Through the eye of a needle

There are a lot of needle metaphors, and a few even relate to sewing, one way or another. But my needle story, though about sewing, is also about a life-journey (mine, obviously). Because even now, I can still learn new things.

Back in October 2022, I wrote about darning socks, something I’ve been doing for decades. In August of the following year I wrote about me mending shirts, or, more accurately, sewing on some buttons. That’s just like darning socks: Something I learned to do in childhood. But there was something between those two posts that led me to learn a new thing.

When I went to fix my shirts in 2023, I couldn’t find my needles and thread—they weren’t where they were supposed to be. I knew I’d had them in this house because I’d used then to darn those socks. Impatient and annoyed, I bought a pack of needles of varying sizes (the largest of which appeared suitable for crucifixion…) and some thread. Before I opened the new stuff, and by sheer luck, I found the originals, and I fixed the shirts using them.

Since then, everytime I’ve needed to mend something, I got the sewing supplies out of the place they’re supposed to be, but the other day I was mending something and I looked at the unopened pack of needles and noticed the little thing in the photo up top: A needle threader. I knew what it was, and I saw it every time I got out the sewing supplies, but it never occurred to me to use it.

When I was younger, I had no issues threading a needle. While I may not have succeeded in one attempt every time, my average was pretty good. However, as I grew older and needed reading glasses, it became hard to thread the needle, and yet I still never used that little needle threader. Until the other day.

The first time I threaded the needle that day, I got it on the first try, which I admit was nothing but pure luck, especially because the next threading was one failure after another. At this moment I finally remembered the needle threader. I carefully opened the pack and got it out, and instantly realised I didn’t actually know how to use it. I did what seemed logical to me and it worked instantly, and on the first try with it (and, again, this was after several failed attempts to thread the needle in the "traditional” way).

There’s no reason I never used one before, except, maybe, my mother didn’t use one, and so, I never learned about it. How I managed to nevertheless know what it was is lost in my own distant past, but because I did, I finally realised it might be a much easier way thread a needle, and it definitely is.

Although I’ve only written about it twice, I’ve actually mended various clothing items many times even in just the time I’ve been in this house, and I expect to do that for years to come. As I said in my 2022 post, “One of my core values is to live as sustainably as possible/practical,” which is one of the reasons I repair clothing whenever it’s possible or practical. I come by this naturally: My parents' adolescence was during The Great Depression, and their adult life began in the World War 2 era, so they came from a time when mending and making-do was important. Related, I’m sure, they both were also big on DIY of various sorts, including artistic work. They instilled that ethos in me, too, and to this day, decades after their deaths, I still carry on the values they taught me, and I still carry a love for DIY, self-sufficiency, and also a more modern ethic I added, sustainability.

In context, then, the fact I repair my clothing (among other things…) is no surprise whatsoever. It’s also not a surprise that I took that needle threader and used it successfully, despite never having done so. The only thing I can’t answer is why it took me so long to do that. Now that I have, however, I’ll use it‚ and its inevitable successors—every time I need to thread a needle.

Even now, and even when I’m doing something I’ve been doing for decades, I still learn new things. To me, that’s the best part of this whole story.

Shoe and tell

Shoes are kind of weird. They’re necessary much of the time, like for safety, but what they’re made of and look like—those can be odd things. I recently threw out the shoes I’ve worn for mowing the lawns (and all other outside work) since I moved into this house. It was definitely time for them to go.

In general, I’m a kind of “waste not, want not” kind of guy, but even I have my limits. I bought those shoes while we were loving on Auckland’s North Shore, and they were my everyday shoes for many years (though I had some others, too, and I had shoes that I wore for outside work back then, too).

After Nigel died and I started looking at houses in Hamilton, I wore those shoes to the open homes because they were easy to slip off and back on. That was a good idea because most Kiwis don’t wear shoes inside someone else’s house, and never a home that’s being shown by real estate agents, including home open homes. In fact, if a house attracts a lot of folks to the open home, there can be a crowd of shoes outside the front door. However, even by that time, the shoes were showing signs of wearing out.

When I moved into my house, I at first kept wearing the outside shoes I’d been wearing for a few years, but their rubber soles cracked through, and there was no way to fix them. At the same time, the signs of wear on my open home shoes had accelerated (once it starts…), and they became my new outside shoes, especially because in those Lockdown Days I didn’t have a lot of options.

A brief digression: What I call “outside shoes” are just ordinary shoes that are wearing out that I wear for gardening, mowing the lawns, and other work outside (and yes, I’m aware that shoes I wear out in public are also technically “outside shoes”, but my shoes, my rules, mkay?). I also have “inside shoes”, which are inexpensive shoes that are bit more robust and, well, shoelike than slippers are. I never wear those outside (except, maybe to check the letterbox).

The thing is, anyone with dogs has to contend with gifts left on the lawn, ones that may be invisible until they leap out underfoot while we walk across our lawns. Having outside shoes means if such an event happens, I won’t track the gift remnants into my house because the shoes don’t go inside except for the garage. Also, and somewhat miraculously, I manage to avoid stepping on the gifts; perhaps I have an invisible force field?

As those outside shoes continued slowly deteriorating, I made efforts to extend their life: I re-glued the back of the sole of one shoe twice, and then it peeled off a third time. By then the rubber soles had a hole worn through to the harder rubber underneath, the padding at the back had popped free as the stitching at the heels failed, and the stitching along the upper was opening up in places. At the end, the heal of one shoe was flapping as I pushed the mower around. It was time for them to leave, and they went out in the rubbish collection a couple weeks ago, immediately after I took the photo above, and that was right after I finished the mowing that week.

I already had replacement shoes ready to go: A pair of runners/trainers/joggers/whatever they’re called where you’re from that had been Nigel’s. He bought them maybe more than 20 years ago, but I know that he was still wearing them in 2006 because my friend Jason snapped a photo of Nigel and me (at right; I originally shared the photo five years ago, in one of my earliest grief journey posts) while Jason was visiting us. Nigel eventually stopped wearing them, having bought other shoes—some of which he also stopped wearing. I tried the shoes for mowing one time, and when I took them off, I accidentally loosened one sole from heal to about two-thirds of the way to the toe (because I hadn’t loosened the laces enough, and had used the toe of one shoe to hold/push the damaged one down to make it easier for me to slip out. Oops.

I forgot about that until I went to get them to mow the front lawns Wednesday of last week. I wore them, anyway, but the back of the sole was flapping around just like the now-gone former outside shoes did. Wednesday night I re-glued the sole and they were perfect when I mowed the back lawn on the next day.

I know that my current outside shoes, already showing signs of wear, won’t last forever, and I may not even have the opportunity to make any further repairs before it’s time to put them in the rubbish, too. However, what this tale underscores is that I do what I can to repair and even make do rather than always buying something new. So much of what we buy, even “good” brands, is designed to have a short useful life, and I do what I can to upset corporations’ plans.

In this case, the now-gone outside shoes were ones that other people would have thrown away long before I did—though this isn’t a competition. Many people don’t have the time, skills, resources, whatever, to do what I do, and I probably won’t be able to do it forever. But right now, I do what I can to extend the usable life of the products I buy, and that includes repairing what I can repair, reusing or repurposing perfectly good things I already have (and donating what I no longer have a use for). This is part of the values that Nigel and I shared, namely, to live as sustainably as possible—though he would’ve thrown out those shoes much more quickly than I did (our values were aligned, but not entirely identical…).

