baking sun with no real prospect of rain anytime soon. By comparison, my weather guide on the computer tells me it's 4 degrees and raining in Wuxi today. Funny old world innit?

Loads has been happening recently: we were on Waiheke until this week while SWMBO had her MRI (results yesterday were fantastic and such a relief after a long period of agonising) where we spent time with Keegan and Margo/Clayto; flew to Napier on Monday and went to see Jade (and Tango) in Palmerston North yesterday. 

A new day dawning (who'd a thought Uriah Heep would provide the very appropriate post title - from July Morning if you were wondering - you know you were).

We have a visit to Taranaki lined up for the near future as we await instructions about a return to Wuxi (we had a one way way ticket home as there is a suggestion there may be changes afoot in Wuxi). All a tad unsettling but we are enjoying the beautiful sun and heat in Nu Zild while we can.

Love and peace - Wozza

P.S. My pictures are still not loading so I'll have to resort to Facebook again.