Peas at last

I picked and podded them and tonight I'm going to steam and eat them!
Peas!
At last!

The knight is young (for Shunda's boys).

Plain green.

'Unlike in Europe, New Zealand's stark agricultural landscape is seldom used for recreation, says UK-born Wratten. "Britain has the public footpath scheme, and in Europe people cherish the countryside, the skylarks and the heathers. But noone wants to go for a walk in the Canterbury Plains - and if you do, you're likely to be asked to leave if you're on private land.
"But Greening Waipara is about changing that."

The Listener (Jan 1-7) has a very good article (Nature ground zero) about the re-planting of the Canterbury Plains, starting with the vineyards, that I found to be a very good read. You too might find it valuable.
Try not to gag on the cover :-)

Bomber's awards

Over at Tumeke! Bomber Bradbury is, like many other commentators, giving out awards for sterling performances across New Zealand's political and entertainment spheres.
His choice of Michael Laws and his thinking behind awarding the mascared-one a tinny gong made me laugh.

"I imagine him after a long day of stoking talkback bigotry going straight home to shimmy out of his human skin to start swallowing small rodents."

Ele Ludemann at Homepaddock notes that Garth George was the recipient of an award for services to journalism - it's a topsy-turvy world indeed!

*Update - Scott at Imperator Fish gave John Key an award also

"Member of the Order of the Ostrich (MOO)

This award goes to those prominent persons whose response to difficulty has been to place their heads in the sand.
John Key, for services to doing nothing. His ability keep smiling while our economy continues its gradual descent down the OECD rankings will surely see him re-elected in 2011. If blandness and lack of imagination are virtues in our leaders, then surely Key is one of the greatest. When asked by the Herald what his favourite hobby was, he said "golf". Yawn.

Quite right.

Grubby stuff

Thanks to Santa, I now have two mattocks!

Xmas deco

Every year we buy one new Christmas decoration to add to the tree. This year we found this lovely kowhai flower.

Today's rag.

Up early to read the paper (those e-readers seem to be becoming very popular - wonder if I'll end up with one of those. They'd be great for council business. The trees that come through my mailbox now!) and glean what I can about the wide world before my own makes its demands on my time.
A real mish-mash of the sublime and the ridiculous this morning. Our SAS have attacked and killed 2 civilians in Afghanistan. That's tragic for those who were killed and for their families and very bad for New Zealand's reputation in that war-torn country.
Here in Southland, Charlie Te Au is taking a pasting from his fellow board members after criticising the council Christmas Party. That's a step too far Charlie and you're going to pay the price, apparently! Both the chairman and and old-guard councillor have taken up poison pen and used the Letters to the Editor column to beat poor Charlie about the head with his own words. Has Bluff become the new Gore?
Best snippet for me though, came from the article by Nathan Burdon on roller derby, where he lists the evocative names the 'girls' have chosen for themselves, the best (imo) being 'Karma Suture'.
That's pretty funny and slightly disconcerting at the same time.
Best photo is the dizzying shot of the Indian high-voltage power line worker repairing the lines whilst balanced like a spider, on the wires he's fixing. No cherry picker, insulated gloves and boots or safety line for him!

