Of shepherds and skies and fizzy plonk....

It's been another busy week in Te Horo, with the expectation that life will get busier as we move into December crazy time. I was in Auckland on Monday and Tuesday for work. We've alot on with lots to do to complete the integration of Fort Dodge (another animal health company we have bought) with Pfizer.
Paul has been busy too with team manager meetings and project work. He will be travelling a bit in December as the year wraps up.
The girls break up from school for 6 weeks on the 17th Dec, so we will have the usual holiday juggle through to February. Despite all that - I am really looking forward to Christmas and having a few days off to celebrate with family and friends. Which leads me nicely on to this:

The key ingredient to one of our Christmas farm traditions - elderflower champagne. It was a huge hit last year (especially with my Dad, who was very disappointed we only had 3-4 bottles to quaff). So Paul and I have been keeping a close eye on our tree - shouldn't be long now 'til we harvest the flowers and get brewing! We spotted a tree on the side of the road up near Otaki as well, so we will go in search of that this weekend. More flowers means more plonk...

The weather is almost spring like - but we are still having cold snaps and very wet days. I snapped these on Sunday night, after locking the chooks away for the night. Gorgeous colours, with the promise of a good day...

When the kids were small, we taught them the old weather rhyme "Red sky at night..". Kyra recited it to me the other day on the way to school -

"Red sky at night, shepherds delight,

Red sky in the morning, shepherds dewarning"

'Bunny - what was that last thing you said?'

"shepherds dewarning - why?"

-chortle- its shepherds warning, not de-warning...'

Blank look.

"But it rhymes...."

Funny how kids fill in the blanks....