It beats me that 10 people will spend a collective 15+ hours digging a ditch to move water away from the vehicle entrance so they can get their vehicles on the beach.
Yet none of them ever turn out to help plant 4,000 spinifex plants. A single spinifex plant can trap 16 m3 of sand a year.
Folks interested in Waikawa Beach and its birds … take a look at this morning's Waikawa News blog post: Wrybills vs Dotterels. 🐦
Wrybills and two kinds of Dotterels are tiny, cute, and starting to show up for the season.
Respect to Maya Sharma and the others — Same-sex marriage: The lesbian activist seeking equal rights in India - BBC News 💪🏻 :
Ms Sharma doesn't want marriage for herself - in fact, she "despises the concept" … "The term marriage comes with a lot of associations," she says…
Gulp. Handed over a chunk of our retirement savings today for the EV I collect tomorrow. It'll reduce our annual CO2 emissions and we'll be saving a heap on petrol.
It's goodbye to the now 20 year old petrol guzzler I've driven the last 7 years.
I'm upgrading to a 7 year old Mazda CX 3.
I love The Spinoff — they almost always make me laugh.
The Greens won three electorates and what may become their highest ever vote share by employing two clever political tricks:
- Offering to help people with their number one concern.
- Not screwing up constantly.
Few other parties managed to execute these complex strategic manoeuvres.
☛ Winners, losers, big losers and gigantic losers from the 2023 general election.
As expected for our 2023 Election, the country swung to the right so we'll have a National-led Government supported by Act. Te Pāti Māori took a few seats too, and the Greens did well.
By my count, there are 53 women who will be in Parliament — nearly half of our ~120 MPs (it's complicated).
Election Day is the one day every 3 years when no local politics are aired in media. So blissfully peaceful. In about 10 minutes though the polls close and for the next age we'll be barraged with results, analysis, guesses, coalition talks, policies.
The media love it, of course. But, aargh!
The best coverage of today’s election in NZ: Election 2023: Dogs at polling booths | The Spinoff 😆 🐶
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wasn't an advice I expected to see … for a free book. 🤣
I watched all 8 episodes of Sweet Kaaram Coffee and it was a delight. 📺
Three generations of women from one family take a road trip, so, of course, things change …
I don't want to give anything away so won't elaborate, but it's excellent!
As I walked to the beach yesterday I became aware of a beautiful scent in the air. I soon spotted the reason: it's spring and some of the Tī Kōuka | Cabbage Trees are starting to bloom.
I wish I could bottle up that scent and send it to you — it's so wonderful.
Alas, a photo will have to suffice.
I read 3 chapters of Dead Before Dinner (A Maddie Swallows Mystery Book 1) by Kat Bellemore then stopped and read a few other books.
I did eventually read the rest, but it wasn't a favourite. 📚
I don’t know why I never thought to do this before … Today I took several photos with my iPhone, exported the GPS data and then made a map to show where the new spinifex plantings and driftwood are, south of Waikawa River and estuary.
I used gpsvisualizer.com and Shottr to help.
Bad news: Climate outlook for Aotearoa predicts rivers in the sky, heatwaves in the sea:
NZ's average air temperature has risen 1.26C since 1909, and that … is already having huge impacts.
Extreme weather (causing floods, slips and droughts) is becoming worse, and happening more often
For 2 years some folks upset by their inability to get their motor vehicles onto the beach 24/7/365 because nature sometimes cuts off access have been trying to get the local Council to create a vehicle track across our much loved pedestrian-only North Track
. Today that option was ruled out. 🙌🏼
It was almost dark last night when we went to check on something in the zendo.
The entrance was being guarded by this little Warou | Welcome swallow.
Her nest was in the tiny space between the top of the door and the roof of the porch.
I was relieved the flash didn't worry her …
Kiwis (and others) buying an electric car. I found these sites very helpful:
This is a super busy week with a lot of things going on — new car will need a charger, bank stuff, insurance stuff. Meanwhile a gigantic local issue about how (and if) vehicles can access Waikawa Beach will be debated tomorrow and I'll do a wee speech at Council in the public participation session.
In Aotearoa at the moment petrol's getting really expensive. With an election in a few days the government is likely to do quite a right turn and they'll kill the current electric vehicle incentives. Then there's the turmoil with Israel.
Things are feeling really uncertain right now.
Today we signed the papers for a new MG4 Essence 64 to be collected next week.
This was the first we drove and liked it so much we didn't bother with the others we'd arranged. It gets great reviews, and felt really good.
I'd have preferred orange but delivery wouldn't have been till November.