Koru

Climbing the ladders of success

If you want to reach the heights in the world of gardening, you’ll need a ladder.
I have seven. I don’t know why I have so many. One’s enough to reach the highest point of my house when it needs painting so what, I ask myself, are the other six for?
They were bargain from garage sales and I couldn’t resist buying them; their wooden rungs and flared legs in cedar and oregon, unpainted, bar one in a rich orange (orange=easy to find when left propped up somewhere in the orchard).
I can’t climb more than one at a time so I’ve fixed a couple of them to poles and grown vines up them: Manchurian gooseberries and grapes, unorthodox but very Greek (the Greeks didn’t do this, I suspect, but in my imagination …).
My smallest is a mini-fruit picker’s ladder, perhaps for dwarf trees. It’s far wider at the base than the top making it very stable. Not that it would be far to fall if it did tip, but it’s un-climbable now, nailed as it is to the shed wall and tightly wound about with a thick kiwifruit vine. Perhaps ladders represent my aspirations; I’ve lots of those too. They’ve made great playthings for my children as they grew up. I once looked out of the upstairs window into the face of my son who had climbed to the top of the tallest ladder, straight up into the air with his younger brother standing at the base holding it vertical and steady.
I use the ladder to check the bird nests in the cabbage trees, take aerial photos of my garden, clear the guttering of leaves and to collect seeds from high up in the canopy of my native forest.
The greatest bonus of all for a collector of ladders like me is to be able to say yes to a neighbour who might want to borrow one, even if I’ve lent out two earlier in the day.

Rats!

New evidence from research into kiore, the Pacific rat, reveals that they and their human co-colonizers

arrived here in Aotearoa no earlier than 1280 AD. This puts pay to claims that humans first arrived here around 2000 years ago. Perhaps. I found the work done with native tree seeds and the marks left behind by rat chew very interesting and took one of their images to illustrate this post.

From the article (hat-tip Geoff ).

"Dr Wilmshurst and her team researchers re-excavated and re-dated bones from nearly all of the previously investigated sites. All of their new radiocarbon dates on kiore bones are no older than 1280 AD. This is consistent with other evidence from the oldest dated archaeological sites, Māori whakapapa, widespread forest clearance by fire and a decline in the population of marine and land-based fauna.


As the Pacific rat or kiore cannot swim very far, it can only have arrived in New Zealand with people on board their canoes, either as cargo or stowaways. Therefore, the earliest evidence of the Pacific rat in New Zealand must indicate the arrival of people.

The dating of the rat bones was also supported by the dating of over a hundred woody seeds, many of which had distinctive tell-tale rat bite marks, preserved in peat and swamp sites from the North and South Islands."

Pickin' peas 'n' poddin'em

That's my morning planned.
Later, I'm planting sunflowers and corn in the tunnelhouse, moving nets from redcurrants to plums and planting out my pit-grown peach trees.
In the evening, I'm repairing my never-flown Chinese goldfish kite.
Tomorrow, she flies!

Now he lives in my forest

Snarlers

For several years in a row, blustery weather causing choppy waves has prevented the running of the Boxing Day power boat races on the river at Riverton. The high-powered snarling things have had to stay on their boat trailers, engines un-fired, hulls un-wetted.

Instead, the rowers took to the water, not bothered by choppiness. Their multiple oars dipped and pulled without a sound. Even the grunting from the oarsmen and the yapping of the coxswain barely carried across the water to the watching crowd. It certainly didn't shatter the seasonal peace that enveloped the town like Santa's cotton wool beard.

Are we unhappy at the weather-forced gagging of the massive engines with their banshee screams?
Do we pine for their inconsiderate throaty howls?
Not in this gentle household.

Now, where did I leave that ark?

It persisted down here over night and the ground is well soaked.
The new hazels planted in the sandy 'townside' garden have gone from wilted to perky and the chickory seed Adam broadcast onto the top garden will be swelling fit to burst into growth. I got the black currants and the Wosterberries netted against avain attack just before the rains began to fall, so all is well.
It's still raining, adding to the 41mm that fell last night, so it's time I think, to watch some movies.

The knowledge of Guyton - Southland Times Letters to Ed

As I read Robert Guyton's letters about dairy farmers in the paper it seems a waste of knowledge to me.
He should set up as a consultant advisor to dairy farmers.
Stupid old dairy farmers such as I need quality advice. My banker advises me to contract a good consultant, this precludes me from offering to be one of Mr Guyton's first clients.Now he is on the Regional Council I trust they will use his vast knowledge of dairy farming.
DUGARD MCKENZIE
Wyndham

Remember this brethren?

