Some neat things from my life recently

It's been ages since I blogged, but I wanted to share some random neat things I've enjoyed recently :-)

Firstly, the jasmine cordial I made that turned out to be really strong?  I tried using it to flavour icing :-)  It might be too strong for cordial, but it turns out to be a relatively weak essence!  The cake is 18cm across, and I used 1/4 cup in the icing to give a fairly mild jasmine flavour.  The underlying cake was a vanilla Victoria sponge (I think the first sponge of any kind I've made), and I decorated it with edible flowers - violas and borage from our garden, and jasmine from near where I swim.  It was pretty and yum!

Encouraged by how well that turned out, I had another go.  This is the same Victoria sponge recipe, but made with lemon icing and decorated with borage flowers.

I'm continuing to enjoy swimming at Blockhouse Bay Beach - now generally staying in for an hour and swimming 1.2km.  I'm expecting to go without my swim beanie next week - the water is distinctly warmer now.  18 degrees, according the Safeswim website (which also handily tells me when I shouldn't swim due to sewage in the water: Auckland's sewerage pipes generally overflow into the stormwater pipes after heavy rain, so it's good to know when that's forecast to happen and when it's forecast to have cleared!)

A few weeks' back I noticed the first pohutakawa had started to flower.  After I swim I generally sit on the base of a particular pohutakawa or on a nearby seat - and that pohutakawa has had one 'zone' in flower for a few weeks now :-)

By this morning it'd been flowering vigorously enough that there was a (sparse) carpet of pohutakawa stamens around the base of both 'my' tree and seat.  I found stamens on me when I showered afterwards ;-)

Speaking of pohutakawa, on Saturday I spotted my first ever yellow one!  I think I first heard of yellow pohutakawa at least 10 years ago (a natural, but rare, genetic variant), but this was the first I'd seen.  It's in Grey Lynn Park.  We'd gone there to check out the festival, but it turned out that'd been cancelled due to the exceedingly soggy ground.  Probably a wise choice - the one food truck that showed up anyway (in the background of the photo) churned up a pretty sizeable strip of the field it parked on.

Despite the disappointment, it was a really pleasant afternoon.  Martin and I wandered around some of the perimeter of the park (it's huge!!!), stopped for a bit to watch kids playing on the pump track, listened to an audiobook we're enjoying together and generally had a pleasant time.  After walking back up the hill to Grey Lynn shops I had a fruju (the first I've had in years, and definitely what I was wanting!) and Martin had a Trumpet ice cream (Tiptop has recently moved to using slave-free cocoa in their trumpets, so we're eating them again).  Then we rode home in the front seats of the top floor of a double-decker bus :-)

The past few days I've been distributing tomato seedlings to various neighbours and church friends.  Originally I gave away surplus seedlings I didn't want, but they've proved so popular (and such a nice way to connect with people) that now I deliberately grow way more than I need!  This year an Indian neighbour reciprocated with a bitter gourd plant and an eggplant plant for me - and even cooked me some bitter gourd and gave me the recipe so I'd know what to do with it.  Yay for good neighbours!

And lastly, on Sunday morning, Samoa played in the rugby league world cup final (I think a first for any Pacific Island country).  Avondale has been complete madness (in a good way) for days!  Lots of cars are decorated with little Samoan flags, and plenty of folk are driving around waving full-sized flags out their car windows whilst playing upbeat music at full volume.  I've seen a few cars with Tongan flags, too (although it was wall-to-wall Samoan ones by Saturday) - and this one car that appears to be supporting the entire Pacific :-)

My church is probably a bit under half Samoan, and the energy in the room on Sunday morning was incredible.  Probably aided by the fact half the people there had been up since 5am to watch the game!  We have one chorus song we often sing, where each verse is the same words in a different language.  When we got to the Samoan verse, various people started traditional dancing, and the teenager on bass guitar whipped out a full-size Samoan flag to wave for the duration of the verse.  Fun :-) 

Foraging fun

On Monday, for my Sabbath 'fun thing', I went for a wander looking for edible plants.  I was particularly interested in nasturtiums and jasmine, both of which I'd recently learned could be used to make cordial.  I was also wanting to see if I could ID some giant daisies that I was hoping might be edible oxeye daisies.