I still buy new stuff, of course, though not a much as I once did (us pensioners have a strong incentive to live frugally so that we don’t have to live austerely). I’m not part of any sort of “no buy” movement, but simply the stop-and-think movement. Do I need that that new thing, or do I already have something that will serve the purpose? Can that old thing be repaired or refreshed, as needed, or is it too far gone? And all that aside, is the new thing I want something that I really want, regardless of the answers to the other two questions? Because if so, I’ll buy the new thing—I’m just human, and neither a monk nor a radical.

Everyone needs to decide for themselves how to live their lives and how to put their values into action. This shoe story is really about how I go about doing that. Old shoes can tell us a lot about a person, apparently.

Rubbish communication

Recycling has become a touchy issue these days. Some people think it’s all a scam, that it’s all dumped in landfill (it’s not), some bizarrely see recycling as some sort of “virtue signalling” (probably because of their general anti-rational way of thinking…), and some people try their best to recycle everything, sometimes including things that can’t be recycled. New Zealand is about to change what it collects for recycling, and most people were probably blindsided by the news.

On January 16, the day before I left Hamilton for Auckland (and the start of my trip), I saw a Facebook Post from Hamilton City Council HCC) on changes being made to kerbside recycling. It said:

From 1 February 2024, the Ministry for the Environment is standardising kerbside recycling.

This means all Councils in New Zealand will be required to only accept plastics 1, 2, and 5 in the yellow-lidded recycling bins (along with paper, cardboard, clean tins and cans). Glass will still be collected in the blue/green glass crate as normal.

This is a change from what Hamilton City Council previously accepted, which were plastics 1-7.

At the time, I was very busy getting ready for my trip, and too stressed to give it any headspace. However, I was a bit annoyed with the Ministry for springing the changes on us. Hamilton, as their post said, collected plastics 1-7, and it annoyed me that we had to start throwing some plastics in the rubbish, and annoyed me even more that I couldn’t get rid of what I already had in my recycling wheelie bin because I’d be away the last time recycling would be collected before the change in the rules. The notice was so short!

After I got back from Fiji, I saw another post from a different local council, Waikato District Council (which borders Hamilton City Council), and their announcement directed people to throw absolutely recyclable things into the rubbish:

The new government recycling standards come into place next Thursday, but don’t worry we’re already on the right track.

The only changes to your recycling collection will be:

• No lids can be collected. Not even your ice cream container lid. This includes metal and plastic lids.

• Containers should be no larger than 4 litres.

• Anything under 5cm x 5cm can no longer be recycled.

My reaction to that was, WTF?!!, only it was the words, not the initials. HCC had said absolutely nothing about lids in their post, so, which was it?!

I decided to go to the source of the trouble and confusion, The Ministry for the Environment, finally finding the apparently unironically titled page, “Improving household recycling and food scrap collections”. It turned out that the new rules weren’t being “sprung" on us. As it appeared: They’d been finalised in March 2023—nearly a year ago—but this was the first I’d heard anything about it.

It’s possible that the evening news reported on it at the time, but if they did, I certainly didn’t hear it. However, it doesn’t sound like the sort of thing they would report, at least, not in detail. I also never saw any notices from HCC at the time, however, due to Facebook’s famously bizarre algorithms, I don’t always see what they post, and as far as I know, they don’t use any medium other than Facebook (and their own website) to spread news. Add it all up, and there was little chance I’d know about the changes earlier.

I looked through the information on the Ministry’s site, and found that Waikato District’s post was basically accurate—except about the ice cream container lids, I couldn’t find anything about that (the information is available as a PDF on the Ministry’s website). However, Waikato District got some things wrong, like about can lids: “Steel-can ends can also be accepted if securely enclosed inside the can, for example by placing the lid inside the can and squeezing the top of the can closed.” They can also be left partly attached to the can.

At first I thought I’d have to stop putting all lids (including metal jar lids) into the recycling, but then I remembered that HCC hadn’t said anything about metal or ice cream container lids, or about containers larger than 4 litres. So, it seems that for us, for now, that part isn’t changing.

I have absolutely no idea why Waikato District is going farther than HCC, nor whether their rubbish is sorted at the same place or not. However, strategically, it makes sense to hold off on banning loose metal lids, ice cream lids, and containers larger that 4 litres, if they must be banned, because making too many changes too fast will lead too many people to just give up and throw lots of recyclable things in the rubbish. Once they start doing that, it’ll be incredibly difficult to get them to start recycling again. It seems Waikato District doesn't see it that way.

The change in plastics recycling really doesn’t affect me: Types 3, 4, 6, and 7 collectively make up about 5% of all plastics, and for consumers, it’s mainly things like individual containers of yoghurt (the larger tubs tend to be type 2 plastic), sour cream, etc. So, in practical terms, this won’t really affect me all that much—but I took the time to find out the real story—I doubt very many people actually do that. Councils need to get much better at communication if they want people to comply with new rules, and to avoid confusing people.

This isn’t the first time I’ve criticised HCC for poor communication about recycling (See: “”Not really very clear” from January 2022), however, credit where credit’s due. In a new Facebook post on January 22, when I was still in Fiji, HCC was clearer about what the change is:

From 1 February 2024, the Ministry for the Environment is requiring all Councils across New Zealand to collect only plastics 1, 2, or 5 from the yellow-lidded recycling bins (along with paper, cardboard, clean tins and cans). ♻

You can tell what the plastic number is by checking the triangle on the bottom—some plastics look similar, so it pays to check. If there's no number or it's too hard to read, put it in the rubbish bin.

Examples of plastics 1, 2, and 5 👉 Milk, soft drink and juice bottles (without the lids – these go in the bin), large yoghurt containers, 2L hard ice cream containers, cream cheese, sour cream and cottage cheese containers, some dip containers, and some tomato, BBQ, and mustard squeeze bottles. It also includes meat trays and some takeaway containers.

Examples of plastics 3, 4, 6, and 7 👉 Small yoghurt/sour cream pottles, styrofoam, PVC pipes, polystyrene, biscuit and cracker trays, pill packets, some dip containers, soft plastics (plastics you can scrunch in your hand such as biscuit and cracker bags and trays, packaging from bread, rice, packaged vegetables and fruit, and shiny gift wrap) and some tomato sauce, mustard and BBQ squeeze bottles.

Although this is better, there was still poor communication: The bit about recyclable lids from milk and soft drink containers going “in the bin” may possibly mean the rubbish bin, but it’s not clear. The document from the Ministry would suggest that’s what HCC meant, because they’re too small, but it’s absolutely not obvious or clear.

Good communication from government wanting us to do (or not do) something is absolutely critical if they seriously expect compliance of any sort, especially correct compliance. However, many of the new regulations—about lids in particular—strike me as a “them” problem, not an “us” problem. If they’re “difficult” to process, then the correct action is for them to fix their procedures and methods. Failing to do so will lead more and more people to give up recycling in confusion and frustration. All councils already have problems with people illegally dumping rubbish, government at all levels, central government in particular, <i>must</i> get their acts together and make it easier to recycle, not harder.

Related: “Banning more plastics in NZ”, my post about the changes made last year.

The graphic up top is from the Ministry for the Environment.

Productive start to the week

Weekends are when many people take care of all sorts of chores they don’t get to during the week. Even I do that, despite, technically, having unlimited time. In my case, though, the timing of projects is often determined by the weather.

I’ve needed to mow the lawns for several days because all the rain and mild weather we’ve had lately caused a growth spurt, something that was true before my previous mowing adventures two weeks earlier. Unfortunately, that same rain also made it just as difficult difficult to find the right right opportunity this week.

