Some beautiful things

It's the time of year for Jerusalem artichokes and I'm greatly enjoying the flowers and the bumble bees they attract :-)

aren't they glorious?

And my moth orchid is still going strong (although with many fewer flowers after some wormy thing ate through lots of the stems...)

I'm also pleased with some cards I recently made:

The yellow and blue are glass paints on acetate.

The image was a reward given to my mum at Sunday school many years ago.  She came across a stash when they were moving house recently and I've kept a few and will be using the remainder on cards :-)

Fair Trade 'Nutella'

Over the last year or two I've been working on a recipe for home-made Nutella.  I don't want to buy regular Nutella as it's made with cocoa bought on the open-market, some of which will have been grown by slaves.  I want my global neighbours to flourish, so try to always buy fairly traded cocoa.  However, I still want to have a chocolate hazelnut spread in the house as one of our regular visitors is very attached to it, and hospitality is important, too!  Having failed to find any fairly traded chocolate hazelnut spread in New Zealand*, it was time to figure out how to make my own :-)

*if you're in Australia and have this problem, try this: it's yummy, widely available and not even that expensive!

Assisted Dying in New Zealand

Update: the submission deadline has been extended.  Submissions now close at midnight on Tuesday, March 6th.

A bill proposing to introduce assisted dying (i.e. voluntary euthanasia) is currently being considered by the Justice select committee of the New Zealand parliament.  Were this legislation to be passed into law, assisted dying would become available to anyone with a terminal condition who is expected to have less than six months to live, as well as to anyone with a grevous and irremediable medical condition.

I am against this and am in the process of writing a submission to the committee to say so.  Could I encourage you to do the same?  You can read information about the bill (along with some concerns about it) here or, if you're super-keen, read the full text of the bill here.  You can make your submission here.  Submissions close February 20th.  Parliament has prepared a guide on making submissions which you can read here.  You don't need to say anything more than whether you oppose or support the bill in question, although they prefer for you to give your reasons in moderate detail :-)