Today my garden looks like this.

Pea

Frog by Terry

Recognise this famous froggy face?
He sits on the back of my Christmas t-shirt, painted there by my son.
Great gift.

Peak coffee

Today's Southland Times carried a real eye-opening article about ... coffee.
Seems the escalating price for a cup of the invigorating stuff is the result of several factors, all boding ill for the coffee drinker. Coffee growers are hurting from the very low prices they are being offered for their beans and are unwilling or unable to refresh the bushes on their plantations. Coffee beans are becoming harder to find, as those bushes age and become less productive. This is resulting in traders ramping up their prices as stocks diminish. Here at the coffee cup end of the equation, it looks like a peaky kind of situation with pressure on to drink less. Or stop altogether. Or take a third job to cover the very high price that coffee is on it's way to demanding.

Peak coffee, coffee shortages and sky-rocketing prices are reminiscent of the position motorists face regarding fuel. With petrol at over $2.00 a litre and coffee going up in price, changes in behaviour are inevitable.
This article describes the connections between the two, oil and coffee, well.

Berry day

Boxing day is berry-picking day at my place. The red currants are ripened to perfection and safe for the moment under netting but the blackbirds and thrushes are getting more insistent. They've started on the gooseberries and blackcurrants, even though those are not quite ripe, so today it's off with the nets and picking as fast as we can til the redcurrants are safely inside on the kitchen table. The we'll net the other berries, give them a few days to sugar-up and do the same again. Meanwhile it'll be topping and tailing, freezing and jamming. There will be red currants for breakfast and desert. When the gooseberries come in, there will be fools to be had and pies. All the while, the blueberries will be fattening and blueing-up. By then the plums will be ripe and the early apples coming on. All of our nets will be deployed (there are over 90 apple trees), the figs will be ripe and the pears ready for picking.
No time to waste, I can hear the sharpening of beaks and the flutter of wings.

Sparky's portrait

The best little Christmas Eve Parade in the country.

Every year at 7:00 p.m. on Christmas Eve the Riverton Christmas Parade wends it's way down the main street of our little village. In the distant past, the parade consisted of Lion's Club members dressed as Disney characters and wearing bizarre paper mache heads that were reminiscent of Goofy, Donald and Mickey, flinging boiled sweets to the modest crowd that gathered to watch, and an assortment of tractors towing hay-making machines and ploughs, followed along by the old retired fire engine with a cotton-wool-bearded Santa plumped up in the passenger seat. It was unique.
Now-a-days, the parade has biggered!
The aged Lion's hand out balloons now (the children of the town used to dice with death chasing lollies amongst the wheels of the tractors) and the wacky heads stay in their wool shed storage. Clowns bother the crowd and annoy all and sundry, their 'funny' behaviour augmented by a Noddy car that has two golliwogs seated in the back, grinning inanely and waving their white gloved hands as they tootle the length of Palmerston Street. The New Life church has a themed float, as do other churches in the town, festooned-all with children. Santa has a sleigh now and a better beard. Then come the trucks. Many trucks. Diesel trucks burning diesel. Many a lung has convulsed as those behemoths passed. Stock trucks, gravel carrying trucks, lime spreading trucks, urea hauling trucks. Trucks. And tractors with monstrous farm implements behind - reapers, winnowers, rakes and giant ploughs, all scrubbed shiny by proud contractors hauled by glass cabbed, multi wheeled tractors driven by lads I once taught. It's a heart-swelling sight and reeks of Deep South Christmas.
Come on out tonight and see it for yourself.  

Abuction fears disrupt Nat Christmas function

Bill English is no Santa Claus and his electorate it seems, is a hot-bed of paranoia around Christmas time. Reports from this year's National Party Christmas party for devotees from the Clutha/Southland electorate reveal that there was fear that the festivities there might be interrupted by visitors from outer space! Neil  Henderson's comment on Homepaddock reveals the level of  anxiety felt by the National Party faithful attending the Christmas shindig,

"Many people are frightened that “aliens from outer space” might disrupt these pleasant gatherings."