This past Monday was the day I was determined to do it, but first there was a different projects I needed to to do: I once again had to clean out the weeds from The Damn Raingarden. In the near year since I first wrote about doing that, I’ve had to clear it our a few times, and when I do a normal mini-clear out, I toss the weeds onto the lawn so the lawnmower can grind it up into mulch. There was rather a lot this time.

The mowing when very slowly because the grass clippings being mulched by the mower had trouble getting back out when the grass underneath was so long. I had to frequently stop and raise the mower up so it could spit out all the tiny clippings more easily. Even then I nearly stalled the mower a few times.

Once I was done with the front, I mowed the part of the side yard where I keep my wheelie bins for rubbish and recycling so they’d be easier to roll out. I did that because it looked for a time like it might rain, and I wanted to be sure I got that done in case I didn’t get to finish the mowing.

Back inside, I put the battery on to charge—once it cooled down, something I needed to do, too. Once the battery was re-charged, I headed back out, rolling the mower to the patio. I decided to start with the parts of the lawn I can see from the living areas of the house, because I remembered that last time the battery ran out of charge before I could finish.

I reached my first goal, and the mower was fine, so I mowed more, until the views out my bedroom windows would also be over mown lawn. The mower kept going, so I did, too, and I managed to finish mowing the entire back lawn on one charge—as it always used to be. Along the way, I noticed a small wasp nest on my fence (photo up top), and I removed it. I don’t know if it had been abandoned or if it was just too new to be occupied, but either way, it’s now gone (the wasp species is an invasive and fairly aggressive foreign species, btw).

It was a productive day, clearly, because I closed all three rings on my watch by the time I was done. This usually happens on days when I mow the lawns, so I was expecting it. I’m always glad when it does, because it’s not all that often that I close all three.

Later that evening, I was sitting and watching TV when my watch tapped me on the wrist to tell me I’d hit 200% of my Move Goal for the day, something that’s far more rare than closing all three. The Move Ring (the red one) records an approximation of kilojoules consumed by activity of any kind, especially movement. The user sets the Move Goal every Monday, and mine is set kind of low so I have a fighting chance of closing it every day. The alert made me smile—because I thought it was funny that it happened when I was sitting and watching TV.

I did all this despite being dog tired, so to speak. At some ungodly hour yesterday morning, someone we’ll call “Leo” (for no particular reason…), decided he wanted to go outside to go to the toilet. That ended my sleep—and yet I still managed to get all that outside stuff done (maybe it was the caffeine?). I assumed that I’d probably fall asleep in my chair while watching TV that evening, but I didn’t.

I was kind of puzzled by this: The whole mowing thing had gone better than two weeks earlier, but for the machine and for me. And then I remembered that last time I used the line trimmer on all the edges, and that’s probably what exhausted me personally. I also knew I should’ve done that this week, too, and if I had, I probably would’ve fallen asleep in my chair.

Today I washed and dried tow loads, and I also ran the dishwasher. This is relevant because they, too, were because of the sunshine: I used the free electricity from the sun do run those machines. Unlike the mowing, however, it’s at least possible to do those chores in the midst of rainy weather.

This week, then has gotten off to a productive start. I have some deliveries coming this week, a podcast to record, and maybe even some more projects to get done. Was this week’s start the trend or an anomaly? I’ll know in a few more days.

Waste not, wanted not

Not everyone prioritises their personal values, and some are probably only vaguely aware of what their personal values even are. A casual skimming of this blog would affirm that I’m not necessarily like most people, in many ways, and so it’s not a surprise that trying to live in accordance with my values is probably among the most important things to me. Over the past couple weeks, I’ve been trying something new to do just that.

Nigel and I had a shared passion to live as sustainably as we could, starting with what we we could do, then building from there. I’ve been giving a lot more effort to that, mainly because I can, but also because I try to live my life in a way that Nigel would be proud of—something I’d do if he was still alive, of course. Toward that end, I recently I tried yet another experiment in more sustainable sourcing of food. It had mixed results.

The story really begins back in June, when I ordered a box of avocados and lemons directly from a grower/supplier. It was successful—and stressful: The avos and lemons were really good quality, but it had far too many avocados for me to use without pushing hard. I gave a couple away, one went bad before I got to it, but the rest I managed to eat—usually smashed on toast, one way or another. Most of the lemons, however, ended up being used for cleaning after they were well past use as food. I didn’t order another box.

Well before that experiment, I saw Facebook ads for a Waikato-based company called Misfit Garden, something that was set up to:

…connect growers and consumers closer together to help fight billions of kilos of unnecessary food waste.

Instead of telling farmers what we want (which is how the food system usually works) we speak to them each week to find out what is already grown and what is needing a home.

In your Misfit Box you can expect the 'too big', the 'too small', the 'too misfit', as well as some damn fresh produce (the way it's meant to be!)

Customers sign up to have a box delivered every 1, 2, 3, or 4 weeks, and can choose a “Mini Misfit Box” for smaller households, or a bigger one better suited to larger households. There’s also a seperate “Seasonal Fruit Box” that appears to be the larger sized box, and a small veggie-only box. Subscribers can also order add-ons, which vary from week to week, just as the box contents do.

I ordered the “Mini Misfit Box” on an every other week schedule (the photo up top is of the first box—Box 1—at the left, and this week's order, Box 2, at the right). I felt that getting a box every week would be too much for me, and getting one fortnightly might mean I’d get through one box before the next arrived. I’ve now had two boxes, and it didn’t work out quite as I thought.

The first problem I hadn’t considered is that they’d send things I was unfamiliar with, or maybe too much for me to get through before it went off. In the first box, there were two telegraph cucumbers, and I managed to get through most of one in salads, though I had to throw some of it away (sorry, put it into my compost bin). I used the other one to make cucumber relish, kind of out of desperation to use it for something before it started to rot.

Both boxes contained pears, something I haven’t had in maybe decades (Nigel hated pears—and cucumber, for that matter, so I never bought either). The pears from the first box are now getting to the point where I need to use them for, I dunno, something, or I’ll have to throw them away (sorry, into my compost bin). I did eat some the mandarins/oranges I was sent, though, so—there’s that?

Fruit was a mixed success, then, but so were the veggies: I don’t eat potatoes very often, but both boxes had them, and—much to my surprise!—I’ve managed to get through most of them. Onions are always nice to have, and the small “pickling onions” in Box 1 were actually perfect for the cucumber relish. The most recent box had two red onions, something I use once a week or two when I make red lentil dhal.

There were the new-to-me items, too. Last box, it was New Zealand yams, a native of the Andes which aren’t actually yams, but a member of the oxalis family. I don’t remember if I’ve ever had them before, but I’ve certainly never cooked any. So, I roasted them (the most common suggestion I got), tried some that way and put the rest in my red lentil dhal. I thought they were fine—didn’t wow me, and I was surprised at how sweet they were, but they were fine.

The box this week included an enormous bunch of silverbeet (our name for chard). I’m pretty sure I’ve had that before, but I’ve absolutely never cooked with it. I decided to use the company’s recipe for Silverbeet Soup (photo at the bottom of this post, with some chopped fresh coriander—a huge bunch of which was in this week’s box). It was a little more fiddly than I thought it would be, partly because—never having cooked with silberbeet before—I didn’t quite grasp how much of the stem needs to be cut away from the leaves (the leaves were added at the end), but I got there. For the final steps, everything is whizzed up and cream is added, making something that reminded me a lot of the cream of celery soup I made—except not quite as nice. It was fine—I just preferred the celery soup.

