Living in Leeston has many perks being away from the city, one of these perks is being close to Ashburton, and its fantastic disc golf course. We were lucky to have a peaceful day causally discovering the course, the first round was quite confusing, the map wasn’t as clear as we thought it could be, but we quickly discovered the course, and the second round was a breeze.
Improvements we’re hoping to see in time:
clearer map
indications on the cages what the tee number is
less dog walkers
more people discovering this amazing course
T13, T15, & T17 bases are on the paths/sidepaths, while all the other tee-off pads are concrete blocks and easily identified. Beautiful dappled light in treelined fairways.
A few months ago I downloaded a mobile app called ‘Life Cycle’ and allowed it to track and monitor my whereabouts and the amount of time spent at each location.
The tiny sliver of walking with only 21hours made up the result of 121,980 steps. Imagine what you could achieve in your garden for the same amount of energy. It could be transformed.
In December 2020, as you can see above I did a lot more activities including many interviews, meetings and meetup sessions. We also traveled to Mapua for Christmas so there are more locations to track.
In January 2021, an interesting factor is that dedicated walking is only 4hours compared to November 2020 with 21hours. I would personally prefer to be doing dedicated walking in nature than walking between tasks, however I’m loving being back at work having had 12 months off.
Did the garden get more focused time during this period? Yes it did. Sadly for the app the garden isn’t far enough away from ‘home’ that garden time isn’t registered as a separate event. I will review this and try to get a timed ‘gardening’ event. I’m expecting that I spend less than 2hours a day in the garden.
Yesterday, I did spend time weeding or as I like to think of it, refilling the compost heap. The above raised bed had several keepers and a diverse range of support plants. The support plants add great value to the compost.
I noticed that this season that the compost has really dried out so I added extra greens and dried grass and watered it down. The water is laced with live bacterial culture and makes a world of difference as long as the area remains moist. More on that another day.
Here are a few pictures from our travels over the 2020-2021 holiday season.
First we visited Conway, stayed overnight near the beach and watched dolphins. The next morning we traveled up the east coast to Mapua, stopping along the way taking photos and 360 degree video.
The bulk of our time away from Canterbury was in the Nelson and Mapua area, with five nights in Redwood Valley and 3 nights at the Mapua camping ground.
We saw New Year’s Eve in at an off the grid log cabin in Glenhope on our way back to Canterbury. Two fantastic nights and lots of river walking! Simply beautiful territory.
With the change of seasons our little Netherland Dwarf rabbit is molting. His mood has changed and he’s become slower and looking more annoyed than usual.
He still loves a brush and enjoys our company even through these otherwise intolerable times. There is fur everywhere in his hutch and no matter how many times we clean it, the space fills with fluff within a day.
We had a wonderful afternoon completing the 4 zip lines at the Christchurch Adventure Park, the height, the speeds, the side by side battle of the bulk.
Josh Byrne has produced a fantastic resource in creating this gardening know-how book. The rich content with explanations, step-by-step photo journeys, details about land and water use is superb.
The now Perth based Environmental Scientist (plus landscape designer and gardening expert) provides information on water systems, food systems, garden habitat, hands on tips for soil building, plant production and recycling, garden maintenance and plant propagation.
I read many gardening books each month and something that stood out to me was the parallels between Josh Bryne’s approach and what we are trying to achieve in our own garden spaces.
Each section of the book has given us quality information. I’m always impressed with reading content that inspires change.
Hidden gems include: super informative water cultivation, storage and water zones, vegetable planting guide, herb planting guide, tree planting guide, fruit tree cultivation guide, beneficial predatory and parasitic insects, nutrient deficiency guide, plant pests a diseases guide, and a chicken breed guide.
