Flocks of birds in flight at the beach today. 🐦
I planted two Grevillea New Blood today.
A stunning deep red flowering ground cover.
It is a quite vigorous frost-hardy plant that flowers over a long period from Autumn to Spring. Best suited to well-drained soils in full sun but will tolerate partial shade.
25cm x 1-1.5m
Thanks to @bsag I'm currently reading Lolly Willowes by Sylvia Townsend Warner.
There are some wonderful turns of phrase …
On Sunday mornings Henry would wind the clock. First one and then the other the quivering chains were wound up, till only the snouts of the leaden weights were visible, drooping sullenly over the abyss of time wherein they were to make their descent during the seven days following. After that the family went to church, and there were wound up for the week in much the same manner.
Deb and I brunched today at Harrison's cafe and garden centre in Pekapeka. It's such a peaceful environment and the food is fine.
While waiting to pay for a few plants, the next-door cat, who thinks the cafe and its people who give it cuddles are just the best thing ever, graced the counter. 🐈
Loved reading A Matrimonial Murder (A Temple Hill Mystery Book 2) by Meeti Shroff-Shah. For me the location and people are exotic. There's so much about Indian food — items I've never heard of. It's all so colourful and vibrant.
I suspect there's a layer of humour that's well over my head. 📚
There were also plenty of birds on Lake Te Puna a te Ora, including many Pāpango | New Zealand scaup. 🐦
Today I noticed juvenile Karoro | Black-backed gulls 🐦.
What a lovely essay: Por Por’s broth | 婆婆煲噶湯 | The Spinoff:
she is painfully excited about my learning Cantonese; …
婆婆 always wants to hear my progress. We develop a set conversation we have almost every time we meet. Hundreds of times I have heard that she spent the afternoon playing mahjong and reading the newspaper, that she has a piece of fish for dinner. But maybe it doesn’t matter. I think underneath, we are having a different conversation. 咁大雨! | So much rain! we say; 我好忙 | I’m so busy; 早抖 | goodnight — and what we mean is I love you I love you I love you.
An excellent movie. Watch it! One Life 🎥 :
based on the true story of British humanitarian Sir Nicholas Winton as he looks back on his past efforts to help groups of Jewish children in German-occupied Czechoslovakia to hide and flee in 1938–39, just before the beginning of World War II.
The whole article is really interesting — Of melting pots and mongrel languages:
If a few soldiers, 958 years ago, had shown a bit more self-restraint, we’d all be speaking a different English. We wouldn’t, for example, know the word different. Or example.
The soldiers were English, but they spoke what we know as Anglo-Saxon. The Angles and Saxons … drove the native Britons off to the west and north, taking their Gaelic languages with them …. The territory that the raiders stole became Angle-Land, which in time became England. And thus Germans became the first English.
Today's 'haul' — Dotterels and a Hawk in flight. 🐦
I enjoyed this and may read others by this author if there are any, but somehow I never felt quite connected with the characters. Shot in the Dark (Detectives Martin & Stern Book 1) by Anna Britton. 📚
Unusual with its blend of texts, emails, reports, phonecalls and procedure.
Also on the beach and in my camera's view this morning, this Matuku moana | White-faced heron. 🐦
And here's my new S9 Apple Watch, a full 6 days before I expected it! 😁
Success! Not only has the population of baby Oystercatchers doubled overnight, but I managed a photo or two. Like this one of the two chicks seeking refuge under their parent. 🐦
This parent Oystercatcher was very upset with me today for walking too close to its baby (maybe 10 or 15 metres away). I was getting the works! 🐦
On very rare occasions an odd looking item turns up in the supermarket Fruit and Vege section.
Turns out it's a Dragonfruit. I looked up what it was and how to eat it then laid down $8 to buy one! You eat it raw and they say it tastes like a cross between a pear and kiwifruit.
A bit bland really.
This is super interesting (Waikawa Beach has a terrible erosion problem in one particular spot) — Cyclone Gabrielle: Parts of East Coast lost 10 metres of shoreline (my emphasis):
"Commercially, they've been operating these very high resolution satellites for about the last 20 years, but it's probably only been over the last four or five years that the cost has come down, and the accessibility got to the point where you can order an image on your phone... or you can actually pay a little bit more and task a satellite to be over your beach at a particular time and take an image."
He said it cost academic buyers about $20 per square kilometre. The higher the resolution, the higher the cost, but it was a gamechanger for scientific research, he said.
At the beach I saw, but didn't manage a photo of, a brand new baby Oystercatcher! Huzzah!
Meanwhile, at home, Warou | Welcome swallows keep lining up on the deck railing to keep an eye on me. 🐦
Today is one of NZ's most important days: Waitangi Day. We commemorate the signing of Te Tiriti o Waitangi between Māori and the British Crown in 1840. It is the founding document of our nation.
First came He Whakaputanga, the Declaration of Independence of the United Tribes of New Zealand in 1835.