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I’m lucky to lead a healthy life. Tonsils out at five, gallstones gone at around forty, and that’s pretty much it.

Therefore going into hospital to have a total knee replacement was a big deal, but the hospital care couldn’t have been better.  I was phoned at home by the anaesthetist – a female doctor with a pleasant Kiwi accent and a very long name. She said she’d be doing a spinal block with some sedation, and that if I didn’t want to hear the operation proceeding then I should bring some noise-cancelling headphones! Whoa – that scared me silly for a while until I found out from friends that it’s reasonably common these days.

She proved to be a tiny lady and her long name came from somewhere in Asia. She was the second of the fantastic people I met. The consultant surgeon had been impressive in his dark suit and white shirt a couple of weeks earlier, but in his scrubs he looked like every other TV doctor. And when he appeared in my room in running shorts and singlet for an early Sunday morning check-up, he was an absolute hoot.

“Do you work seven days a week?” I asked.

“Pretty much,” he agreed, bounding off down the corridor for his weekend exercise after making certain I was doing okay.

Because it’s mid-winter here in Wellington, New Zealand, today is cold. And wet. Unlike lots of my readers who are telling me how hot they are, we’re loading on the winter woollies to stay warm.

Two thirds of our day was taken up with a big curtain installation job with ‘interesting’ access.

When we got there we found a gang of men with a pneumatic drill right outside the big windows. They were breaking up a concrete patio and the noise was horrendous. I felt sorry for them because they had to carry all the rubble out to their truck in buckets. And I felt pretty sorry for us as well because it was NOISY. Lovely view out over the harbour though. Big ferries, small ferries, two log ships waiting for berths, and barely a ripple anywhere.

It was wonderful to come home for lunch – at almost 3 o’clock! And even better when I had an email from the Apple Store’s merchandising manager which included this for me. Perked me right up, and now I have the fun of watching Summer Sparks climb their free book charts.

A golden camellia – and it’s been a long wait.

Our garden is less than a quarter of an acre, but many years ago we became so invested in camellias we ended up with more than 250 of them. Heavily pruned – obviously. We exhibited at shows, became camellia judges, wrote for horticultural publications, generally gained a great deal of pleasure from these beautiful flowers and the like-minded people we met from all over the world because of them.

One of the varieties we bought was Camellia Chrysantha – a golden variety from a botanical institute in China. Year after year we looked forward to flowers – as did many of our Camellia Society friends. No flowers. We all decided we’d been duped as the years rolled on and on and on.

But this morning we found them – clear yellow flowers as promised. A bit battered because they’d fallen to the ground, but there are more buds to follow so hopefully we’ll get some better photos.

Do you ever get everything done? My husband and I were talking this morning about prioritising stuff…. As in not trying to do too much at the same time and getting distracted. He’s a four-jobs-at-once person, and twice in a row now he’s forgotten to put sugar in our coffee because he was also trying to do other things. Today it was wash out some paintbrushes, phone the hospital the check on his mother (she broke her hip last week) and check on sandpaper supplies while he set the coffee going.

I’m a ‘make a list, do it in order’ person. And cross it off once it’s done. I love to see all those things being obliterated. Things like ‘pick beans, plant pansies, reply to Shirley, find good disease for Meifeng’s mother, check on Chinese translations, get Portuguese cover designed, send message re local writers’ workshop at library, paint dining room top windows, do Friday’s accounts, varnish nails.’

It’s autumn/fall here in Wellington. It’s been an amazingly hot, record-breaking summer so the flowers are all giving up a little early. Even a few leaves are drifting down. (‘Rake leaves, buy polyanthus, spread compost, plan love scene’). So on top of extra gardening tasks we’ve had the chance to get a lot of paint onto our 104 year-old-timber house. ‘Buy hinges, buy filler, choose back door colour, mow lawns.’