Through all this experimentation, I’ve learned that putting wilting spinach or silverbeet in a sink of cold water revives them—um, so I could wilt them in what I was cooking? I even accidentally realised (due to vegetables rejuvenating in the sink) that if I scrub potatoes in a bowl, I can throw the water and dirt out onto the lawn (which desperately needs actual topsoil). In the past, I’ve always washed the soil down the drain. So… a win?

Among other things I got were a celery bunch, a giant bunch of cos lettuce, and some carrots—all of which will get used. So far, I’ve also used all the avocados I’ve received. The first box had three, and they were relatively small, so it was easy to use them up as they ripened—not nearly as challenging as the avocado box I got in June.

I was drawn to this idea because I liked the prospect of keeping fresh fruit and vegetables from going to waste, and I also liked the idea of providing another market for growers, many of whom are here in the Waikato. For a long time, I’ve been buying the “Odd Bunch” range of vegetables at the Countdown supermarket chain, and they’re a similarly mixed bunch of “imperfect” things. When I began this experiment, it was based, first, on the fact that I know I need to eat more fresh fruit and vegetables, something I’d cut back on due to cost: Frozen is much cheaper, and it doesn’t go off before I can use it up. I knew that “The Odd Bunch” range was cheaper than the “perfect” counterparts, and I suspected that ordering direct might be good value.

To find out, I created a spreadsheet (of course…), and entered each item in the boxes, along with its weight or quantity (some things, like avocados, are sold individually). Next, I checked the online prices for both supermarket chains that deliver, Countdown and New World. I used either the lower price or averaged if neither one was a perfect match for what I’d received. Each box costs $32 plus $7.50 shipping, so $39.50 total. However, the supermarkets charge delivery fees, too, and they vary depending on a number of things, so it made sense to compare only the price of the produce and ignore delivery charges (they’d be important for an actual financial analysis, but this post isn’t that).

Box 1 would’ve cost me $49.88 at the supermarket, and Box two would’ve cost $37.40, so both supermarkets would’ve charged more than the $32 I paid (full disclosure: The first Box actually cost me $25.60 because of a 20% discount when I bought two boxes). So, yes, at normal prices, I came out ahead financially over the two orders.

However: If there’s too much for me to get through in time—either before it goes off or before more arrives—is there any savings at all? If one of my goals is to reduce wasted fruit and veggies, then it doesn’t work if I have throw stuff away (sorry, into my compost bin). To get around this, I could switch to a veggie-only box delivered every three or four weeks, or I could just stop it altogether. This is the option I’m leaning toward.

I think what the company is doing is great, and I love that they’re based in the Waikato—however, I think that for me, the potential for waste is too high to ignore, and I honestly don’t like the pressure of having the think of something to make with the box contents—especially if I’ve never used them before—rather than buying produce specifically because I want make something. It’s not just that it’s backwards, it’s that I also don’t need the pressure to use the stuff reasonably quickly. If my household had another person in it, things might be different, and the pressure could be reduced simply by checking in advance to see what’s in the box—maybe, but meal planning has absolutely never been a strength of mine, and now that I’m living alone I find it’s even less so.

The experience meant I also learned some new things, like that what Kiwis call “yams” are actually a form of oxalis, and that silverbeet is chard. Today, when I had the leftover soup for lunch, I thought some nice bread would be nice (I’m out), and then, probably because it’s a creamy soup, I remembered how my mother used to make New England clam chowder, and sometimes served it (or other dishes) with oyster crackers, and I realised I had no idea what they were or—especially—why they’re called that (it turns out that no one knows for sure). Those are an American thing, anyway, so I used what I had, and crumbled some water crackers into it. It was nice enough, quite similar to using oyster crackers, and also different than the version the night before.

So, this was another experiment that was an incomplete success: It wasn’t that it was bad value or that it failed, it’s simply that it wasn’t right for me, and that’s something I’d never have found out if I hadn’t tried it. For a household of two or more people, I think this could be a really good thing. Unfortunately, it wasn’t good for me.

The challenge of values isn’t in holding them, and it isn’t merely in trying to live in accordance with them: It’s in being willing to constantly evaluate and re-evaluate them and the ways we try to live by them. This is another thing that’s a journey, not a destination. Because of all of that I’ve very glad I tried it.

The Silverbeet Soup, with fresh coriander on top (also from Box 2).

As always, I was NOT compensated in any way whatsoever for my comments—they’re my sincerely held opinions. This is one of those times I took a chance and got great products and service, and I just wanted to share my experience.

Tomatoes and blessings

Once again, a Facebook “Memory” struck a chord with me. It’s certainly the first time that’s happened, and it won’t be the last. More and more, though, these “Memory” reminders make me realise or understand something, where they only used to make me sad. This is a good development.

This past Monday, I posted “Time shift” , a post about how a FB “Memory” made me realise how my perceptions of time have changed over the past four years. That “Memory” made me reflective rather than emotional. The previous Thursday, I published ”Furbabies have magical powers”, and that post was more emotional for me—though it carried some reflection, too. Today’s FB “Memory” made me reflective about emotional memories.

The photo up top is one I shared on my personal Facebook on this date in 2018—five years ago today (as is usually the case, I posted to Instagram, and it was automatically shared to my Facebook; the photo above is the original for both). As I said about the “Memory today on my personal Facebook:

This particular Facebook “Memory” would stick in my mind regardless of the fact it was our last Labour Weekend together—and it was a good one! We went to Mitre 10 Mega (in Takanini or Pukekohe—I forget which, and I think Nigel’s mum was staying with us) and had some lunch at the Columbus Coffee in store. Then, Nigel and I chose the plants and the cages and went home.

I’d prepared the beds for planting, as I always did, and that included clearing out what was left of the dead plants from the previous season’s crop. And in the photo it’s possible to see some scraps on the lawn. Then, we planted the tomato plants, and all of that was standard for us.

Those plants didn’t produce the most tomatoes all at once (the plants I grew from salvaged seed the year before produced more at first), however, these plants produced fresh tomatoes into winter, and finally stopped less than three months before Nigel died. We never got to plant any in 2019.

The thing is, as I’ve often said since then, I was absolutely certain that if Nigel had never had that damn cancer, he’d have been even bigger into vegetable gardening in later years, especially because he really enjoyed the harvesting (it meshed with his dream of us living as self-sustainably as possible). The photo at the bottom of this post is of Nigel harvesting the previous year’s crop on April 7, 2018 (I took it from the deck above, but I don't think he knew I'd done that).

At that time, too, I also saw that he was becoming more willing to do the physical work, and not leave it all to me, so I could clearly see a future in which we’d work together on it—especially if he got to use power tools, like a tiller or something, but raise that probability exponentially if there was technology involved, because he absolutely would’ve found some to use. For example, something like a watering system controlled by an app: I can clearly imagine us getting together with family, and him pulling out his phone (especially if his brother was there…) and saying, “sorry, I just had to water the garden,” smiling with that cheeky grin of his.

So, when I see a memory like this, I don’t mainly think just about what I—what we all—lost when Nigel died, and it’s not just about what, in 2018, seemed like our certain future that never was. What I actually think about is how great this particular memory is, because it was so typical of the thousands of awesome times we had together (and yes, that’s including how we always got scratchy with each other when we worked on projects together). The other, bigger, thing I think about, though, is how amazingly lucky I am to I have all those wonderful memories of our life together; not everyone is as fortunate, for whatever reason. I wish they were.

