No time like snow time

What is it about snow that brings out the child in me? A quick glimpse outside early this morning showed a world of white glistening in the moonlight and I couldn't wait to get outside to take photos. I walked down to work on a road transformed into a white carpet; just my footprints showing until a van passed me. I looked for kiwi prints but not this time, maybe tomorrow!

Snow mixed with hail - so pretty

My footsteps between the van tracks

The shade house has coped with the hail okay, unlike what I presume must have been the wind at the weekend. It was disappointing to find it awry with the tensioned wires sagging and all the seedlings in the greenhouse upside-down on the floor. It was as though a giant had picked the shade house up and shaken it. It didn't seem that windy here so I'm still scratching my head, and also wondering how I can anchor it down better.

The shade house was shunted back around 400mm and lifted up on to the path

Inside was a mess with the cardboard floor rucked up and the shelves in the
plastic greenhouse fallen down

My new-fangled Rice Cube was christened a few days ago with reasonable results although I will do things differently next time. I used long grain rice and it wasn't quite gluggy enough so the cubes were in danger of falling apart. I had fun though and they tasted good!

I bought my Rice Cube from Stevens - yum, cubed sushi

I couldn't put the nori round as they were too fragile but you get the idea

Another first was installing new fire bricks in my Metro woodburner - 1 top baffle and 2 side bricks.

New firebricks all installed - easier than I thought. The white extension on
the top baffle was completely gone on the old one

 Finally some pics from my Deep Bay rat lines today...

Fungi growing on the chocolate drop bait

Close-up of above

Snow on Mt Rakeahua - looking across a choppy Paterson Inlet