We’re grateful to Garth, Tanya’s brother, for lending us this powerful painting by Margaret Lawlor-Bartlett- an 85-year-old grandmother!  She painted it in 2015- and now in her 90s, she is still painting, after a 60 year career as an artist. It will be displayed next year in a retrospective of her work over many decades. […]

We’ve just been thinking how lucky we are to still have our 2001 Honda.  She is now almost 20 years old, has seen us from the farm days through to the city, has done 456,120km, has a few mended scratches,  bangs and rust patches, and has faded somewhat from her original marvellous mauve.  But she […]

  Before our Northland journey, we’d had a rather busy month – a mix, as usual, of supporting NZ drama, films,  music and books, indulging and learning…as well as gardening (Tanya) and Isaac Body Corp Owners’ Committee (Charmaine) Three very different films: Rose Matafeo’s Baby Done –  a riotously funny journey with a top woman […]

  Save Canal Road Native Trees… For more than 100 days now, protesters have been occupying a property  in Canal Road , Avondale, to prevent the felling by a property developer of  the remaining twenty-three 100-year-old native trees.  The surviving trees include rare natives like black maire and kawaka; half the trees which grew on […]