A walk in the forest

Awahuri Forest to be precise. It’s one of the few remaining remnants of lowland podocarp swamp forest surviving in the region. I use the word “surviving” with caution. The forest has been devastated by introduced animals and plants, and without human intervention, all native species, both plant and animal would disappear within a hundred years, probably sooner, and be replaced by exotic species.

Rats and possums are currently the target of trapping and poisoning programs as both species predate on native bird and plant life that has evolved over 80 million years in the absence of mammalian predation. There are reminders at the entrance to the forest that for our own safety it is necessary to keep to the paths.

Currently plant control is concentrating on the removal of willow trees, bamboo and tradescantia fluminensis, the latter carpeting the forest floor preventing the regeneration of native plants from the few seeds that rats and possums don’t consume. Birdsong is often being interrupted by the sound of chainsaws attacking the willow.

There’s also an active replanting program and thousands of native plants have already been planted, with many more thousands planned.

What saddens me is the thoughtlessness of some visitors to the forest. The sole surviving silver fern is dying due to people removing fronds. When the wife and I visited the forest yesterday, workers were building a fence around it to protect it from “human predation”. But as one of the workers commented to me, it’s probably too little to late to save it. It’s really sad because just a few kilometers away there’s hundreds of silver fern growing, and while not quite as convenient (no adjacent boardwalk) they are readily accessible.

We try to visit the forest at least once each week, depending on the weather. There’s little wind under the forest canopy so unless there’s rain it’s alway pleasant, even if a little chilly. And the smells of the forest are so delightful. So here’s a few images from walks the wife and I have made though the forest in recent weeks.

The Jab

Living in one of a few truly covid-free nations, Aotearoa New Zealand, there has been little urgency for most people to be vaccinated. Border, quarantine, health and essential service workers have already been vaccinated and others at high risk are currently in the process of being vaccinated. The general population will be able to get vaccinations from the end of July for those over sixty and then progressively through younger age bands. By the end of the year, everyone over the age of sixteen will have had the opportunity to be vaccinated.

Being in our seventies, the wife and I are considered “at risk” and yesterday I received an SMS message inviting me to book an appointment for the first of the two Pfizer shots. So now we have a confirmed appointment for the 10th of August, at 2:40 to be precise. Yes, it’s still around six weeks away, but like most Kiwis, we don’t have a sense of urgency about being vaccinated.

As to whether the lack of urgency is good or bad depends on one’s fear and/or restrictions on freedom. Here in Aotearoa New Zealand, where we don’t experience restrictions such as social distancing, wearing of masks (except on public transport) or limits on the size of social gatherings (recently, 50,000 fans attended a Six60 concert in Auckland, and tens of thousands regularly attend sports events), life has been more or less normal for more than a year. Yes we are still encouraged to scan QR codes wherever they are displayed and to enable Bluetooth on our mobile devices to enable fast and effective contact tracing if necessary.

My observation has been that significantly less than 25% of the public bother to scan the QR code that is by law required to be displayed at all premises and locations open to the public. I have no idea what percentage of those who don’t bother to scan have the covid app and Bluetooth enabled on their mobile devices, but I’d be more comfortable about the ability for any future covid outbreak to be contained if more people took the the time to scan, especially in light of new variants that are highly transmissible. It literally takes only a second of your time to scan a QR code if you’re prepared. So why not do it?

Perhaps too many people here are a little too complacent about the potential dangers and have forgotten the effects of the lockdown in March/April 2020. If it wasn’t for the frequent overseas covid related news reports such as new variants appearing in some parts of the world and the dire effects such as has occurred in India, I suspect any thought I have about the pandemic would quickly fade into oblivion. It’s something that affects other nations, not Aotearoa New Zealand.

It is true that the quarantine-free travel bubble between this country and the various Australian states can be a bit hit and miss at the moment as covid still pops up over there from time to time. A bit like whack-a-mole. It’s enough for me not to consider travelling to Australia for the time being. What I find hard to fathom is why so many Kiwis feel they’re hard done by when they cannot return home without being quarantined, whenever an outbreak occurs over the ditch. It’s been made abundantly clear that the quarantine-free travel bubble with Australia is conditional on each Australian state being covid free, and that there is no guarantee that the situation in Australia will remain the same throughout their stay there. Are they unable to understand the risks or are they wilfully ignoring them?

The Case for a Non-Commercial Public Broadcaster — Peter Davis NZ

Once again Peter Davis has reflected on a topic that has been on my mind for some time – public broadcasting in the online multimedia age. It’s a topic worthy of discussion particularly in light of the trend towards the polarisation of ideas and beliefs.