I think about and miss Nigel every single day, but what’s changed is that the memories that once made me feel sad, or that fuelled the fires of my pain, those same memories are now like a warm, fluffy blanket I can wrap up in whenever I need it the most, including when I’m sad. Whenever I miss Nigel’s hugs the most, those memories take his place. It’s not the same at all, obviously, but the way they can make me feel is a reasonable substitute.

Time doesn’t necessarily heal all wounds, but I’ve learned that good memories can at least soothe the wounds. It turns out, his memory really is a blessing. A Facebook "Memory" made me think of all that today.

Mending my own business

I’ve long repaired clothing items when I can, and I talked about darning socks back in October. While I can’t repair a hem or do similar sewing tasks, I can do other useful things, like replacing buttons. Yesterday I replaced three buttons, something that was inspired by a shirt than cannot be saved.

The photo above is a closeup of a major tear across the back of what was once pretty much my favourite short-sleeved shirt—so much so that I wore it in several selfies over the years. However, as it became a bit older and worn (a bit like me…), I only wore it at home, and when I wasn’t going anywhere. I knew it was only a matter of time before it would be unwearable, and that finally happened recently: I was tucking the shirt in before putting on a sweatshirt when it got cold, and with a loud rip, the mid-back got a gaping gash across it.

I liked the shirt because it was baggy, and because it didn’t need to be ironed, however, that may have sped it’s demise: As it got older, it got wrinkles (a bit like me…), especially in the lower half of the back (totally unlike me…). Those creases, as high points in the fabric, became worn until one eventually tore open. Would ironing have extended its life? Well, probably, because if I needed to iron it I wouldn’t have worn it very much (at any given time, I have quite a few shirts waiting to be ironed).

Three shirts could be saved, though: Two shirts had buttons broken in half, and a third had lost a button for its button-down collar. All the shirts had spare buttons sewed onto them, so all I needed to do was match the thread colour closely enough and sew on the replacement buttons.

I chose the button-down collar to fix first because I knew it’d be the hardest: I had to figure out where the button went. I also struggled a bit getting the spare button freed—which made me wish the original button had been attached nearly that well. In the end, I succeeded. I haven’t worn the shirt in eons because of the missing button, and I’m not sue how much I wore it before that, so it’s kind of like a new shirt, I guess.

I next took on the two shirts with half-buttons. I again struggled with getting the spare buttons freed, and then managed to drop the first one making me spend a couple minutes looking for it on the floor. Oops. Both of these shirts were also “at home only” shirts, though I have worn both “in public” in the past.

My next step was to iron a bunch of shirts, including one of the formerly half-button shirts, part of an attempt to maybe prevent a repeat of the back gash incident. At this point, I should be wrapping up the story, congratulating myself, and celebrating another small victory. But this adventure wasn’t done with me yet.

As I ironed the button-down short, the iron hit something in a pocket: It was the button that had fallen off. I had absolutely no recollection of putting the button in there when it fell off, and, in fact, thought I remembered simply discovering it was gone. Now I have a loose little button for the shirt, which I’ll put in my sewing kit in a tiny plastic bag with a note telling me what it is. Just in case. (yes, I did consider sewing the loose button into the seam, but, too much work. For now).

It turned out in the end that while there are limits on what repairs I can do, there are also limits to what can be repaired (like the gash in the back of that shirt). However, the bigger obstacle seems to be, as it so often is, misremembering things related to what I want to do, in this case, that I put that button in the pocket of the shirt it fell off of. Forgetting all about that meant that I ended up making more work for myself—and it gave me a loose button.

While the extra work and loose button has a kind of shoulder-shrug of unimportance, it’s also yet another example of how my unreliable memory causes problems—very, very minor ones, sure, but problems nonetheless. I wish I had the kind of memory I had 20 or 30 years ago, but that’s not the way these things work, so this was one of my motivations for creating my personal organisation system. There were other things that helped me work out how to structure the system, but finding ways to compensate for my unreliable memory was chief among them.

That new system has worked pretty well. It’s also much easier than trying to get a spare button freed. So, yay.

Real plastic changes

There’s a clear momentum in many countries for companies to move away from single use or hard to recycle plastics. Whether that’s because of consumer demand, government regulation, or cost is irrelevant: They’re doing the right thing and that should be acknowledged—even as we urge them to keep moving toward sustainability.

Last week, the obviousness of change was brought home to me through two supermarket chains. Last Friday evening, hours before New Zealand’s new plastic bans took effect, I stopped in New World on my way home from a family get-together. I was curious and looked: Their produce section already had paper bags for customers to use, and there were no rolls of plastic bags that I could see. They may have made the switch ages ago, for all I know, because I wouldn’t have noticed: I’ve had reusable mesh bags for produce for several years. Regardless, it was good to see they were ready ahead of the deadline.

A few days later, I was placing a delivery order with Countdown (part of New Zealand’s other supermarket chain), and I saw the ad at the top of this post, one of several that cycled through their main web page. In January of last year, I blogged about how only some plastics were easily recyclable, and coloured drink bottles weren’t among them. I was glad to see that the Coca-Cola company was taking responsible action.

Throughout the slow walk away from single-use and hard to recycle plastics, the degree of acceptance has varied, particularly among affected businesses. Both supermarket chains started working on produce bag replacements by the time plastic shopping bags were banned, and spokespeople for both companies talked about problems. There’s nothing quite like a looming deadline to spur action, and whether or not that was an immediate motivator for the supermarket chains or not doesn't really matter because it imposed a deadline—and both companies got there.

The bottle change is a bit more interesting to me, and, of course, I had to learn more. It turns out that the decision was announced on May 1 of this year. According to the company’s website:

Coca-Cola in New Zealand has today announced that after nearly 60 years Sprite’s iconic green plastic bottles will switch to clear plastic, making them easier to recycle into new bottles.

While green PET plastic is recyclable, it’s usually converted into single-use items like clothing and carpet that cannot be recycled again.

The change is being made globally, because it “reflects the company’s commitment to prioritise sustainability and drive packaging circularity”. I actually think this is true: It’s good business for companies to make an effort toward sustainability, but if they’d persisted with difficult-to-recycle green bottles, sooner or later there would’ve been consumer backlash—just another reason the move made good business sense. Still, it’s no small thing considering that the product has been in green bottles since it was introduced in the 1960s (the no sugar version has been in clear plastic bottles for a very long time).

These two things—making an early change to paper rather than single use plastics, and changing a plastic bottle colour to one that can be recycled multiple times—are each obvious moves for the companies to make. The first was needed because a rule change made it necessary, and the second because consumer demand could ultimately drive sales down without the change. However, there are also incidents of companies that resist, such as, continuing to use banned plastics, and those are the sorts of things that get reported by the new smedia. I think we should acknowledge that, regardless of motivation, sometimes companies just get on with what needs to be done.

And yet, there’s still so much more to be done.

Almost two years ago, I wrote ”The problem is more than plastic”, a blog post in which I talked about some of the problems remaining. Nothing much has been done about the problem with things made from mixed plastics or that otherwise can’t be recycled. Personally, I’d like to see government come up with a plan to ban such plastics, too, but that’ll take alternatives and support from companies (like food and food product manufacturers) to make that happen.

In the meantime, I’d like to see a sustained effort, with significant government support, to educate people on sustainable alternatives to using plastics of any kind. At the same time, we all need to take responsibility for living more sustainably.

