The little silvereyes sure do love the birdfood! 🐦
In the traditional Māori calendar New Year falls at mid-winter. From next year it’ll be a public holiday:
will celebrate Matariki as a public holiday…, beginning on 24 June 2022. The calendar date … will shift each year to align with the maramataka … always on a Friday.
The frost lingered in shaded spots on the beach, and the track back to the car brought a great view of a snowy peak in the Tararuas.
The dogs were right of course! It’s chilly but fabulous down at the beach.
The dogs are giving me their full-strength ‘take us to the beach' glares even though it’s only 2C at the moment and the ground is mainly still glistening with the overnight frost. I may have to give in… 🐶
I’m so pleased to be able to say that today I spent some time sitting on the front deck in the sun reading. It’s silent apart from birdsong.
Playing ball with a blind dog on the beach
Sometimes over the years Sasha 🐶 has had fun chasing a ball along the beach. This photo from 2019 shows her chasing a ball I’d rolled for her. She has never really been up to seeing a ball thrown through the air.
Sasha’s now 141/2 and almost blind. We think she can see some light and dark, maybe.
Today we found a washed up bright yellow tennis ball so I thought she might like to play. It’s been a while …
First I had to look for a flat bit of sand, unimpeded by driftwood. Then I had to make sure Sasha knew what was happening and was looking roughly the right way.
Then I rolled the gently so it didn’t go too far or too fast. Quite often Sasha could see it go by, went chasing after it and caught up to it. Maybe a third of the time she missed.
Then I tried making sure the ball tapped the sand by her ear so she could hear it starting off. A few times I missed and the ‘tap’ was too far back or in front of her.
All up though, I think Sasha really enjoyed having a bit of playtime like this.
Now I’m wondering if there are balls with bells in that could help her track them?
I try not to get too hung up about language change, but the total loss of a perfectly good word upsets me. I don’t want the word ‘fact' to simply mean ‘information.
False facts mistaken for reality by about half of New Zealanders | RNZ News
A ‘fact’ is true by definition…
Having procured pine shavings today I replaced some of the dirty straw in the quail run with a nice deep layer of shavings. I hope Glee and Fliss enjoy it. Also stapled back on the plastic roofing that came adrift in the gales yesterday. All between rain showers.
Well, all the smart birds were snugged up in their little beds while I was trying to watch for them today. Wind, rain, cold are not conducive to bird activity. I did see 1 hawk, 3 magpies and a black-backed gull. A group of 5 birds rocketed by so fast I couldn’t identify them. 🐦
Even though the weather’s rotten I’m doing my bit this afternoon for the NZ Garden Bird Survey. There are worse things to do on a cold rainy day than look out the window and hope to spot some birds.
Maybe I’ll spot a ring-necked pheasant like this one from April 2020.
And here we have what seems to have become a daily power cut post. 🤨
Yay. 😒 Winds gusting to almost 80 Kph and the power’s gone out. I presume a line has come down somewhere. Outage looks quite widespread.
So much rain over the weekend localised flooding closed a couple of roads. The Waikawa Beach river’s running very swift — we had 43mm rain (1.6 inches), but up in the hills they surely had a heap more. The river has also managed to breach the sandbar and flow directly to the sea.
Lovely! Loaded up the dishwasher, turned it on and a moment later there was a loud pop and the house went dark. It was just us — the dishwasher seems to have blown up. We had trouble with it recently and tried to buy a new better one but supplies are short… 🦠
Last night we drove to Palmerston North to celebrate Deb’s recent birthday. Arranged Marriage provided delicious meals from the Kerala region of India. I had:
chicken cooked in fresh spinach and cashews ground together then sautéed with roasted garam masala and turmeric.
Yum.
On this cool, grey, rainy day we had our 15th International Breakfast : Churros. Yum! They were light and airy fingerfood. As usual we had to improvise a bit: an icing bag with no special nozzle, milk instead of heavy cream. It’d be interesting to add chilli to the chocolate.
It’s a Big Cuddle day for Oshi. 🐶
Hmmm, coming later in 2021 is NCIS: Hawaii:
NCIS: Hawaii stars Vanessa Lachey as Special Agent in Charge Jane Tennant, Yasmine Al-Bustami as Lucy, Jason Antoon as Ernie, and Noah Mills as Jesse.
I’ve always enjoyed NCIS (original). I mostly sorta like NCIS: LA. NCIS: NO is 🤔.
I check the global map of wind, weather, and ocean conditions every morning. Today’s map shows an amazing air stream that flows down from the sub-tropics, across Aotearoa New Zealand and then right down to the Southern Ocean.