Success on all fronts!

nasturtium flowers - about 2/3 of an ice cream container worth

The Justice Conference and its aftermath

Two weeks ago today, we were at the Justice Conference with Just Kai.  It was a good day, but long and tiring - especially as I forgot to rest basically all afternoon and into the evening :-(

Lots of people seemed interested in what we had to say - quite a few didn't seem that aware of the issue of slavery in our food supply, and lots were encouraged to see brands they already bought on our table of 'good' options :-)

Letting God's work be God's work

July was incredibly busy for me, with my brother and his family visiting from the UK, a whole bunch of unexpected fuss associated with Just Kai preparing to be at The Justice Conference in September, and supervising a student (a first for me) doing a commissioned (paid!) research project for Just Kai.  At the end of it all, I badly needed a holiday!

Camping at Karamatura

Last weekend Martin and stayed at the Karamatura campground in the Waitakere Ranges.  When I was a child my family used to often take visitors to Auckland on the Karamatura Loop Walk, so it's a place I've been many times, although never to stay overnight.

We'd originally planned to camp there in November and to go to Ambury Park last weekend, but it turned out that campsite is closed for the winter so Karamatura it was. 

This is near our tentsite.  It's a stunningly beautiful place, and I loved going to sleep to the sound of running water.

Unlike the other Council campsites we've stayed out (which have all been $16 ones - this was $9 and hence more basic) there was only one picnic table.  But it came with a most excellent shelter, and for all but one night we were the only campers, so we mostly kept our stuff spread out all over it.

Cataract surgery

About 2 1/2-3 years ago I was having a lot of trouble with glare and started wearing polarising sun glasses whenever the sun was low.  Then last August I was due an eye checkup, but I put it off a week as we were going on holiday.  A few days into our holiday New Zealand went into Level 4 lockdown and the optometrists shut.  By November, my eyes were really weird.  I had transient blind spots; I was perpetually cleaning my glasses as it felt like they were dirty; I was seeing shimmery arcs from time to time.  In early December, optometrists were allowed to re-open and I showed up on day 3 :-)  To my considerable surprise, I was told I had early-onset fast-growing cataracts in both eyes.  Both my parents have had cataracts so it seemed likely I'd get them one day, but I wasn't expecting them at 45!

Resting - on Waiheke and at home

Over ANZAC weekend Martin and I spent four nights camping at Poukaraka Flats on Waiheke Island.  It's a fairly basic Auckland Council campground in the Regional Park there, although less basic than some - there are flush toilets, and the showers are set up so the water reservoirs heat up nicely on a sunny day.  The showers also have open ceilings and are located next to some tall trees: it's quite lovely to look up into leaves and a brilliant blue sky :-)

We stayed at the same campground over ANZAC weekend last year.  Knowing the place a bit did make the break especially restful - I wasn't so interested in making sure I saw the various interesting things in the area, meaning I spent most of the time just resting.

Here we are about to get going.  Most of the kit's on Martin's bike, with just a few bits and pieces on mine.

Here are the bikes after visiting Waiheke Island's Countdown: my bike's a bit more laden, now that we have four night's groceries added to the mix.

I'd made really good time getting to the supermarket.  We'd biked to the local train station, caught the train into town and then the ferry across to Waiheke.  Last year it took me about an hour to get from the ferry at Matiatia to the supermarket in Ostend; this time it was 45 minutes :-)  However, after that things didn't go so well.  Waiheke's pretty hilly, and at the beginning of the last hill I ran out of oomph.  I've been working very hard recently, and I think I was just too tired - especially with the extra weight of groceries.

