It’s still raining another day later and the bassets and I are thoroughly fed up. After spending yesterday rescuing trees and plodging through the mud in wellies I yearn for the summer sun to return.

I know that the farmers need the moisture and we need the rain for the tank but things are starting to get out of hand with enough rain I think in the last 36 hours to make up for what we’ve been missing.

Ever wondered what an empty water reservoir looks like in drought. Here’s some photoblogging so you can see.

The Stuart Macaskill lakes serving the Wellington mains water system just down the hill from where we live.

The severe weather we were expecting arrived last night. According to the newspapers it wasn’t as bad as people feared but it sounded like rain of biblical proportions on the roof.

Still at least our water tank will be full which is always a comforting thought.

The lashing wind and rain has caused havoc with my new trees. I’ve had an almost wholesale collapse of trees already delivered so it was a challenge putting them all upright again this morning. Not sure my garden twine is up to the job of keeping some of the bigger trees secure in high winds. Mental note to get some proper rope to lash them together.

Talking of trees – we had another delivery today but this time smaller species and more native to New Zealand. Given the high winds and rain that seem to be with us at the moment it was tricky finding a spot to store these plants. Although you might think with 6 acres that won’t be a problem but it is when the excavators are due on site soon to finish the top soil spreading and finish the drive.

In the end I thought the safest, if not the most sheltered, would be to lash the plants together to the house in the existing flower borders. Not the most attractive I know but at least it’s a practical short term home. Hope they don’t get too used to their surroundings as they’ll soon have to be shifted elsewhere and survive wind and rain lashing on their own!

For new and returning visitors to Domestic Executive, here’s a quick link round up for you to enjoy.

We’ve been living in New Zealand now for over two years. Don’t ask me where the time has gone as it hardly seems like yesterday since I was loading my chattels into a container in Oxfordshire. The goal for moving 12,000 miles away from family and friends was to find some peace and quiet in the country and cut loose from the corporate life. I’ve certainly done that and now the hard bit comes to enjoying what we’ve got. Even in New Zealand it’s easy to get into the work rhythm when being a Domestic Executive requires new habits and passions that revolve more around the demands of nature than shareholders or stakeholders. I ponder on life as a Domestic Executive from time to time – click here to read Domestic Executive Musings.

Our house is a fulfilment of a long held dream to have a house with a Walton’s porch and turrets. The build process last year was a roller coaster ride of highs and lows. It’s only with the benefit of hindsight that I can now see how lucky we were to get our build completed in the time we did and with relatively little problem. Our neighbours have suffered much more. Doug, our country living hunter next door, has had a lengthy delay with his architectural plans after his architect became seriously ill. He missed the opportunity to build last year (he’s building his own place) so will have to wait till the end of next year now to start his own build. His parents (neighbours closest to the main road), bought Doug’s house and have rennovated it with the idea of making some extra money – they’ve now been hit with the propertly slump and it’s still on the market after a couple of months of showing. Mike and Andrea (our neighbours on the hill) are due to get handover on their place at the end of June. It’s been a painful process of mishaps and mistakes with the biggest one being a budget blow out that has meant that they’ve got to finish the house by decorating it themselves. Today we’ve got the painters and builders back to complete the work they they should have done within 2 weeks of moving in – since it’s six months now it only goes to prove that builders have their own time zone where 1 week=1 month. You can see our housebuilding adventures through my houseblogging reports.

Part of the Domestic Executive picture has always been to have two basset hounds to love. Fortnum and Mason have certainly brought bundles of activity to our lives and I can’t imagine life without them now. If I’d known what I was letting myself in for when we brought them home I am sure I wouldn’t have done it but am pleased I did. They are unruly, boisterous boys with limited hearing capability for basic commands. They eat, sleep and hoon around living a life of pure pleasure and fun. They are a constant worry and expense but they are now part of our family and give me hours of entertainment and unconditional love that is hard to adore. You can read about our Basset Boys in my bassetblogging posts.

When you have 6 acres of land and grand plans for growing and a menagerie of animals there is always something to do. There’s no Ground Force transformation taking place here just backbreaking digging, weeding, strimming and mowing that seems to have a marginal effect. We have at least established a garden around the house and immediate plans for a second go at growing a lawn and planting trees before the winter sets in. My winter project is going to be planning in detail my kitchen garden. I’m getting inspiration at the moment from Geoff Hamilton through some vintage episodes of his on DVD. Geoff makes it all look so easy so as long as I stick to his advice and that of Alan and Monty I’m sure that it will all come right in the end. The biggest drawback at the moment is my lack of carpentry skills to do some basic chores such as built my compost, border protection from basset fencing and a chicken house. Still you’ve got to start somewhere so my goal this week is to get the necessary ingredients (I mean materials) and follow my plans. After all how difficult can it be to build a box to put garden rubbish in? You can follow our gardening and country living exploits.

Being a Domestic Executive has opened up a new interest for me – blogging. I’ve loved writing my daily snippets and enjoyed the feedback from people. Another winter project is brewing of the publishing kind. I won’t say more about it now but hopefully Domestic Executive fans will enjoy a new look and approach to blogging by Spring. Also, inspired by reading other people’s blogs I’ve got a new blogging idea developing that I’m hoping will bring inspiration, insight and laughter to a new cyberspace audience. Mum’s the word at the moment but don’t be surprised if I tap your shoulder by email to be part of my new blogging venture.