I’m trying to practice what I preach. Just as I researched and found reusable mesh bags for produce long before the single-use plastic versions were banned, so, too, I’ve been researching and trialling alternatives that, at the very least, reduce the amount of plastics I use—not merely hard-to recycle plastic, but all plastics. I’ll soon start blogging about my efforts in the hope that they may be useful to others.

On the meantime, though, things in New Zealand, at least, are moving in the right direction. We’re far from solving all the problems associated with the use of plastics, and there are some big and difficult challenges in the way, but just a little more determination can go much farther toward getting us there.

Important Note: The names of brands/products/companies listed in this post are used merely for purposes of description and clarity. No company or entity provided any support or payment of any kind for this blog post. The opinions I expressed are my own genuinely held opinions, and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the manufacturers, retailers, or any known human being, alive or dead, real or corporate. Just so we’re clear.

AmeriNZ Podcast episode 388 is now available

AmeriNZ Podcast episode 388, “Future-like”, is now available from the podcast website. There, you can listen, download or subscribe to the podcast episode, along with any other episode.

The five most recent episodes of the podcast are listed on the sidebar on the right side of this blog.

Banning more plastics in NZ

From midnight tonight, more single-use plastics will be banned in New Zealand, including a first-in the world ban of plastic bags used to pack-up fresh produce in supermarkets. This is yet another move toward dramatically reducing the amount of hard-to-recycle plastic that ends up in landfills, the ocean—and us.

The plastics that are banned from tomorrow, in addition to those thin plastic produce bags are: Plastic tableware (used at foodcourts/fast food places, and that includes plates, bowls, trays, and cutlery), plastic straws (except for disabled people and those with health needs), and a transition will begin toward home-compostable stickers on produce (like apples, for example). This will be the latest step in a program that actually began in 2018.

Back in 2018, plastic microbeads were banned. Those were typically used in things like cosmetics, face scrubs, etc. They ended up contaminating waterways, the oceans—and people.

The next year, 2019, single-use plastic shopping bags were banned. They were common in many shops, like supermarkets. I’d already made the switch to reusable bags long before the ban came into force, but that was so unremarkable to me that I don’t seem to have ever talked about it specifically (unlike when I converted to reusable mesh produce bags).

In 2021, the government announced its three-phase plan to phase out “problem plastics”. Phase One of the current programme began in October of last year, and it banned some PVC food trays and containers, polystyrene takeaway food and drink packaging, all expanded polystyrene food and drink packaging, all “degradable” plastics (things like bags that contained “pro-degradant” additives, including oxo and photo degradable plastics; those products simply produced microplastics and couldn’t be recycled), single-use plastic drink stirrers (like for coffee and tea), single-use plastic-stemmed cotton buds (such as, Q-tips). Phase 2 is what begins tomorrow.

In 2025, Phase 3, the final phase, will ban all PVC and polystyrene food and drink packaging not already banned. By this point, all those produce stickers will need to be sustainable.

We have a long way to go, and we still need to find better ways of recycling plastics we can’t yet replace, even as work to find sustainable alternatives continues. New Zealand has been working hard at finding solutions, even as we find ways to avoid using plastic packaging at all.

The work to eliminate as much plastic as possible, as quickly as possible, is about more than overflowing landfills and wasted resources, it’s about health. Last year, researchers found that Auckland’s air contained microplastics equivalent to three million plastic bottles a year, and microplastics—especially the even smaller nanoplastics—now being found in humans alarmingly often, and because of that, they’re suspected of being capable of possibly causing some cancers or other diseases, particularly involving the lungs.

When plastics started taking over the world, we didn’t know how dangerous plastics, especially single-use plastics, would be to the environment—and to humans. We need to get serious about ending this problem. I’m glad I live in a country that’s doing exactly that.

Related: “Guidance on single-use plastic products banned or phased out from July 2023” – New Zealand Ministry for the Environment

Graphic above is from the New Zealand Ministry for the Environment [SOURCE].

Avocados over the Internet

Ever since Covid, I’ve been been making an effort to buy direct from New Zealand producers of various things, or small retailers, and I recently saw a Facebook ad for Grower Outlet, which described itself as “a family-owned business with a rich heritage in sustainable farming… We aren’t just sellers – we're growers. We understand the process from root to fruit…” What hooked me was that they had a special offering a free kilogram of lemons, something I don’t buy because I’m usually given some (and, actually, my own baby lemon tree has three baby lemons on it!). So, free lemons, why not?

The order shipped on Friday and arrived today (a photo of the opened box is above). The avos and lemons both are at various stages of ripeness, which is perfect—that gives me more options/time for using them. One of the avos was perfectly ripe, though, so I made some avocado dip for later—tasting the avo first and it was the best I’ve had in ages. Very pleased.

The supermarket I usually go to had avos listed as being $3 each, which means that even including shipping, the price I paid for my order was less than the supermarket, though obviously that will vary from time to time. Still, the point for me was to get nice avocados, yes, but also to buy direct from the grower so they can get a higher return. Win/win.

New Zealand is entering peak season for avocados, and I frankly don’t have them all that often. However, if I want more, I won’t hesitate to order. And I’m more likely to order other produce, too.

As always, I was NOT compensated in any way whatsoever for my comments—they’re my sincerely held opinions. This is one of those times I took a chance and got great products and service, and I just wanted to share that. Don’t know if I’ll share any of the avos, though.

Two years with a dream fulfilled

Of all the things I’ve done since Nigel died, the thing I’m happiest about is having had a solar power system installed at my house, which happened two years ago yesterday (the photo above is from that post two years ago). It was about fulfilling a dream Nigel and I shared in a way I could do it without him, but it turned out it’s also saved me money: My power bills over a year are less than half of what they’d be without the solar power system, and much less than that in summer. When I blogged about this two years ago, I said, “This will matter a lot when I retire.” I read recently that there’s a bit of a boom in NZ with people doing this, as I did. as they near retirement, and for the reason I mentioned two years ago. I’m a trendsetter!

Over the past two years I’ve learned to manage my power use to maximise return on investment, and although that was never a consideration when I had the system installed, it sure is nice. I mentioned above that my annual power bills are less than half of what they’d be without the system, and that doesn’t sound like much, right? That’s only a part of the story: By maximising my use of power in the daytime, when my electricity is free, there’s a whole lot of electricity I don’t have to buy, and that’s actually worth much more than half my bill.

My actual savings are far more than half because the credits I get for the power I generate are far less than what I pay to buy electricity, and so, it makes sense for me to use the power I generate. All of which means that, depending on the time of year and weather, my electricity charges are actually at *most* a third of what they’d be otherwise, something I know because I made spreadsheets to track all this in detail (and I’ll soon have the data even more precise—still working on that).

So, two years ago yeterday I realised a dream Nigel and I shared in the only way I could do it without him, something that aligned with the values we shared. That’s more than enough, of course, but it turned out to be a wise financial decision, too. It’s no wonder I’m happy with it.

The power of summer

Summer has a lot going for it—in a normal year. One of the many things I like about the season is that (in a normal year) my solar panels generate a lot of electricity, but was that dramatically different this year? Naturally, I had to look at the numbers to see what happened in this year's non-normal summer. That took a lot longer, and a lot more work, than I expected.

I’ve been working on this post for the past three weeks, each version different from the one before. It began because I wanted to see how the storms in January and February affected my power generation, but then I wanted to to know, precisely how well the system was helping me meet my only goal, namely, to tread a little more lightly on the planet and to live a little more self-sufficiently, as Nigel and always dreamed of doing. I think I finally figured out how to explain it.