Fortunately, where I ran out of energy was by the beach right next to the beach where we'd be camping.  Martin suggested I leave my bike at the carpark and walk around the headland, and he'd bike his bike up and over then nip around the headland for my bike and bike that up and over as well.  In the end, I decided to take a somewhat longer route and walk over the headland that divides the two beaches - it was a hot day and I wanted some cover, plus it's always nice to be in the bush.  I took it pretty slowly and ended up at the campsite at exactly the same time as Martin rolled up on my bike - about an hour after we'd left the supermarket, the same time as it'd taken me to bike last year :-)

It's a glorious place to be: above is the view looking back towards the campsite from the beach at low tide.

At the right in the photo below is the headland I walked over to get to the campsite.  It's an old pa site, with lots of kumara pits.

Martin serving up dinner.  These council campsites always seem to have enough picnic tables for anyone who wants to to commandeer one, which is awfully handy.  Our tent is big enough to sleep in, but doesn't really have space for much stuff, so we kept all our groceries and other bits and pieces on the table the whole time.  Behind Martin you can see there's just a thin band of trees (which made a very effective shelter-belt) and then the sea.  It was lovely to go to sleep to the wash of the waves high on the beach :-)

Our setup.  You can see the picnic table and tent.  We kept a bike at each end of the table the whole time, which meant we could cover the table with a tarp at night or when it rained and the tarp stayed reasonably well above the stuff.  It rained a few times while we were there, but not enough to be really troublesome.

The view looking out from the beach at low tide.  You probably can't pick it in the photo, but w could see the Sky Tower slightly to the left of the small island that's roughly in the middle of the photo.  There were many brief rain showers during our stay, and Martin spent a lot of time looking out at this view watching the various bands of cloud roll in - they moved remarkably quickly!

It was so good to take time to rest.  We did one bush walk, had a couple of swims on the finest day, and listened to a 5-ish hour audio book together.  Twice Martin picked cockles for our meals :-) Other than that, I spent an awful lot of time dozing, and didn't do much else other than sit in various places watching birds.  It was so good to just 'be'.

It wasn't the cheapest of holidays, at $275 for four nights, but not too bad.  Also not too bad from a greenhouse gas point of view, being responsible for around 70kg CO2e (what the planet can absorb per person in about three weeks).  And it was so good for us both.

At home, I often find it difficult to truly rest; although I still spend much of my day lying down, I'm most often both playing Solitaire and listening to something.  But on this break I found myself quite content to just do nothing.  I've been trying to practise more of that at home, too, in the week or so that we've been back - and twice in recent days that's led to me falling asleep in the afternoon - so good :-)

Today has been my weekly Sabbath.  I'm so grateful to God for the rhythm of the week, and for every week having a day to rest and to be with God and to do the things I feel like doing.  This morning I spent time reflecting on Isaiah 30:15:

For thus said the Lord God, the Holy One of Israel:
In returning and rest you shall be saved;
    in quietness and in trust shall be your strength.

It comes at a time when God is trying to call the people of Israel back to him, but they're not interested.  And yet, reading those words, I'm so interested!  Being with God, rest, quietness, trust - these are the things I so often find myself longing for.

So, I thank God for the regular rhythm of weekly rest, and for regular patches of quiet in the day.  I pray for deep rest.  But, I also pray for the simplicity of purpose that I hope comes from spending time with God.  Because the other thing I was reflecting on this morning was the fleetingness of life.  I was reading these words sitting under our oak tree.  The leaves were falling - each of them has come to the end of its existence as a leaf.  Ants were crawling over me, and I killed one of them as I flicked it off my leg.  More significantly, someone we care about a lot from our church is dying - and, although he's lived a long life, it still feels like his life is being cut short as he's so actively living and growing right now.  And so I pray, in the short time that I will live, that I won't be consumed with busyness but that I will live out of a still, quiet core - that trust in God will be my strength and my guide, day to day.