While the true-blue believers of Clutha/Southland are clearly worried about 'little green men', I'm more than a little worried about them!

Cheerio-o Sparks!

Yesterday, our ol' three-legged dog Sparky shed his mortal coil (if that can be said of dogs) and now rests in a plot beside the gravel path that leads to our house. We held a little service for him today, laid flowers where he now lies and recounted stories of his doggy life. A surprising number of those involved his stealing food; Christmas cakes and barbeque meats, the cat food from our neighbour's porches and thawing frozen foods in particular, and other funny escapades where he featured large. 
We'll miss him, though we're happy that he's released from the discomfort of a failed third leg, his partial deafness and what was once a powerful and fear-inspiring bark, since faded to a wheezy cough.
Here's a photo of a photo that shows Sparky and Terry out on the estuary together.

Planned summer destination

The wisdom of bj chip

bj comments on Frogblog and is no sluggish thinker. Today he made the comment below, which I've 'borrowed' to paste here because I think it's instructive and significant.
Thanks bj chip.

"If you would understand people who are really-really-smart you have only a few choices. First/best one is to also be really-really-smart. That isn’t however, a choice… more of a condition. The next is to read carefully and think about the different possible meanings a lot longer before you decide that you know what happened. The third is to trust someone else who is really-really-smart to explain."

First fire

At last, we have a wood-fire installed in our house. It took years of umming and ahhing but here it sits, our Tiny Trad convectional/radiant stove with its long flue (tall enough to clear the top of the roof on our two-storey house) and clean lines, sitting on a base of thick slate tiles. It's a picture and here one of the first light-up, made yesterday afternoon while the hot nor' easterly winds blew (we were advised by the installation guy that the first burn was a smelly one as the coatings on the stove and flue 'burned off' and that it was wise to light up with the windows and doors open - so a cold winter's night wasn't the best option and a hot summers day was.)
We are looking forward to cosy nights around this cheerful fire, burning wood that we've grown here in our owner-planted forest - manuka, tarata, kotukutuku, kowhai, alder and birch.

Lunar eclipse as seen from Riverton

Pure and unadulterated.

Nick Smith on the privatization of ACC.

Sneaky little hobbitses!

Brownlee, Key and Jackson.

2 hot 2 do 2 much

It's sweltering here.
Yesterday's rain has evaporated leaving the ground as dry as it was before.
I've spent the day mowing cow parsley and fennel in the lower orchard and thinking about the wikileak that revealed that Key's been sneaky about the visit of the Dalai Lama.

Damn leporids!

The @#%&* hares are attacking and snacking the young apple trees we've planted at the arboretum at Otautau, stripping the new leaves from the tips of the branches and chewing on the bark on the trunks.
I'm going to make chicken-wire tubes tomorrow and surround each tree with a steely ring of confidence.

The Decider

If we do suffer a serious drought here in the South it has been suggested that the claims by organic farmers that their pasture management and resulting greater depth of roots on their grasses will protect them against a big dry will be tested.

I'm plumping for the urea-free farmers to win this challenge hands-down, but we'll have to wait and see - today's rain may be a drought-breaker, though I doubt that it'll do any more than wash the dust off the pasture. Flying over the Aparima district on Friday, it did look as though Organic Acres was greener than any other farm below us and it's early days yet!

You'd never guess...

...what this is.