In the meantime, I hope you continue to enjoy my Domestic Executive adventures!

New Zealand has weather warnings today that we’re about to be deluged with rain with a threat of tornadoes. Just as well we managed to get the rain collection from the barn roof connected to the main water tank today. This means we’ll now be able to maximise the rain amount of we collect.

We were planning to install another tank to avoid the water shortage possibilities next year but the costs were much higher than we imagined so we’ll see how we go with just one tank but more water collection when it does rain.

High excitement too that we’ve had another tap installed outside by the barn. This will come in handy for watering the trees and save on the feet when refreshing the basset water bowl. It’s a great sense of satisfaction when I tick things off my list. After a slow and frustrating few weeks it’s good to be making progress at last.

If we do get the projected rainfall this week there’s a danger that parts of New Zealand that were suffering the most with droughts will be dealing with floods which I am sure bring their own brand of difficulties for those in weather dependent industries like farming. I’ll keep you posted.

Here’s a satellite image taken last night shows the thunderstorm in the Tasman Sea heading towards New Zealand. Looks grim.

Fortnum’s been overdoing it and ended up back at the vets. Probably too much hooning around but he’s now confined to gentle play and lots of rest in his crate. We’re not sure whether it’s an injury or whether he’s got growing pains but nevertheless rest is the only way for him to get it better.

As you can imagine this has not gone down well. It’s confusing for him and for Mason who is almost as much affected since he’s lost his playmate and keeps getting told off for simply having a good time.

We were due to go to a basset walk today – the first we were to attend – but only managed the meet and greet before seeing a baggle of bassets head off down the path. Fortnum and Mason did enjoy seeing other dogs and were a bit disappointed to be left behind. Next time they’ll get their chance.

Here’s a couple of pictures of their latest antics.

It was another mini milestone this week with the arrival of some autumnal colour at last. This was in the shape of our first delivery of trees – 42 in all – about 50% of the first tranch of planting to be done.

It was quite a sight to see the HGV delivery them without a hitch. This was because the fencer and I have been in dialogue as to whether the gateway he’s just built would be wide enough for trucks, diggers and the like. We now know that it is!

The delay in getting the ground works men back to finish the drive and spread the top soil means we’ll be tending our trees in their pots for a while yet. To give them the best chance of surviving our winds we’ve lined them up and secured them to the fence and barn.

It’s exciting to see the next part of the landscape plan coming to life. Now we just need some fine weather in about two weeks so we get the drive finished and the top soil spread ready for our tree planting extravaganza.

There are thousands of Brits here in NZ adopting life kiwi style. Many are avid bloggers so there are plenty of sites to choose from. Here’s one I found recently which really chimed with my thinking Brit in the Boonies. Check out the archives on the right to find the rest of the articles that follow.

When I was a kid I always used to be slightly embarressed that my father was capable of over engineering most things. For example, we couldn’t just have a rubbish bin – it had to be a grit bin which was one of the products that we manufactured in the family firm. There was a long list of other DIY projects that were highly specified and in the event more than fit for purpose.

Still it was a wonder to have a DIY Dad who can turn his hand to most things and has served me well in my home improvements over the years. In the true tradition of my father I think we’ve now got an over engineered chicken run. It will however last for a long time and there’s no skimping on the space or the appearance. Look and and see!

Now the coup is ready I’d better get on with the next bit of my country life dream. One of my favourite leaving presents from my dear friend Ruth in the UK was a book about keeping chickens. This has been my inspiration for some time and now we have a home in which to put the chickens it’s time I started learning what I’m suposed to do with these feathered things.

Next step is to get a house for nesting and some chooks and we’ll soon be scrambling our own eggs for breakfast – how amazing is that!

It’s going to be a lazy today in honour of my birthday. It will be minimal chores and hopefully time doing things that I wouldn’t normally do.

Although our morning routine didn’t change that much I did manage to open my pressies before having to get the boys up for their ablusions and breakfast. It was a bit of a struggle though as they were rather enjoying playing with the paper from the present they’d bought me – a striking possum beanie hat and pair of gloves.

It’s never easy basset photoblogging but here’s my best efforts!

It’s been months since I started my search for a fencer and after a couple of false starts with two people I finally found a fencing contractor that would come to take our hard earned cash.

Hugh and his mate finally turned up a week late but in a few short hours they’ve reinstated the deer fencing from the side of the house up the drive, put in the posts for the new gate and created a door through the fence to the soon to be chicken run.

It’s amazing how a bit of fencing can give such definition to an area. It is of course not just aesthetic benefit when complete the house area will be secure for Bassets to roam a little more at their will.

They’ve loved having the fencers on site. New feet to get under, smells to sniff and something other than me to stare at from the veranda. Little do they know that it’s these entertainers that are to contain their wanderings which I am sure they won’t like at all!

More work to be done but here’s some interim photoblogging for you to enjoy!