The Valley of Vision

In recent years it has become my custom to pray through a list of people and situations most mornings.  For some months, however, I've been very tired and haven't had the concentration to do that.  That's OK in itself, but it's also meant that I've drifted into a pattern of not talking to God very much at all.  Talking about God yes, but precious little talking to God :-(

Once I realised that I was keen to change it, and one thing that's made a difference is a book I came across called The Valley of Vision.

Edible weeds in my Auckland garden

The other day a friend saw I had a bowl of nasturtium leaves on the bench, along with other salad ingredients.  "Are those a vegetable?", she asked.  She was very excited when I said they were - she has lots of them growing in her garden and thought they were 'only a weed'.  Inspired, I enthusiastically showed her the oxalis that was going into the same salad.  She was positively ecstatic about that one: apparently it tastes very similar to a herb from her Thai homeland that she hasn't been able to find in New Zealand!

I love edible weeds like these: delicious herbs that show up of their own accord and thrive without care in our garden.  Here are some of my favourites.

Nasturtium

(source)

Making a table of contents in a blogger blogpost

This won't interest any of my regular readers. I hope some people who will benefit from it will find it, but mostly I hope it will save me having to figure this out again every time I need it!

On some of my longer blog posts (such as my recent one on seeing the world) I like to include a table of contents to make it easier to navigate.  Unfortunately, blogger does not make this easy and, as someone with no background in computer programming, I found the online guides on how to do it hard to follow.  So, for other programming-novices out there, here's how to do it.

Seeing the world

I think it's fantastic that many Kiwis want to better understand how life is lived in places far away.  Most of those people will do this by traveling; however, in the spirit of not encouraging flying, I'd like to introduce you to some resources that have helped me to do this from the comfort of my own bed.

Bon Voyage!

• Literature
• Central Africa
• West Africa
• South Asia
• East Asia
• Middle East
• Europe
• USA
• The Caribbean
• Latin America
• The Pacific
• Antarctica
• Historical Perspectives
• Blogs
• Radio and podcasts
• Social media

Spring is so early this year!

I've been very surprised by how early spring is this year.

Last year in autumn after it lost all its leaves I cut back my bleeding heart vine till it was just a few sticks poking above the soil.  It then sat dormant for a few months before putting up its first shoot.  This year, before all the leaves were even dead, I was startled to see new shoots appear!  I thought the plant was just confused and cut them back along with the rest of the plant.  New ones replaced them immediately.  I figured that meant the plant knew what it was doing, so I left them be and watered them.  Now, with theoretically another whole month of winter still to go, it looks like this.

The next thing I noticed was our local grey warbler singing its heart out.  My bird book tells me that they sing occasionally year round, but mostly in September and October.  It's only July, but it's been singing solidly for at least a week!

And then there's my hyacinths.  These sit in a pot tucked away in a corner for most of the year and are only brought out when they start to sprout.  I have a reminder in my calendar for when to start looking for the sprouts - if I miss them, something has a tendency to eat all the flower-buds before they open.  That reminder is set up for August 1st: a month earlier than I've ever previously noticed them sprouting.  On Friday, though, I saw some pink flowers out of the corner of my eye: my hyacinths hadn't just sprouted, half of them were already flowering!  They must have come up a good 6 weeks early.  Fortunately, whatever it is that likes to eat the flower buds hadn't got to them (maybe it's still too early?) so it looks like I'll still get a good show of flowers :-)

I'm not complaining, but it does make me wonder what's up with the weather!

A ring-side seat at a salmon run

In recent weeks, I've spent hours watching leaping salmon and the bears that stalk them.  It's been fantastic - a rare privilege, with likely a better view than I'd get from being there in person!

I had no idea that a salmon run could be so abundant.  The camera's been running continuously for nearly six weeks now, with salmon leaping all the time, day and night.  I had no idea how high they had to leap, either - it's absolutely astonishing.

The bears at Brooks Falls - I think there's 7 in this picture.

Mum and Dad's 50th wedding anniversary and other happenings

Life's been crazy-busy recently!  Since early June we haven't had a week without visitors staying, and for the last month we've had people staying most nights.  It's been great, but also exhausting!

Martin's sister and her family have been visiting from Thailand.  We've enjoyed lots of good food and general hanging out with them, and it's been good to see a bit more of Martin's parents than usual while they've been here.

L-R: Martin's sister Sandra and her husband Chris, their daughter Michaela, Martin's dad