We’ve been doing up this house, soon to display the much-awaited ‘Seagull Gate’, and it’s been interesting to field comments from the passerby on our efforts.

Our first essay into house improvement received huge amounts of kudos. We removed the phenomenally ugly fence (a massive concrete plinth topped by three huge telegraph poles), broken concrete driveway, and straggly grass. Following removal came the installation of wooden edging, Pittosporum and Corokia hedging, Astelias split off a massive plant in the back garden, and renga renga lilies also split off large existing plants. It’s not my most inspired piece of gardening but it looks tidy with the addition of bark mulch, set off by a white gravel parking area. Most people who came by commented on how good the improved front yard looked, and how hard we were working on it.

The garden work seemed relatively easy in comparison with the subsequent effort required to repaint the house. Repainting has been a major. The outside of the house was in poor condition, requiring new barge boards, random concrete platforms to be broken away from the base, areas of rotten board-and-batten cut out and replaced, alligator-cracked paint to be stripped off, rusty iron around the base to be replaced with concrete-board.

Now, dirty-cream soffits have turned bright white. Grey-brown board and batten has become sea blue. A 100 year old house has an upbeat personality, rather than a downtrodden droop.Approbation for the paint job has been very slow in coming. We didn’t expect a lot of feedback on our repair and paint stripping, but it was pretty disappointing when we painted the front of the house and not one person commented. Feedback has been dribbling in, but at a markedly lower level than for the garden.

We have pondered why. Have people got tired of our improvements? Oh, there they are, working hard on the house, again. What are they doing? Showing us up?

Or do people not like the blue? Is blue too weird? OMG, have you seen the COLOUR they are painting that house. I so much preferred it grey-brown.

Or, do people relate to painting in a way they don’t relate to gardening? I’ve done a bit of painting in my time. Painting's nothing special. One set of neighbours commented on how they need to get a landscape architect to give them advice on what to do with their 5x8m front yard. I suggested the neighbours could have a go themselves and start learning about plants. I didn’t get a particularly positive response – gardening doesn’t appear to be something people want to learn any more. They want gardens now; easy care ones, as I mentioned last week.

When I was running the University of Canterbury Research Office, I came across the phenomenon of people downgrading activities they knew about. The UC Research Committee held an annual funding round. Researchers submitted proposals and the Committee decided which would get funding from the limited pool. Proposals from the Drama and Music Departments always got a hard time. Everyone had an opinion about drama or music – they went to plays, they listened to music, they knew about these things. Documenting the history of music of Northland Dalmatian immigrants was a waste of time – the woman singing in the recorded sounded awful. Research on the dramatic nuances of sumo wrestling? What a joke!

However, committee members refrained from expressing opinions about the merits of studying the spectra of far-flung stars, or identifying DNA base pairs using a stretchy membrane pierced with a nano-scale needle, or topology (the mathematics describing the form of objects under continuous deformation). They admitted to not knowing anything about such fields and deferred to the knowledge of any committee member with specific understanding, of deferred to the knowledge of the applicants. "It sounds complex. It must be good."

Such comments are in the vein of, “It’s hardly rocket science. ‘Rocket science’ is held in awe because rocket scientists have studied high level maths and physics, unlike the majority of the population. Kindergarten teaching, on the other hand…most people have had children. Familiarity is said to breed contempt...contempt is a bit of a stretch in the case of the new blue house. But, perhaps, familiarity breeds minimisation?

If you ask me what’s the hardest thing in the world is, I’ll say, "Understanding people." Rocket science follows the rules of physics; to get a rocket to behave ‘properly’ learn those rules and apply them in the structured practice of engineering. To get people to behave ‘properly’…don’t we all wish at times for a simple set of rules? A set of rules that tells us why the ruler of a country wants to bomb or invade the next door country? A set of rules that tells us how to stop that ruler? I'd like a set of rules that explains why people viewing this house comment volubly on the garden but not on the house. Not that a house or garden matter in the planetary scheme of things…but I’d really like to know why. Perhaps I should ask them?