It turned out to be difficult to work out the clearest and most accurate way to talk about how the solar panels perform. After several attempts, I finally worked out that I need to be able to answer these questions:

1. How much electricity is created by the panels?
2. How much of that electricity do I use myself? and so,
3. How much power is sent to the grid?
4. How does the production affect my power bills—how much electricity do I still have to buy?

The chart at the top of this post answers the first three questions for the first two summers the panels were in operation (the system was installed and switched on after Summer 2020/21 was over; in New Zealand, summer is from December 1 to March 1). The chart shows the results for each month of those summers, and the total amounts for the seasons.

Next, let’s look at how much electricity I purchased for all three summers I’ve lived in this house:

This chart shows how much electricity I was billed for in kilowatt hours (kWh). There’s an important caveat here: The billing period is from the third week to the third week of every month. That means that the bills for each summer month were actually for the period from the third week of November to the third week of February. Moreover, the meter reading wasn’t necessarily taken on the same day. Meanwhile, the data on my production is for calendar months. So, there isn’t a perfect alignment between the data for my generation and for what I was billed for. To get that, I’d have to put the daily data in a spreadsheet and then match it up more precisely with the billed periods.

Even if I did that, there’d still be one more problem: There’s a mismatch between how many kWh of electricity the power company credits for having been supplied to the grid by the panels, and how much the system records as having been sent to the grid, and that can be for more OR less electricity than my system says it sent. I have absolutely no idea why the numbers don’t match up.

All of that maters for the next chart, which ties to work out approximately how much total power was used at my house over the past two summers (with 2020/21 shown to compare months):

Putting aside the imperfect match between monthly periods of time, what this shows is that my approximate total power consumption—the solar power I used myself combined with what I bought—is actually higher than it was before the panels were installed. Despite that, what I actually paid less than I did before the panels were installed.

The lower bills are because of a simple fact: Every solar power kWh that I used myself is a kWh I’d have to buy if I didn’t have the panels. It’s not just that the power I used was free (thought it is), it’s that the price I pay to buy electricity is higher than the credit I receive for power I send to the grid. For both those reasons, it makes sense for me to use as much of the power I generate as I can. As I’ve talked about before, I do power-hungry things—laundry, running the dishwasher, even charging batteries—in the daytime. I also can run my heat pumps 24/7 to keep my house at a constant temperature and still pay less than I did during my first summer, before the system was installed.

Overall, the data shows that over summer I’m buying a bit more than half as much electricity as I did before the panels went online—in fact, in that first, pre-solar power summer, I bought nearly twice as much power as I did in the following two summers combined. So, yes, I’m treading a little more lightly on the planet (though I can do better still, of course).

Which brings me back to the question that started all this for me: How was the system’s production affected by all the storms? These two monthly charts show that:

This underscores what I said at the time: Cyclone Hale wasn’t too bad in Hamilton—roughly like any other rainy day—and the Anniversary Weekend storm was much worse. Cyclone Gabrielle, however, was the worst of all. There were still good days for solar production in those months, but bad days can be very bad.

In each of the past two summers, February was less productive than either December or January, and that makes sense: Bad weather is most likely in February, which is in cyclone season. Even so, production is always highest in summer, and lowest in winter, due to the longer days of summer (more sunlight). Winter is usually rainier/overcast more than in summer, too, further reducing the amount of power that can be generated.

That’s my swim through the pools of data about how the solar panels perform. The main thing I found is the most obvious thing: The panels are helping me to achieve my goal and to live a piece of the dream that Nigel and I had. That’s a huge win. The lower power bills are pretty good, too, though.

An unexpectedly easy job

It’s not easy for me to get projects finished (obviously), but sometimes it’s completely understandable. This past Sunday, I finally accomplished something that’s been on my to-do list for about a year, and it was one of those projects that I couldn’t easily do by myself. Or, so I thought

The VegePod raised garden bed I bought two years ago had been stuck in the ground for about a year, and it looked awful: It happened because the wheels were on the ground, not on a hard surface as it’s supposed to be, and the weight of the thing caused it to sink into the dirt, where it got stuck (it was too heavy for me to pull it out). Weeds then grew underneath, and later, when the cover got askew from strong winds, weeds grew inside it, too. Because I couldn’t move the VegePod, I couldn’t mow underneath it as I did that first summer. I also couldn’t get the weedeater underneath it, though I tried as best I could.

This all happened mainly because I didn’t use it all last year because lockdowns were at the wrong time, and that prevented me from buying plants. I actually tried starting some seeds, but we had a spring storm with strong winds that blew the cover off—and all the pots with seeds onto the ground, dumping out the contents before they even had a chance to germinate. I gave up.

I knew I wanted to use it this year, but I also knew I wouldn’t be able to plant it out until I moved it. I made an elaborate plan for how I could do that by myself: I’d put a large plastic sheet on the ground, dig out all the dirt (to make it lighter and possible for me to move it), and then, I’d move the VegePod (assuming my plan worked and I could get it unstuck…), and I’d put put all the dirt back in it.

My first task was to remove all the weeds inside under the cover. Then, my next task was to start my elaborate plan—but I’d gotten a late start and I was a bit worried about how long it would take, and how physically exhausting it might be. So, I thought I may as well try moving it first.

I rocked it back and forth, lifted each corner in turn (trying not to overuse my back muscles), and I got the thing free! I pulled it over to my patio (which is cement), rolled it where it’s going to go, locked the wheels, and then went back to clear the weeds that had been under it.

After that year or so of undisturbed growth, some of the weeds had big woody clumps at their base. I pulled everything I could by hand, then used the garden fork to leverage the root clumps out of the ground (I’m composting all of that, of course). I’ll mow the lawns later in the week, then sow some grass seed at that spot.

Now that it’s moved, I can plant the raised bed—although it already has some thyme growing, I noticed. As it happens, the Labour Day holiday weekend, which is this coming weekend, is traditionally when people plant their gardens for summer (although it’s actually any time before the end of October that people shoot for; the holiday weekend just gives them an extra day to work on their gardens).

In my case, I also have to clean up my patio itself and remove the weeds growing around it, but those jobs are much easier. Planting out my gardens—including the hedges I never managed to get planted (except for one) will be a big job, but even it will be easier than trying to move that earth-locked VegePod.

This project took time to figure out because—not for the first time—I really didn’t have anyone I could ask to help me (I rarely ask for help on projects, anyway, so that I’m more likely to get help when I absolutely can’t do something myself, but this particular time there was no one available). It was also delayed because I needed to figure out where to put it. I knew it had to be on a hard surface, and I thought about putting down some pavers—but where? In the end, I decided to put it at one end of my patio, which is 8 metres wide by 2.6 metres deep (from the house to the edge). I don’t actually use the patio, so giving up one end for gardening won’t inconvenience me. Still, I can always move it somewhere else later on if I want to.

The important thing to me right now is that the worst of my outside jobs is done—finally!!!—and that makes me very happy. Now, on to the next one(s).

The photos up top are the VegePod before I started the project, and below is the spot before I cleared the weeds and after. The single photo shows the the VegePod after I took the cover off, showing the weeds growing in it as well as under it.

Darn socks

We always hear how older generations knew how to avoid waste, often because of the Great Depression or the shortages caused by World War Two. To the extent that’s true, they taught what they knew to their children—often Baby Boomers—who, we are told, failed to teach their kids, and so on, leaving young(er) people today not knowing how to stretch food, to repair simple things, to grow food, and much more. Those impressions may or may not be true, at least generally, but I’m a Baby Boomer who was taught some of those apparently lost skills. Like darning socks.