Judgement day

Venture Southland's HQ in Spey Street's a hive of creativity and yesterday, festivity as well.
It was Christmas Party time for the fertile thinkers that brainstorm Southland's future directions under the 'Venture' umbrella and they needed a greenie judge to apportion certificates and prizes for their 'office plant' competition. Robyn and I agreed to have a go at it and arrived in time to squeeze in 5 minutes of judging before the merry crew finished the 'secret Santa' stage of their day and swarmed upstairs to where we were frantically scribbling down notes, checking under leaves for hidden bribes and assessing the health (or otherwise Rex!) of the pot plants. Venture Southland has in its ranks some very high profile Southlanders who are no strangers to performances in front of crowds, so it was a high pressure situation for the two judges from the country (We're from the country!) but there were clear winners in most categories: the 'healthiest plant' went to the plant that was healthiest - a lush lettuce that looked ready to salad. It's neighbour, another lettuce, took the 'Orana Park' award for best wildlife and looked very unlikely ever to make it to the salad bowl. Some staff cheated, it was clear, though they denied it emphatically. There were enormous strawberries hanging from what looked to my gardening-eye, like alpine strawberry plants, well known for their tiny-even-when-ripe berries. The stems that supported the swollen giants looked suspiciously wire-like. Most creative of all the potted plants (all theoretically edible) was a small, indistinct plant whose 'carer' cared so deeply for its well being that he'd surrounded it with prayer flags, vials of arnica, a pellet of 1080, a Cheops pyramid and a host of other protective devices and charms, all designed to keep the plant from harm but so numerous that they'd all but crushed the poor wee thing! The 'most nurtured plant' certificate couldn't be awarded to any one else but Robin, though I feared he'd add it to the pile and completely crush the tiny thing. The 'best decorated pot' award went to Angela, with the rider that it was also the most trashy - swathes of gold beads wound around the plastic pot moments before the judging contributed to the tarty look but caught my eye anyway :-) The pace and pressure of the judging meant we missed the more subtle nuances of design and presentation, but once the crowd had dispersed, back to their cubbys and desks, we took a more leisurely look at the 30 or so pot plants and marvelled at the details. Tiny cut-outs of all his fellow workers were poked in the soil around one healthy parsley plant by its good-with-scissors owner. Another featured plastic leaves and blooms that would keep the spirits of the gardener up, should the real plant die. There were baubles and reindeer of doubtful genetic stock (I'm certain that was a cow with antlers selotaped on!), tinsel and little Christmas treats. And aphids, plenty of aphids. The office window ledge is perhaps not the most balanced environment for growing vegetables but the harvest of fun was worth the weeks of worry and attention the project required.
Lots of fun. Well done office gardeners!

At last! The real food baby!

Up in the air

The fog cleared and the chopper arrived right on time. We flew along the river bed, looking at the work done by the gorse-control people, then further upstream until we reached the native bush that flanks the mountains.
Flying over native forest is exciting and memorable. The forms of the crowns of the trees are spectacular.

The source of the Aparima is a series of trickles amongst the scree eroding from the back of the peaks of te mauka tapu Takitimu.
Fabulous place!

Friday's flight

The bumblebees are already up and flying and I was to be too- at least that was the plan. The fog/low cloud that's uncharacteristically shrouding the deep south might keep me on terra firma despite my appointment to helicopter the winding length of the Aparima River on a reconnaissance flight midmorning.
I can't grumble too much though - this moist and misty cover is a relief from the dry, hot conditions we've been experiencing for some time now. The news that river and ground water levels are at worryingly low levels already and the the projections indicate drought for the South, were on the front page today. We've been briefed in the Chamber on the potentials and the extent of the issue and so I'm not going to wish away clouds in the hope of getting off the ground today.
If it doesn't go ahead, I'll be heading into Venture Southland HQ to judge their gardening competition and I hear the honours have been fiercely contested!

Drilling into Gerry

"The kindest thing one can say of the Minister and the Government he represents is that they have as yet no adequate conception of the magnitude of the threats that come with climate change. I’ll do them the courtesy of presuming that if they did they would have made it very clear by now that the lignite will stay in the ground."

Bryan Walker on Hot Topic writes to Gerry Brownlee, Minister of Extractions, and receives a reply.

It's worth reading.

Sago, rice and ..tapioca!

