There’s been a loud ticking sound around the place in the last week. Â No, it’s not the cicadas arriving early but the sound of jobs being ticked off the list. Â Well, I confess, it’s actually writing being smudged off the chalk board but I like the... 
There was a most indignant look on the basset’s faces when they were woken from their slumbers this morning at an ungodly hour. Â After much stretching, scratching and yawning they succumbed to the early rising, but purely on the grounds that breakfast was being... 
With a taste that can be as sharp as their thorns gooseberries are not to everyone’s liking. I love the  crisp bite and piquant flavour that livens the palette whether you eat them straight from the bush or wrap them in a luxurious blanket of cream and sugar.... As my bones creak and muscles ache I can only imagine this is how Sisyphus would have felt on his quest to push a boulder up a hill. Whilst much of the rest of New Zealand heads to the beach, the lakes or the mountains we stay at home and make our annual effort to... 
