Bike camping at Ōmana

 After church last Sunday, Martin and I headed off on an adventure!

So many lovely things to see recently!

A couple of weeks back, I went for a wander around Western Springs.  It was lovely and full of life!

You can't really see, but one of the trees here has a bunch of white birds perched in it.

Face maks that didn't hurt those who made them

In New Zealand we're now required to wear face coverings on public transport, and they're also recommended in many other contexts.  Many people are turning to reusable masks in an effort to reduce their waste footprint, but cotton fabric often has a pretty hideous human cruelty footprint.  Which masks are most likely to be good for the workers?  I'm after masks that:

• have supply chains free of child and slave labour;
• are made by folk earning a living wage, working in safe conditions etc.;
• didn't involve polluting the local environment where they were made.

Handily, every year Tearfund puts out the Ethical Fashion Guide, which ranks common clothing brands on these kinds of ethical issues.  This year's guide isn't out yet, but many brands that ranked highly in 2019 are making masks.

A fun day in lockdown

After a string of pretty tired days, today has been lovely :-)

It started with sourdough biscuits and gravy for breakfast (biscuits in the American sense, and the sourdough made using the pulp left over from making soy milk).

 

Abiding in God

As I said earlier, I've been lower in energy since our holiday in mid-June - although the reduced energy is carrying on so long it may be simply because of winter, rather than the holiday.  The last 2-3 weeks, though, I've been much less frustrated about it all - I've been mostly content, albeit punctuated with the odd patches of extreme panic!

One thing that has made a huge difference is a 'breath prayer' I've been praying.  If I wake in the middle of the night and can't sleep, I start saying "You are the true vine, help me to rest in You."  If I find myself fretting during the day, I do the same.  God has used this to really transform my attitude :-)

Holiday in Te Aroha and Auckland

A few weeks back, Martin had two weeks off.  We spent the first week staying with his Aunty and Uncle in Te Aroha.  They borrowed bikes for us to use down there and, on Martin's birthday, we rode from Waikino to Paeroa (through the Karangahake Gorge) on the Hauraki Rail Trail.  It was about 14km, broadly downhill, and we meandered through it over about 2.5 hours.

About to start.  Unfortunately the stunning weather didn't hold, and it was foggy from a bit before the gorge through to the end.

Moving to Level 2

I have found the transition to Covid-19 alert level 2 surprisingly difficult.  At least, I think that's what it is!  Today and yesterday I seem to have been getting upset uncommonly easy.

I found the move to having an alert system and rapidly moving through levels 2, 3 and into 4 not too bad.  It took adjustment to have Martin and Sarah at home all the time.  I'm used to being on my own a lot and found that quite overwhelming initially.  But we have a large house where all three of us can easily be fairly separate, and after a week or so that became much less of an issue.

Survival strategies

Over the course of the last six months or so, I've put into place a number of survival strategies that have helped me cope with the big change in my life.  I wrote earlier about Sabbath-keeping and care-casting.  Since then I've added two other practises that have also been super-helpful.

Lockdown adventures

Like everyone else, over the past 6 weeks or so that we've been in lockdown I've had very few face to face interactions with other people and none, other than with Martin and Sarah, at a close distance.  It's a very curious time.

I've been thinking about many things over this time - and have been coping more and less well at different points in time! - but here I want to write about  the non-work things we've been able to do even though many options have been taken away.

A lovely trip to the beach

Martin and I are trying to stay within 2-3km of home (as the crow flies) at the moment due to the Covid-19 lockdown situation.  That rules out both my usual beaches - but Martin noticed there was another one!  At the base of the Pt. Chevalier peninsula is a tiny park called Eric Armishaw Park - and from there you can walk along the coast of the peninsula at low tide.

Today I biked there (3.3km) and walked 20 min along the beach, which took me as far the as the sailing club's boat ramp.

It was lovely!  Such a classic Kiwi beach :-)

view from the park itself - towards the NorthWestern motorway between Waterview and Te Atatu

Recent happenings

A couple of weeks back, Martin and I spent a week in Whangarei. 

We heard Dad preach at the Chinese church (with translation into Mandarin from their pastor, Tony).  It was a small congregation: lots of people were away for Chinese New Year.

Kawakawa berries

Ages ago, a foraging blog I used to read taught me that kawakawa plants, not only produce leaves that make yummy tea: the plants come in male and female variants, and the females produce delicious berries.

I haven't managed to find anyone who sells 'sexed' kawakawa seedlings, but a few years back I did find someone selling lots of 8 seedlings very affordably.  So I bought them, and planted four each on either side of the oak tree.  My hope was that there would end up being at least one male on one side and at least one female on the other: when they revealed themselves, I would kill the rest :-)

Unfortunately, it initially appeared they were all male.  For some years now we have had many male cones appearing on both sides of the tree.  The seedlings are also all now large plants that are thoroughly intertwined: uprooting unwanted ones (without disturbing the others) is no longer an option.

Then, maybe a month back, I noticed one 'zone' on one side of the tree was covered in bright orange female cones.  I had at least one female after all!  I got to work picking the berries, and also cut back all the branches without berries: hopefully that will give the female plant lots of space to take off in future :-)

about half a cup berries, picked today (my third picking from the bush this summer)

 

What is good for 'the environment'?

Recently I've been pondering claims that various practises are good for 'the environment'.  I've come to the conclusion that such claims are often dicey - not because of 'greenwashing' (although that's real), but because there isn't, exactly, an 'environment'.  Instead, there's a whole bunch of systems, which often need quite different things to support them.  Sometimes the things different environmental systems would benefit from are even directly opposed to each other.

The place I see this most starkly is plastic packaging.

Old T-shirts for Christmas

Martin and I are both fairly hard on our T-shirts (and wear T-shirts a lot), so I have a ready supply of old T-shirts for crafts.  Originally I was using them to make rag rugs (there's one about half-way down this blog post); but most people I think are likely to want one of those have one now, so before Christmas I was looking for new ideas.  Here's what I ended up with :-)

T-shirt pompoms.  Like regular pompoms, but bigger.  You cut the T-shirt into quite narrow strips, pull the strips to make them curl in on themselves, then make a pompom (something I don't think I've done since primary school!).  It takes about one T-shirt per pompom.

a string of 7 bunting pompoms, made for my 'almost family'

Recent happenings

A few recent bits and pieces from me...  In general, physically I'm getting stronger and stronger, although mentally I seem to have crashed quite badly over Christmas.  I'm struggling to face any 'thinky' tasks.  I was working quite hard on Just Kai stuff in the lead-up to Christmas and am hoping I've just overdone it a bit.  I'm trying to leave the thinky things alone for a while and hoping things will come right soon; it does seem a bit better today and yesterday.

But here's some of what I've been up to before and after our Taupo holiday :-)

Friends who are missionaries in Japan came to visit - and brought us yummy Japanese snacks!

Christmas holiday in Taupo

Our good friend Temi recently moved to Taupo for work; Martin and I decided to go and visit her for a week over Christmas.

To reduce the carbon footprint of our trip, we went by bus,* including catching the local bus into town to catch our bus.

* a long-distance bus in New Zealand has about a sixth the carbon footprint per person as the total footprint of an 'average' petrol car traveling the same distance.  That means your emissions are about equal if you have all five seats in the car full, but with just the two of us it reduced our emissions to a third.

Martin walking along our street to catch the bus.  He had the bulk of the luggage.