Well, summer is long gone now. After a long dry spell, the last three days of May brought us more than 200mm of rain, making up for the lack of decent rain since February. The usually softly flowing stream became a roaring muddy river, our dam overflowed and created a new creek in the gully behind our chook house, and the low-lying paddocks and our driveway had surface flooding. Thankfully our house is up on a hill, and we stayed warm and dry inside. Other areas weren't so fortunate. Several rivers burst their banks and washed out bridges, roads, and paddocks. For several days, there were no open roads out of Fairlie. And even after the flooding receded, we could only get as far as Timaru - all roads north to Christchurch were closed (except via the west coast which would have turned a 2.5-hour drive into an 11 hour one). Thankfully they were able to put a temporary fix on the Ashburton bridge to allow traffic to flow again, just in time for our trip to Christchurch for an agility competition.
It was an unexpectedly eventful trip, beginning our journey on Friday morning in heavy fog. Barely ten minutes down the road, I was pulled over by a police officer to be told that I was driving "too slowly" and "annoying the drivers behind me." It was a winding, hilly section of road, speed limited to 100, and I was driving 80-85 due to the poor visibility. And the drivers behind me were only him and one other guy. There were places for them to overtake me if they'd really wanted to. But this police officer told me I shouldn't drive too carefully like that, because other drivers might get antsy about it and "do stupid stuff." Okay, sure. Later in the day and closer to Christchurch, I was going along the highway doing 100kmh - the speed limit - and a car still overtook me dangerously, forcing the oncoming vehicle to take evasive action before they swerved back into the correct lane, very close to my car's nose. So, the moral of the story: people are always going to do stupid stuff no matter what speed I'm going and I should just focus on driving safely.
Despite the drama, we arrived safe and sound in Christchurch, did two amazing days of agility, Skuggi running the best he has yet. Three clear rounds - 2nd, 5th, and 6th. We wasted a bit of time on the turns which cost us higher placings but he's doing so good.
It's always a blast doing agility and getting to spend a weekend away in the city, but it's nice to get back out to the quiet country. The view from here is simply the best.
With winter upon us, the chooks have given up laying eggs. Or so we thought until we found a nest of three eggs outside the coop. Well done, Chicken, for making so much noise that led us to your hiding spot. We now sneakily collect a couple of eggs from that nest in the evenings, after the chooks have gone to bed for the night.
