Lance's last leg

This fit fellow has all but completed his Reinga to Bluff walk along Te Ara Roa and he's done that marathon hikoi in order to learn about and draw attention to, water quality in New Zealand. Lance stayed with us on Thursday night then headed off along the North Beach, which becomes Oreti Beach, on the second-to-last day of walking that will end in Bluff today. A family he met while he was i Geraldine have arrived for an Easter visit, so we might all drive across to Bluff later today to congratulate him on completing the challenge. Lance has a 'face-page' that documents his journey:
https://www.facebook.com/walkforwaterqualitynz

Movement Unleashed - Te Araroa

Max Bell wrote:

Hey Robert.

I'm working with two guys who stayed with you recently on their way walking across New Zealand. I'm running the internet-side of spreading their project, as they're raising money for charity as part of it. We've put up a blog post here - http://movementunleashed.com/trapped-by-flooding-the-walk-update-2/.
We've posted a link to your blog. I'm wanting to ask if you'd be keen to share a link back about their walk project, so we can get the word out more and raise more money for charity.

Jack and Rowan stayed with us overnight at a very early stage of their big walk and I'm more than happy to post on their project and progress. While they were here, Jack banged out some tunes on our ancient piano while Rowan and I wandered around the garden, identifying the sorts of plants the two of them might find and eat as they make their way north. Now that they are days further on from here, I'm really feeling for them, as the weather has been scabby-as. This link shows where they are at now and the kinds of challenges they are facing. It's just as well that they are so well prepared physically. Walking through the wilderness in this weather can't be easy! 

Circling sharks

Whenever I'm on the cat crossing Foveaux Strait to Stewart Island, I always watch the waves for signs of marine creatures - a fin, a flipper or a bristled snout. Mostly I've seen penguins; little blues, Fiordland Crested and sometimes a Yellow-eyed, or seals but as yet, no whales and no sharks. I know there are both in Te Ara a Kewa, the strait's earlier name, and have no desire to get in there with them but I'd at least like to see them in their chilly realm, lolling about or cutting through the foamy brine. Seems my chances of seeing one of those families, the Great White sharks, are increasing markedly. Reports of swelling numbers of our toothy friends in the waters off Rakiura (that's Stewart Island for you Northern readers) have me thinking that I'll get to see some soon enough and that I'll be extra keen to stay aboard when I do.
Sharks eh!
They're everywhere! 

The Oystercatcher's Cottage

The Oystercatcher's Cottage, with it’s driftwood paling fence, cheerfully orange back door and flotsam and jetsam garden features must be one of the country’s sweetest little holiday cottages but it’s rivaled for cuteness by the glasshouse next door. Both structures are the work of Emily and Mitch who have mix-and-matched found and donated materials with quirky flotsam and jetsam from the beaches of Bluff to create the cosy and snug pairing of an unforgettable crib and glasshouse that make you want to settle in to both – the cottage for a few days of nautically imbued relaxation and the glasshouse just for the pleasure of soaking up the atmosphere of crafty-art combined with happy horticulture.
I visited the recycled windows glasshouse while the architect/builders were away, perhaps combing the beaches in search of knobs of driftwood like the one that serves as a latch on the door, or washed-across-the-ocean-to-our-shores buoys, baskets or bins that could contain more of the lettuces, tomatoes or basil that grow in there now.
I took photos, smelled the basil (I love the aroma of basil!), lifted the leaves of the strawberries for a look (good crop!) and stood on the dinky little bright yellow articulated digger that I guessed belongs to their young son, Archie. I hope they’ll be able to straighten that out before he notices. The sandy path that runs down between the growing indoor crops must be his foul-weather sand-pit.
There may be more cheerful glasshouses than this somewhere in the world, but I’d be surprised to be shown one. If ‘happy feelings’ were a crop, this one'd be growing a bumper.

Emily, Archie and Mitch's glasshouse has become a modest but significant benchmark in my experience of glasshouses and has inspired me to search out others of its ilk. I welcome photos of any happy glass-homes that you know of. I’d like to visit them, stand, sit or crouch in them and see how they compare with the beauty from Bluff.

"Passionate lunatics"

That's what the members of the Bluff Hill/Motupohue Environment Trust call themselves and who could or would argue with them!
They're fighting a war against stoats, ferrets, rats and possums on Bluff Hill, in an attempt to make it a better place for the native birds, insects and plants that have suffered ever since the arrival of the pests.
I've met those guys and been shown around territory and take it from me, you'd need to be a little 'touched' to take that job on and thank goodness they are and have!
Congratulations to the team for your success with the Environment Southland Awards - you're the kind of enviro-troopers every community needs.