WWoofing On

Our wwoofing on continued at Niels and Janette's and so far, it has been a delightful experience. We picked up many skills that we weren't quite accustomed to back in Singapore, like gardening.

There are lots of gardens in Singapore, just not in your backyard. Here in New Zealand, it's quite common to have your own garden.

Naked Ladies in the drive way.

Naked Lakies in their full glory.

Toadstools, like in fairyland or super mario. Pretty but poisonous though.

Our hosts Niels and Janette were brave enough to entrust their garden to us. We try our best to help them with the garden.

Gardening is like hairdressing, you give trees and plants a haircut.

After a while, you learn the ropes, get a hang of things and then go from Scissorhands trimming plants to sawing tree branches.

What we really enjoy about having your own garden is to be able to eat from it. More than half of the vegetable dish came from the garden. It's comforting to know that the food you're eating is fresh and hasn't been tampered with beforehand.

Janette is a great cook and Gwyn has been the ardent understudy in the kitchen. She has learnt lots of useful tricks and her book of recipes has been expanding quickly.

This is one of her favorite, baked pears with ice cream. Yummilicious!

Dinner time with our lovely hosts, Niels and Janette. We have been very fortunate to meet you both!

Weather in Wellington is not always sunshine. There are bad days and when they come, we turn to indoor activities, like painting.

Two tins of paint, a couple of brushes and off we went. Painting is definitely not an easy task. It takes a lot of patience and precision to get a wall right but the satisfaction at the end of the day makes all the effort worthwhile.

Apart from gardening and painting, we got to play dog walkers as well. Meet Barney...

and Bertie.

We take them out for walks during the day.

and the beach for a swim.

Barney loves his stick. Doesn't this picture of Barney remind you of Gandalf from The Lord of the Rings. Could be the stick, grey hair and wise old dog look we think!

On the contrary, Bertie's not quite the same. He's young, eighteen months and still maturing. Isn't he adorable?

And then there is Boris, the cat.

Boris actually made us like cats. It was our first close encounter with a cat and embarrassingly, through Boris, we heard our first cat purrs. Like a gentle car engine, Gwyn finds it therapeutic.

Cats are quite different from dogs. Unlike dogs, they don't go to you when you call them. They will come to you only when they want to. Like this.

And they're really quite independent creatures. You can come home and have no idea where your cat is. They leave home during the day and come home only when it's dinner or bed time. Here is Boris waiting at the door for us to return from a day out.

The three Bs are gems in the household, adorable and affectionate. Niels and Janette have been terrific hosts. We will definitely stay in touch when our wwoofing ends. :)