FYI(AM)
"Tapioca pellets, which recently have been introduced in New Zealand, can have valuable potential as a supplement in pasture based dairy cattle rations"

Onlinesupplements.net.nz says that tapioca is good for cows.
I've always thought of it as good for me and am amazed that it's being gulped down by dairy cows here in New Zealand. Tapioca is not especially cheap to by as a desert ingredient and it puzzles me that it can serve as stock food - don't we feed our cows grass? Isn't that what gives us our market edge?
What's next - pavalova?
 More from onlinesupplements:
"Tapioca pellets are a high-starch feed ingredient produced from the roots of the tapioca-, manioc-, or cassava plant. Tapioca is a tropical perennial root crop, which is widely grown in Southeast Asia, Africa and Central America. After harvest, the roots of the plant are sliced into chips and dried in the sun. Subsequently, the chips are pelleted (8 mm) and are mainly utilized for the production of starch for human food and industrial uses, and stockfeed applications."

Odd.

Island Harbour

To get through the gates onto Island Harbour and the South Port facility you must have photo I.D.
NO EXCEPTIONS it says on the gatekeepers cubby. NO EXCEPTIONS!
Once inside, we were ferried about in a bus to keep us from getting squashed by the gargantuan machines that trundle to and fro with bundles of logs in their jaws or steel containers strapped to their bellies. A 6 million dollar crane flexed its wirey muscles in readiness to lift those containers, two at a time, out from the bowels of waiting ships. Bulldozers fitted with giant mesh blades crawled over mountains of woodchip, reshaping them for reasons I couldn't fathom. Stevedores scuttled about, wearing tattoos and overalls. Warehouses stuffed with palm kernel expeller or milk powder lined the wharves. In the darkness sat barrels of molasses and bins of tapioca (Tapioca! Did you know that dairy cows loved to eat vast quantities of tapioca? I didn't!).
Inside the Board Room, things were just as heavy - graphs, maps, projections and rationales - the movements of ships, the prospects for Southland's economic boom, expansions on the waterfront - all very exciting to the progressively minded.
All food for thought and I'm thinking about it all.

Petrol $2.00 a litre!

That's all.
Just saying.

No fair!

Nothing to fear in careful sale of some assets

This is the bright and sparkling message from National and its breathless supporters - those things you knew to be avoided, rejected, watched-for and wary of, are, according to them, passe, out-dated and no longer valid.
National's 'disseminators of spin', such as the blog Homepaddock that provided this post's title, are busy delivering the next wave of softening-up that they hope will facilitate the plans of the party they cheer for, but I'm not so easily softly soaped.
I will be watching for more and more of this 'wash' as English and co try to cover the appalling debt situation they've created for themselves and I hope that any alert readers that stumble upon or regularly read this blog will do the same.
Sell some assets?
No fear!

3 gulls

(Photo Julieiris)



Tao Te Ching

If a country is governed wisely,
its inhabitants will be content.
They enjoy the labour of their hands
and don't waste time inventing
labour-saving machines.
Since they dearly love their homes,
they aren't interested in travel.
There may be a few wagons and boats,
but these don't go anywhere.
There may be an arsenal of weapons,
but nobody ever uses them.
People enjoy their food,
take pleasure in being with their families,
spend weekends working in their gardens,
delight in the doings of their neighbourhood.
And even though the next country is so close
that people can hear its roosters crowing and its dogs
barking,
They are content to die of old age
without ever having gone to see it.

Bean there done that.

On a traffic island near Invercargill.
Encouraging.

Te Ao Marama

Kei te haere au i te ra nei ki te marae ko Murihiku mo te hui.
Ka pai ki au i te wahi ra me nga tangata ka noho i runga.

Clapp nails the platform

Free Willy

 

"The Napier City Council has made a decision to close Marineland permanently after receiving confirmation by the Minister of Conservation that they no longer support keeping marine mammals in captivity."

So that's that.

Good.