The Government recently established a working group to look at the possibility of establishing a new public broadcasting entity. At present Radio New Zealand (RNZ) is almost the only agency that adheres to a public broadcasting mandate largely free of commercial imperatives. Television New Zealand (TVNZ) is in public ownership, but in all but name […]

The Case for a Non-Commercial Public Broadcaster — Peter Davis NZ

The case for autistic pride — Yenn Purkis Autism Page

For a great many of us on the spectrum, Autism Awareness day/month in April is less than helpful especially in the form promoted by Autism Speaks – a “support” organisation that definitely does not speak for Autistic people. Instead, Autistic Pride Day (June 18) is the day to show the world we are not inferior but just equal and different. I might have something more to say on the day that is more relevant to my personal experience, but here is a post by Yenn Purkis that I believe most neurodivergent people (not just autistics) can relate to.

Friday June 18 is Autistic Pride Day so I thought I would write a blog post all about autistic pride. Sometimes people say ‘why would you be proud? You can’t help being autistic. It just is.’ I think for members of marginalised groups, like Autistics, pride is a political act and a way of asserting […]

The case for autistic pride — Yenn Purkis Autism Page

7 years

This morning WordPress reminded me that it is seven years ago today that I opened a WordPress account. I’m not the most prolific writer by any means. My posts occur at erratic intervals – sometimes weeks and occasionally months between posts. Over all, I have averaged one post every 5.1 days. Meanwhile most of the WordPress posters I follow post daily and quite a number post several times every day!

I don’t know about other WordPress users, but if I were to count all the words I’ve used in my posts and compare that to the number of words I’ve used in comments, I suspect that words in comments would outnumber words in posts by at least 2:1. I confess it’s much easier for me to comment on what others say than to convert my own ideas, concerns and joys into meaningful posts.

Even when I have something I would like to share, putting into words is never easy – it comes from not thinking with words. The fact that I currently have 73 drafts in various stages of readiness for publication, some dating as far back as five years ago, perhaps illustrates the difficulty I have in organizing my thoughts in a way that might be intelligible to others. I recently purged a great many drafts that were specific to a particular event, and I still have a few that should go as the moment for their publication has passed. But who knows, the way history repeats itself, especially with politics, perhaps a few drafts might become relevant again soon – very soon in the case of US politics.

I still have followers from my first months of blogging and especially to them but also to all my followers, thank you for taking a a few moments of your time to read the personal ramblings and rants of a somewhat twisted mind.

Photovoltaic generation and more

PV generation

Since the 7th of May, our household has been generating some of its own electricity. Given that it’s only another three weeks until the shortest day of the year arrives, we’re achieving better savings than I expected. We have an all electric home (no gas, oil, coal, or wood), so we do consume quite a lot of electricity – 818.8 kW/h in 25 days of May to be precise. We generated 40% of that ourselves from 23 PV panels mounted on the roof.

In the highly deregulated electricity market of Aotearoa New Zealand, there is a considerable difference between the price supply companies sell electricity to consumers and the price they will buy back surplus home generation. Their sell price is typically around four times their buy price. The price differential made it tempting to install storage batteries so that we could call on surplus power when generation was low. But after discussing that option with several installers, we concluded the the return on investment was longer that the estimated life of the current generation of batteries.

Instead, we have installed an “intelligent” inverter that diverts any surplus electricity into the hot water storage system. Instead of maintaining a constant 55°C (131°F) the water is allowed to fluctuate between 40°C (104°F) and 78°C (172°F). Only after the water has reached its maximum temperature does the inverter allow electricity to be exported to the grid. Don’t worry, a regulator ensures that the maximum temperature at the tap (faucet) is no more than 55°C. In effect we’re using the hot water system as a sort of battery. We haven’t needed to use grid electricity to heat the water since the solar power was switched on. Even so that has been a few days where we have exported small quantities of electricity. I expect that in summer we’ll be exporting considerable amounts during the day, and as the heat pump will be switched off, our nighttime use should be minimal.

Covid alternatives to travel

For the most part we Kiwis have been largely unaffected by Covid-19 with the exception of international travel. In our case, it meant the cancellation of an extended holiday in Japan. We’ve concluded that at our age, it’s unlikely that we will feel the urge to undertake the journey once the dangers of the pandemic have passed. Instead we put the funds intended for travel towards solar power. Of course it’s not just a case of having the panels installed. The house, and especially the roof was in need of a repaint, so it made sense to paint the house before the solar panels were installed.

But if we’re going to paint the house, there’s a matter of some repairs that have been on the backburner for a while. The front door for example. Aging had caused fine cracks to develop in some of the wooden panels allowing daylight to be seen through them, not to mention a draft in windy weather. And if the door is to be replaced, why not replace the horrible single-glazed yellow sidelight with something that allows more light into the entrance lobby while reducing heat loss?

To cut a short story shorter, we had a new thermally isolated door and sidelight assembly custom made. The door has a digital lock so that’s one less key I have to worry about. The installers took only two hours to remove the old door and sidelight and install the new assembly. The transformation is quite amazing! Some of the recent changes can be seen in the images below.

The front door – before and after

The front (2 images) and rear (1 image) of the house before the repaint. The rear view clearly shows to state of the roof.

The final result with PV panels installed – 10 on the east facing front, and 13 on the rear facing west. The original paint scheme consisted of eight colours, the new has just four.