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!