It can pay to be friends with the owner of your favourite cafe. Taper in Levin now offer White Tea as well as black and herbal. Decent chocolate chip biscuit too.
When I watered the tunnelhouse this morning I was surprised to find this frog on a tomato plant, about a metre or more off the ground.
Branch, boat, horses … bird.
A couple of years ago I ordered a down jacket and vest from Wear on Earth:
Custom made down jackets and vests right here in Christchurch, New Zealand.
100% European Goose Down with 750 Loft
Website and customer service were poor, but the gear is excellent. Warm and toasty!
Nothing odd about an overnight low of 3C if it was mid-winter! But it’s mid-summer. 🥶
These days we tap a button and a photo instantly appears. Back in the day a tintype photo took a lot of patience and messing about. Watch this fascinating 23 minute video to see a modern recreation. Recreating 19th Century Death & Mourning Photographs.
I haven’t been to the beach for a few days, but this morning’s visit was splendid. No wind, deep blue sky and ocean, clear air. And this fine horse and rider.
I have a few HTML files I’d like to be able to access from other devices. They’re really only for me. Meanwhile, GitHub has been a mystery to me. Today I followed excellent and clear instructions at Creating and Hosting a Personal Site on GitHub. Easy!
Update, 13 January 2023: looks like I took this site down at some point. My Te Reo reference site was at immiraz.github.io/index.html.
Magpies can be clowns. Spot the one hanging upside down, but twisting round to check me out. Moments later they were singing full throat together.
Most of the wild rabbits round here are brownish-grey. There’s at least one black one though, presumably decended from some escapee pet. The black one tends to hang out and play with a couple of the brownish rabbits. They’re fun to watch.
This morning we visited Te Horo Beach, a 26 Km 30 minute drive by road or a mere 11 Km along the beach south of us. It’s a rare ecological landscape though, being a shingle beach with a stony ridge. The colours were intense and the sea seemed a little wild. Windy too.
I didn’t manage the best photo, but I was so excited to meet a Saluki for the first time in my life. 3 years old and they can’t get him to eat so he’s skinny. So beautiful though. Especially from the angles I didn’t catch. 🐶
I biked round to the village today. It’s a tiny trip: 5.5 Km return, but stops me from getting completely out of the cycling way. The river was very still, and fairly low. A stand-up paddleboarder went past, and then two kayakers.
Visit to Foxton Estuary; White-faced Heron.
A visit to Foxton Estuary; 4 Canada Geese all in a row.
If you’re a Kiwi (I was granted citizenship in 2004) and meet a few residency requirements, then when you turn 65 you receive a Super Gold Card. It gives you various discounts and some free off-peak travel on local buses and trains. Pretty darn good, eh! A few weeks to go yet…
This shocks me:
A local Kāpiti Focus Group formed early in 2019 to advocate for a cycleway, walkway and bridleway on the Ōtaki to North of Levin (O2NL) expressway, is urging NZTA and Government to commit to ensuring that plans for the project include a shared pathway.
Source: Horowhenua Chronicle 08 January 2020.
Why am I shocked? Because any expressway or similar anywhere in Aotearoa New Zealand should automatically include such a shared pathway beside it.
In this century surely we recognise that cars and trucks aren't the be-all and end-all of getting from A to B.
NetNewsWire on my iPad is so fast! So smooth and easy to use. Thanks @brentsimmons
What a great podcast episode! Lady Bam Podcast with Mary McDonnell - Episode 11 - Kate Mulgrew
starship captain and president of the universe walk into a bar… an amazing talk… Kate’s new book … their experiences growing up Irish-American … and much more.
I’m sick of the westerly wind today. Why is NZ so windy?
The “Roaring Forties" is the belt of wind at latitude 40 south… the Southern Hemisphere in the 40s is mostly ocean …. With a lack of land to slow things down the wind whips up across the sea, fuelled by storms