When I was a young kid, I used to see my mother darning socks. With my dad working as a preacher and my mother a stay-at-home mother (as nearly all of my friends’ mothers were, too), she needed to make money go as far as possible. Eventually she taught me how to darn socks and how to sew a button on a shirt, things she would've thought would be useful for me. She never taught me to use a sewing machine, though, nor did she offer to do so, and I later wondered if it was because of gender roles of the time. I’ll never know, but I think that by teaching me to darn socks and sew a button onto a shirt, she have have merely responded to my curiosity (I watched her work and was fascinated).

In any case, knowing how to darn socks and sew buttons onto shirts was extremely useful over the years. I’ve been doing both for at least 55 years—though I started taking shortcuts with socks.

Her method was to take “darning thread”, which was like a rope of very lightweight threads, and weave a patch over the hole in the sock. This method was most useful for large hole, like on the heels. However, I eventually didn’t patch heels—I threw the sock away—because I could always feel the patch when I wore them, and it was uncomfortable. And, anyway, by the time the heel got a hole, it was usually too threadbare to bother darning.

A hole in the toe was always different, though, especially because it was often on a seam, and simple to simple stitch closed. I’ve darned socks this way since at least my university years, which means more than 45 years.

This suddenly became an important, priority task because in recent weeks sock after sock has developed a hole in the heel, and whenever that happened I threw the sock away. In this way, the situation became dire.

This sudden decline in my sock inventory began because several years ago—maybe eight to ten—I bought a LOT of socks at The Warehouse, New Zealand’s discount retailer that was originally modelled on Walmart. The thing about The Warehouse is that they have a particular product line for only a short time, as they constantly change suppliers to get products at ever cheaper prices, thereby increasing their profit margins. After being caught out several times (like with underwear), I finally learned to stock up on things in order for them to last for many years, because it was always certain that in a few months to a year the product I liked would be gone.

So, several years ago I bought pack after pack of socks at The Warehouse to replace the ones that were faded and worn out (nearly all had already been darned, sometimes more than once). Because I bought so many all at once, the socks are now wearing out all once, too. So, the sudden drop in my inventory of wearable socks is no surprise.

As it happens, I have socks with a small hole in the toe that I just never got around to darning (why take the time when I had so many in daily use?), but now I need them: This week, another sock gave me a hole in the heal I then had only four pairs left, and I had 6 and half pairs waiting to be darned. I completed the darning of socks yesterday. Back when I bought the stash of socks, I put aside a couple unopened packs (10 pairs), something I did to prepare for this very day. However, all of them will wear out, too, and I need to plan ahead.

I was recently at The Warehouse (they do have the best prices for ordinary socks…) and I looked at the packs of socks. Turns out, as usual, what they had was nothing like the ones I bought all those years ago (the current ones are made with thinner fabric, so they’ll wear out much faster). That’s the other reason I want to repair what I have: They’re better than what I can get now. At the same time, what The Warehouse now sells is nearly three times the price of the one I bought all those years ago: Back then, it cost me roughly $1.20 per pair, now it’s $3.

Which brings me to the moral of my story: We ought to have the right to repair anything we buy. Clearly I have the right to repair my socks or to sew a button on a shirt—no one would dispute that (though some have laughed at me and told me I should just throw out the socks and buy new ones), but there are plenty of things we buy that not only can we not not repair ourselves, it’s often impossible for anyone to repair them. That’s stupid and immoral.

Our landfills are clogged with things that can’t be repaired or easily recycled (another failing of manufacturers), and landfills have lots of such stuff, including large amounts of clothing and other textiles thrown into them. In the case of clothes, many people these days apparently don’t know how to repair them and feel they can’t justify the cost of taking them to someone who can when buying new is so cheap (price and quality…). So, into the rubbish it goes.

One of my core values is to live as sustainably as possible/practical, and I realise that sometimes it’s just not possible. I know that eventually my socks (etc.) will no longer be repairable. However, when I can, I repair things (including the humble socks) to delay the time when it has to be sent to landfill. If something can’t be repaired, I try to reuse it before throwing it away (for example, my cleaning rags are cut-up worn-out singlets). That’s better for the environment, obviously, but it also saves me a little money. Together, it’s a pretty good return on my investment of time and effort—for me. Others’ realities may be different.

I can’t repair everything, and I never could. Of course. But there are a lot of things I can fix, and all I need is a bit of time and little effort. It doesn’t save me huge piles money, of course, but, to me, living my values is worth far more than money.

Update: I had a late start today and had my shower after this post was published. When I went to put on socks, yet another one had a hole in the heel. I completed my darning just in time.

Day out discoveries

Today I went for lunch with my sister-in-law (different one than last week) and my mother-in-law, which was a really nice time (and good food). This was perfect for me because I planned on going to a supermarket today to pick up some odds and ends, and I was right near New World Rototuna, so no extra traffic navigation. And I discovered a few things.

I’ve always thought New World Rototuna was nice, a little more “upmarket” than the one in Te Rapa (different owners, and Rototuna is newer), but I still like Te Rapa New World better—it feels friendlier, for lack of a better word, and it’s usually better stocked, overall. When it opened, Nigel thought the Te Rapa New World was the nicest supermarket in New Zealand (seriously!), though I think he would’ve liked the Borman Road Countdown, though possibly not as much. Supermarkets, of course, are as much a matter of personal taste as anything else in life.

The shop had one thing I’ve never seen at a mainstream supermarket before: A refill station for ecostore products like dish soap, hand soap, that sort of thing. There’s a chain of small, locally-owned shops called “Bin-Inn”, which is known mainly for selling things in bulk, like flour, rice, yeast, etc., and they also sell (among other liquids) ecostore products, all of which I’d seen. This is simply the first time I’ve personally seen such a refill station in a mainstream supermarket (back in 2019, I talked about some refill options in an “Internet Wading” post (first topic in the post).

Such refills may (theoretically) be priced lower than pre-packaged products are, but the prices aren’t necessarily lower, but it's easy to check pre-packaged products on the shelves near the refill station. However, the biggest reason for using refill stations isn’t prices, it’s to eliminate packaging: Re-using packaging is far better for the environment than constantly buying new packaging, recycling it, and repeating the cycle endlessly.

To say I’m intrigued by this is a bit of an understatement. I feel a mini-investigation (and blog post) coming on.

As I walked through the supermarket, one thing I kept thinking was, “oh my dog the prices are high!” I only bought what I needed—or things I’ll need soon that were on special—but no luxuries or treats (apart from some wine and a frozen pizza). Even that restrained haul was easily 15% higher overall than a similar shop would’ve been, say, last year at this time, and that was with all the “supply chain disruptions” the two supermarket companies blamed rising prices and shortages on at that time. I did note, though, that some things were only up a small amount (mainly NZ-made stuff), and some stuff was up like 25% or more (that was stuff I didn’t buy, of course). C‘est la vie.

The soaring supermarket prices have had an accidental benefit for me: I’ve been getting good at making my food dollars go much farther, and I now generally only need to cook every other day (meaning I also I have leftovers every other day), and I have pretty much zero food waste. Sooooo, that’s good, right? I keep telling myself that.

At any rate, it was a good outing, one in which I had a good time, discovered things I didn’t know, and accomplished an errand. But the best part, I gotta admit, was how happy Leo was to see me when I got home. That always makes me smile.