Fog, sun, sunset

We were greeted by fog this morning, which soon lifted, then rolled back in again and eventually disappeared, except for a bit of sea mist out past Rangitoto Island.

We had new friends coming for lunch today.  We met them on the Discover Howick Village Walk in early June and had been over for morning coffee at the beginning of July. We checked the soup that hubby made yesterday to make sure it didn’t need more salt or pepper or spices and put it on to heat gently to bring out the flavour, while hubby made some Irish soda bread to accompany it.  We had nice cheeses from the Farmer’s Market and home-made cracker biscuits. The table was laid and we were ready in plenty of time, which was just as well as our friends were early. They brought goodies with them - wine, more cheese, and a ricotta cake.  We had the loveliest afternoon enjoying good food, delicious wine and lots of chat.  We were sorry to see them leave at around 5:30pm.

We didn’t get out for a walk today, so fortunately I took a photo of the fog at 7:12am, then the partially cleared fog at 7:31am, then the fog back again at 7:51am. At 12:30pm I took a photo of the beautiful sunny day, then at 6pm the start of the sunset and at 6:09pm the deepening colour of the sunset.  

There are 6,152 new community cases today, and the seven-day rolling average is 6,142 compared to 7,776 last Thursday. The number of people in hospital is 663, including 14 in ICU. The seven-day rolling average of deaths attributable to Covid-19 is 20, and 1,603 deaths have been confirmed as either directly attributed to Covid, or with Covid as a contributing factor.