Cool: symptoms of ‘the UK variant’ of Covid-19 in several languages, including Mandarin, Hindi, Punjabi as well as Māori, Sāmoan and Tongan.
Last night we drove to Feilding with neighbours for dinner at Amayjen. It was Jan's birthday. Food was great, service was great. It was a fun evening. Almost no other diners there though.
Grooming day for Sasha and Oshi (and, not shown, me). Oshi refused to look at the camera, but Sasha’s a very obliging girl. 🐶
Swedish Breakfast
As we continue our weekly International Breakfast series … last week it was Mexican Huevos Rancheros and this week Swedish Rye Crispbread with eggs and fish roe, which we supplemented with cream cheese, tomatoes, cucumber and ham (and ate at lunchtime). This is fun.
It’s annoying to come home from a brief walk and find I have to brush piripiri out of Sasha’s coat. Nasty little things, these burrs. 🐶 At least she only had a few (that I’ve found).
Today I attended a line dancing class for the first time and learned:
-
I have no sense of rhythm
-
I can count to 1
It was fun though. I’m the one in the middle and somehow I was actually doing the same step as everyone else at the same time!
Finished reading Secrets on the Fens by Joy Ellis, one of my favourite authors. Another excellent read! 📚
the bodies of two young people are discovered … in the woods … It appears to be a lovers’ suicide pact … Until Detective Nikki Galena and DS Joseph Easter look more closely.
It’s the last day of meteorological summer and blimmin hot. My temperature gauge that I don’t trust says 27C. A neighbour’s (1 Km away) says 22C. I think it’s between the two. So glad to have some proper hot weather at last, though parts of NZ have hit 39C at times this summer.
For the last day of the photo challenge I thought I’d look up one of the first digital photos I took — with a Fujifilm DX-5. From November 1997 my Blue Burmese cat Minhla. 🐈
The farmer seems to be seeding the paddocks next door — perhaps with grass as he usually keeps dry stock (beef) on there. This year too he mowed those paddocks for hay / silage for the first time.
Round here the male pheasants enjoy pompasetting their finest colours and longest tail feathers.
Ahhh, finally figured out what I keep doing while reading Kindle in bed that changes the font size: pinch out to make text bigger; pinch in to make it smaller. That’ll save me a tedious trip to the menu bar next time I accidentally mess up the size.
I pretty much enjoyed The Rings of Grissom: Tales of a Former Space Janitor by Julia Huni, but I preferred the preceding Space Janitor stories. 📚
When she visits the ringed planet Grissom with security agent Ty O’Neill … Triana discovers just how messy life can get.
Yesterday I took some polystyrene beans out of this dog bed so it’s not so solid and high. One of Oshi’s favourite things is to scrabble at the bed to make it comfy and then lie on the deck in the fresh air.
I never knew real sourdough was a very different thing from mass produced bread, but this excellent interview clarified things for me: Andrew Whitley: Flour to the People | Radio NZ.
Factoid: after searching, they found lost Scottish wheat strains in Aotearoa New Zealand.
The beach code: protect the native plants that hold dunes together by keeping to the tracks.
Europeans planted exotic marram grass because cattle could eat it as they were driven along the beach before there were roads. Marram doesn’t hold dunes. Spinifex and pīngao do.
Aha! We’re at Batwoman S02E05 and it’s really cranking. I’m coming to very much like Alice, and the other characters. Some very nice touches here. 🦇
Micro.Blog Feature request: while we wait for some kind of timeline position sync across devices, how about giving us some kind of widget to instantly scroll back in perhaps 1 or 2 hour increments? See my mockup of 12 hours back. Could be radio buttons or similar. too @help
Ah, today I have a chance to revisit one of my baby Japanese Quail. Here she is sitting on a plastic lid filled with water, and stones, so she can’t fall in and drown. This photo from a couple of years ago.
Yesterday we went for a little walk at Papaitonga Scenic Reserve, only 20 minutes drive from here.
The lake and the surrounding wetland and lush coastal forest [is] a refuge for birds that depend on wetlands or lowland forests for their survival.