Coaster

Venus cranefly trap

My Venus Fly Trap made its first kill!

In them thar hills and everywhere!

As a Beverly Hillbillies fan from way back, I was familiar with the term 'black gold'.
Newspapers and those who comment in them describe oil, real and potential in the same way nowadays, I guess to give it an exciting, even romantic aura.
When 'they' began calling the milk that flowed from Southland's dairy herds 'white gold' it was understandable, though it always put me in mind of King Midas.
But they found they couldn't stop. Southland's lignite became 'brown gold', the region's seemingly limitless water resource 'blue gold' and the radiata forestry 'green gold'.
It got very lame, imho, to be describing these elements of our natural world with the language of a bullion dealer but today 'they' went a step too far.
Scientist Dr Bob Elliot has described Tim Shadbolt's herd of insulin-producing Auckland Island swine as 'pig gold'.
There are so many reasons for me to despair at that unfortunate description but at least I can look foward to the day someone looks at the increasingly viable sewerage to methane fuels industry and breathlessly tells some cub reporter how excited they are about 'sh*t gold'!

Don't sell the farm!

William Hughes Games on Thoughts on the Roof describes very well the reasons why so many of our farmers believe that selling to foreign buyers is vital to their success.


"Some years ago, we went cold turkey on farm subsidies and it was painful.  I think most commentators would now agree that we have a far better farming system because of it.  Stopping overseas buying of our farms would also be painful for those who want to sell their farms since it would undoubtedly lower farm prices but it would, I believe, also lead to a far better farming system.  Now that the banks are loaning on the bases of revenue rather than equity, the lowering of farm prices would have no effect on the financing of a farm. "

Read more.

Radio Live!

I'm supposed to be talking on Radio Live right now, but I think they've forgotten to call!

Fair enough.

Last time I forgot to be home when they did!

* up-date - they did call after all. We chatted about bees, gooseberries and mulch and Helen signed off by saying to Tony,
"He's a very nice person isn't he."
That's a nice way to start the day!

Lignite letter-to-the-ed

For those who missed it, the just-released report on lignite by the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment said don’t dig it up, leave it in the ground.
Jan Wright says that processing Southland lignite will create enormous amounts of greenhouse gas that will be hugely costly for the NZ taxpayer.
She says the diesel and urea produced from the brown coal will not be cheaper for New Zealanders and that our dairy and tourism markets will suffer from the damage done to our clean green image by lignite mining.
The Parliamentary Commisioner for the Environment titled her report ‘Lignite and climate change: The high cost of low-grade coal.’ and if you read it you’ll see why.

Tubular bells

Decoys

Now there's an idea!

From today's online NZ Gardener, a trick to beat the butterflies, the white ones that is.

"I read on a website recently a tip from a lady who discovered white butterflies are very territorial. Out of an old white plastic icecream container lid, she cut out little replica shapes of white butterflies and attached them onto sticks and stuck them in her garden around crops that the butterflies like to lay their eggs on. Then she watched as the butterflies flew over her garden and didn't bother to land. Well I thought, what the heck I'll give it a go. And, would you believe it, it actually works! I just stuck them on little satay sticks."

Brilliant!
Simple!
And kinda graceful too.

Thanks Liz Mackenzie of Glendowie!

Final day in the big pyramid

It's my last day at the Southland Museum & Art Gallery, (more evocatively sub-titled Niho o te Taniwha) and I've enjoyed my stint here as relief Education Officer. There are a lot of quirky and interesting things to see here and some that have to be heard, for example, there was an announcement over the public address system just now that said,

"Would all of those people on the heritage expedition to Antarctica please board your bus now."

At first I thought it was some gimmick for an exhibition experience here at the museum but no, those brave souls preparing to sail down the the frozen wastes were here looking at the Roaring Forties exhibition, perhaps getting a feel for where they're heading, before taking a bus to the harbour.

Hope they weren't put off.