The weather’s really crapped out in the past half hour. Wind’s up, rain’s back. We’ll have to console ourselves with the memory of yesterday’s perfect weather.
Visit to Wellington Botanical Gardens
It was such a beautiful day, that my wife, mother-in-law and I decided to go to the Wellington Botanical Gardens. It was the first time I had been there in at least a couple of years. Hardly any wind, full sun, and no crowds. A great day!
Birds in the garden
It’s nice going out into the garden in the morning to fetch the paper and hear the tūī going for it in the trees. We have a growing number of them in Pukerua Bay.
Dedicated amateur pest controllers – i.e. residents with rat traps in their gardens – have made the village much safer for the birds. We also have lots of kererū (wood pigeons) that have come over from the wildlife reserve on Kāpiti Island. There are so many, they even have their own ‘Slow down’ road safety signs!
Burning Spear - Marcus Garvey
🎵This was the first Burning Spear album I bought. It’s also very devout and hard-core Rastafarian. Also very political, given it’s a homage to Marcus Garvey, who was a Jamaican political leader dedicated to the ‘Back to Africa’ movement. An anti-colonialist, he was also fairly controversial in the company he kept (the KKK) and being an anti-socialist, despite being a trade unionist.
However, the Rastafarians liked the back to Africa aspects of his politics and regarded him as a prophet who predicted the crowning of Haile Selassie (aka The Lion Of Juda) in Ethiopia.
Useful algorithms
I don’t generally like online algorithms that decide for you what you want to see (Facebook and Twitter, I’m looking at you). But I find the radio one Tidal plays once your playlist or album has finished to be a very good stab at what I want to keep on listening to. I can let them run for hours without getting bored. I’ve got a contemporary jazz one going now. There’s a bit of repetition, but I can live with that.
White English rock band hints at reformation; critics in a lather
Open letter to the oil industry
Greenpeace has launched an open letter to the oil industry telling them they are not welcome in New Zealand. It’s pretty blunt and leaves them in no doubt that people will not make it easy for them to get what they and the government want.
You are not welcome here.
We pledge to do everything we can to resist the oil and gas industry if the New Zealand government overturns the ban on offshore oil and gas exploration.
You can sign it online here: Open letter to the oil industry
Finding treasures when tidying
We’ve been cleaning out a space upstairs in the next-door house, where our daughter lives. It was tidy at one time, but when we moved out we dumped a lot of stuff we couldn’t be bothered sorting out in there. Kate had been going through it and bringing over things for me to decide whether to chuck or keep.
Some have been treasurers, such as my father’s detailed account of his time in the army in World War 2. Second New Zealand Expeditionary Force, 26th Battalion. Sent to Greece in time for the retreat when the Germans invaded. Back to Egypt to fight in the relief of Tobruk and captured by the Germans in one of the big tank battles in that campaign. Three and a half years as a prisoner of war, first of the Italians and then the Germans when Italy capitulated.
More prosaically, we’ve been able to clean out some untidy shelves in our office where I had thrown junk I couldn’t be bothered sorting. They now hold books we’ve brought over from next door.
The rain is back! Just in time for Kate to go out to do some messages and go to the beauty parlour.
No scavengers in the house
We do love our dog, but sometimes it is nice to not have her hanging around scavenging when you are eating lunch.
She’s currently next door keeping our sick daughter company. She’s very good at that.
Very sad and disappointing.
Upper Hutt City Council cuts down a stand of beech trees to widen a road into a new housing development.
Beech trees cut down despite efforts of Upper Hutt community
Another gloomy day here in Pukerua Bay, although the rain seems to have eased off. I think there is more forecast for later in the day. Remarkably, we are producing 615W of power from the roof from the light seeping through the clouds.
No solar power today
As expected today, with heavy cloud cover and rain, our solar power production and self-sufficiency is a big fat zero!
Rain, rain and more rain
We were talking to our dinner guest friends last night about how dry it has still been this winter.
No longer. Rain started about 10pm last night and hasn’t let up since. I woke up several times overnight to the sound of relentless rain. Fortunately, there has been no strong wind. Time to get those vege plants in the planter box. Maybe tomorrow.
City Council is reporting flooding in Whitby and Porirua East. Don’t go out unless you need to.
I guess we won’t get any solar power produced today.
Accessibility on devices for poor eyesight
Tory Whanau puts the PM straight
Wellington mayor Tory Whanau has got stuck into the PM for his misguided speech to the Local Government Association this week. As well as justifyingly defending the good things WCC has done (and they aren’t perfect by any stretch of the imagination), she made the important point that it was a missed opportunity for how central and local government could work together.
Her column is in the Sunday Star Times. If it is behind their paywall, I apologise.
Tory Whanau: Time for the PM to stop taking cheap shots at councils
Kate has just come back from a swim at the beach with her friend. She reports that it was “terrible” and she got knocked over several times. It’s fairly windy, which made the water choppy.
Daffodils looking lovely
These lovely flowers are distributing a beautiful scent throughout the upstairs of our house. All from our own garden.
