Carla with Bonnie inside Gregg's workshop while Bonnie's mom, Emily, and dad, Nils, set up the large sound system for the cider party band, Hot Club Sandwich.

 The two birthday honorees at this year's Cider Party: Carla vanZon who turned 60 this past week and her dad, Maurice vanZon who turned 90 last month. I got to go on a wonderful tramp with Maurice and Gregg yesterday. Some of the flora photos that follow are from that hike. I think the next caption came up blank because I tried to import it as a photo when it is a video. I will retry to load it properly.

 Here in the background is Gregg's workshop and cider shed to the left. To the left of the cider shed are a half dozen white birches, a New Hampshire reminder. Behind the white birches is a new laundry, and  bathroom, complete with high powered shower and pig cooker (outside). I was able to give a hand at finishing up the shower and laundry just prior to the throng of party guests arriving. The people in the photo, starting from the centre and moving right are Yvonne, who is Carla's youngest sister and mom to the young woman on the far right, Hanna. Hanna's friend Aidan is in-between helping to carry the ice for the wine, beer and apple juice. Gregg is in the back with the straw hat next to Ian Anderson, who Gregg did some work for when he was in Shanghai working on the Expo last year.

 This fern tree is showing off the iconic Maori/ New Zealand symbol for new life and regeneration, the Horu. I was able to get many photographic examples along our tramp yesterday.

 Here Tony aka "Ropes" is keeping a close eye on the huge fire he has built next to the hangi pit, with the first row of the orchard apples right there as well. The fire is heating thick slabs of steel, bricks, and volcanic stones that will get pushed into the hang pit to bake the great baskets of food wrapped in cabbage leaves for the cider party. Next to Tony is Carla's brother-in-law Tom who is well known in NZ for great engineering on large projects like railway and highway bridges. He and his son Rory brought 80 large fresh scallops that they had just harvested for the party. The hangi included a lamb and other local meats and veggies.

 This is the jazz band Hot Club Sandwich. They played at the party for several hours, and Maurice enjoyed it more than anyone I expect. Once It got dark Gregg put the great castle brassieres to work with huge blasts of LP Gas flaring. These brassieres came from the Edinburgh Military Tattoo. I will attempt to load up a five minute video that show off these pyrotechnics.

 This is a bit dark but shows off one of the bouquet brought for Carla (her favorite color is orange), and Gregg serving and educating about his cider samples, allowing each drinker to rate the four different hard ciders against one another.

 Gregg is telling me here about the new foot suspension bridge and details about its design and construction. It is an impressive design, and apparently the fruit of a lengthy commission that study a disaster where several trampers fell to their deaths when such an earlier bridge failed in 1995. These earlier bridges were often built by volunteers and without thorough engineering. Now they are all very specifically spec'd for every detail of material and assembly by qualified engineers.

 For a couple of days I worked as a 'carny' washing and setting up the kids corner of merry-go-round, and these two bouncy castles. which are very popular during the party.

 Here Maurice has just crossed this large laminate beam foot bridge with steel mesh for anti-slip decking.

 There are a great array of colourful flowers, and these two captions show some from next to the seashore.

 Sunset with Kapiti Island just to the right. This island is a large bird sanctuary just 5km off the coast, as seen from Gregg and Carla's home, Totaranui Orchard.

A family portrait of Maurice and his three daughters: Carla, Michelle, and Yvonne, who is sitting next to Maurice.