Chutney time and David's poorly foot

I have a blogpost prepared about our Parkwood Seekers' trip to Sydney (undertaken before Easter), but it's waiting for the photos and I've had laptop/phone not talking to each other issues - they have been in the too hard basket.

But this morning, I'm making feijoa (1.6kg) and date (400g) chutney - plus it's also got 4 apples, 6 onions (oh how I cried), grated green ginger, a chopped chilli and 2 tbsp of cumin seeds, demerara sugar (no brown sugar in either pantry), and apple cider vinegar.

Once my crying had stopped and the dates & apples were added, in went the sugar and cumin seeds.

And once I'd stirred it, this is what is looked like. Now after 20 minutes or so, the dates are disintegrating and spreading their colour. Smells yum!

It's got a good half- three quarters of an hour to simmer, and then I will jar it. And it has to be left for a week. How will I keep David away from it?

And in other news: David's poorly foot. Some time ago (back in January, so I blame Julia) David tripped up some steps at Coastlands and grazed his lower calf and the top of his foot. All was well, nary a moan, until a few weeks ago before we went to Sydney and he got me to look at his foot. It looked infected and I was sure I could see pus under a scab - why was there a scab three months after the original fall, I ask you?

Long story short, I had a poke with a needle and got some pus out, put a kawakawa leaf on it, a pad over the that and then a couple of lengths of plaster. We thought it would be a good idea to check with the Parkwood nurses. They suggested going to the Weekend Clinic in Paraparaumu where David was give some antibiotics.

Then when we got back from Sydney, it was no better, so it was off to the Wound Clinic - sounds impressive and serious, eh? 

Once again, it seems as though David's extreme healing response (remember the anterior phymosis in his eye back in 2019?) had kicked in, and instead of growing new skin with a healthy blood supply, his foot was growing fibres (fibrinogen - I remember 6th form biology) across the wound. These had formed a hard scab, that I described as a carapace.

After a couple of attempts by chemical means to soften and loosen the carapace over a number of days, one of the Medical Centre nurses very gently pulled off the carapace. Since then we (I) have been dressing it with Inadine patches (iodine infused cloth).

I know the carapace (which has grown back) is smaller, but what's meant to be new skin growing around it looks very white, i.e. no visible blood supply that new skin would get.

I have the backup plan though - I have sharpened the axe and am ready to amputate when/if required. Adair, a very dear zero degrees friend with extensive nursing experience, is happy to come and help me. We have history - many years ago at a dinner party when a few of the other guests were under the influence of inhaled indimica, she and I had offered to perform a vasectomy on one guy who was being rather obnoxious. He thought we were joking until we started to clear the table ...

So watch this space.

Algae is awful!

 My second to last post was about Kevin and Josh cleaning out the ponds in front of our and Janet's places. We all had such high hopes of getting rid of what Janet so delicately calls green snot - the ghastly algae that was really prevalent in our pond but not in Janet's. And we were excited to be able to see the bottom of the ponds and the rocks and the fish and the frogs.

But somehow our dreams were dashed - within a week or so a different kind of algae took over both of our ponds - a dark green almost microscopic algae that just totally discoloured the water so that it was pea-soup green - after about 4 weeks, we couldn't see below the surface of the water and we could barely see the fish when they came up to feed in the mornings.

At first, I relied on Kevin to clean out the newly installed filter/pump. But with all the other gardening work around the village, he was only able to come about once a month. and when I watched him clearing the filters out in situ one day, I could see that it was a hiding to nothing having it be his task.

You can barely see the oxygen weed near the top left of the photo.

 

I also realised that there was no way the filter could get rid of this stuff on its own - it needed chemicals! And it had to be chemicals that did not harm the fish.

So I looked on the net and discovered a place in Napier that advertised Algaefix that purported to be safe for fish; I rang and spoke to Andre a very helpful guy and organsied to purchase said Algaefix and two tubs of Sludge Destroyer to be used when the algae had mostly karked it.

For 3 weeks-ish, I dosed both ponds with Algaefix, and before doing so each time, David and I pulled the pump apart, took the filters off and I carted them into the laundry to clean them out.

For the last couple of weeks, I've been dosing the ponds with the Sludge Destroyer - it's a powdery mix of bacteria (that love to eat dead algae) and barley.

This is what they look like when I take them out of the pump - I think this is dead algae/sludge because it looks a bit browner than the algae and it smells...

 

And this is them after a big squeeze to get the surface muck off, about 5 rinses under the running warm tap, a wash with laundry powder, and a final wash with Handy Andy - a floor cleaner that has some ammonia in it.

An upside down view of the dismantled pump with the newly cleaned filters refitted. The next step is to tip that bit the right way up, then put it back into the bottom 'bucket' of the pump that we have cleaned out and refilled with water. There are 5 or 6 large clips to hold the top bit to the bottom bucket. Today, given David is out, I put the whole thing back together by myself.

I think we are winning slowly - the ponds contain about 20,000 litres of water all up, so there was a shitload of algae in them, and I use that word advisedly! We can now see about 15cm below the surface of the water which is a great improvement. And I am not going to let a microscopic plant beat me! I too have persistence and patience...

Please note that the fish are looking healthy - none of them are floating upside down, and none of them have strange tumours growing out of their sides. I reckon both chemicals we are using really are safe enough for them. And we are better able to see them now.

 

Absence explained

 It's months since I posted; and to be frank, I had pretty much decided to close the blog down. There were a couple of reasons for that:

• unbeknownst to me, I was suffering a bit with long covid - tiredness after any exercise and a general sense of ennui. Not surprising having had covid 3 times (once on arrival in the UK in April 2023, and twice last year). I had put the symptoms down to ageing, especially since we had moved into the retirement village and I thought it was likely to be the effect of leaving the wider community behind and being ensconced ever so comfortably here in Parkwood;
  
• I often felt that I was writing/talking into the abyss - I'd had very few comments on the posts in the last while, and as I was no longer writing about our narrowboating adventures, I thought it was likely people had given up reading. After all, bletherings about life in a retirement village or cleaning the ponds or baking sourdough are hardly captivating reading - in spite of my occasionally quirky takes on some of the activities...

So I decided to let it go. I did think about starting up a new blog which would not be subject to the false advertising of having nb Waka Huia in the title. But I could not find a way to start a new blog! Every time I tried, it just brought this one up.

I was all set to call it quits until a friend in the USA emailed to say she missed my regular updates of our lives here. So Judy, you have spurred me back into action.

Also our friend Sarah, who is writing a book about dealing with the various systems when living with a partner with dementia, encouraged me to keep going.

So here I am: explaining myself!

I am going to keep writing and posting, and if you are a reader, please leave comments for me. I really do appreciate reading them and responding to them as well.

Just so you know what will be coming up in future posts that cover the last 5 months, here is a list:

• 50 years of marriage celebrated;
• a 7 week action-packed, hilarity-filled visit from our friend Julia, and the travels we undertook together
• that will be a number of posts, I think;
• a visit from fellow boating bloggers, Lisa and David of nb What a Lark;
  
• David and the Parkwood ukelele group;
  
• an upcoming trip to Sydney with other Parkwood people;
• probably a bit about the ongoing fun with the Aquamove groups;
• and very possibly I will stray into the occasional political rant ...
  

Stay tuned and get your commenting underway!