Of ducks, rhubarb and pianos.

It's opening weekend of the duck shooting season here in New Zealand. An important part of Kiwi culture or (culcha as we call it:P). It runs from the first weekend in May till some time in June. I don't know when, but I assume the duck shooters do. Preparations are made for weeks beforehand. Ducks are fed grain to attract them to your particular water way, Mai-mais are constructed or re-furbished (hut made out of whatever is to hand that will afford reasonable camouflage and access to said ducks without said ducks noticing - yeah right!) on the edges of lakes, and duck calls are practiced (there's a special device used to make duck calls something like a mouth organ crossed with a reed), and decoys are dusted off in bloke's sheds all over NZ. This year there are supposed to be slim pickings in the Waikato and Northland due to the drought conditions, but I don't expect that will put anyone off.

In the Taranaki Daily News on Saturday morning in an article entitled, "A day for 'real' men",

a certain Mr Mc Donald is quoted as follows: "Any self respecting duck shooter has a black lab. You can get away with yellow or brown labs, but anything that's not a lab is not a dog."

(Lab = labrador ). Get the picture?

My weekend has been very busy blog chics, although no duck shooting was involved, and no ducks were harmed in the making of this blog post I assure you. It began with a four hour trip to move a piano, bought on Trade Me for my son's 21st birthday. I managed to find one in Hamilton, where Callum is at uni, and to press gang flatmates and a friends into muscle power to move it. It took four of them, and was such a delicate and intense operation, I completely neglected to take photos because I was very busy telling Jessie not to trip over the flower pot and Jason to mind out for that low branch!

This is where we always stop for coffee on the way to Hamilton. It's almost exactly half way, and is very remote, but oh so cute, and always good coffee and scones. It's a little coastal village called Mokau. This is the River Run cafe. Famous for it's whitebait fritters, but I can only vouch for the coffee!

This is over the road. State Highway something or other. Can you believe that? This is a main road.

Had to have a go at a woolshed or too as we sped past.



Today I have been very busy domestic goddess wise. Everything at the Magpie House is spic and span, and even the garden is weeded and the lawns mown.

I found this when I was cleaning Sarah's room.

The blog Goblins got me for a while as I procrastinated about weeding and mowing. I had to take a little diversion around the blogs first - while the ground dried out you understand...

Having achieved all that I thought I might cut some of the rhubarb
that grows in my weed /compost heap
and make it into something.

Which I did. I put it into a modified ginger crunch recipe that originally came from Sweet Mary's blog.

And it came out like this! I did a little taste test, and you can't taste the rhubarb that much, as it is a bit overpowered by the ginger. It's kind of a bit like a rhubarb ginger crumble slice.

Very elegant I think.