Gareth

@grenow.bsky.social

2165 Followers 2607 Following

Self-reinvention is a way to stay young, as long as you can remember what you were. I recall being an author, journalist, photographer, truffle grower, climate change writer, magazine editor and publisher, but who can be sure? Born at 313ppm

New Zealand does not have a public debt or interest problem. It has a household debt and interest problem. Relying on households to grow the economy is a fools errand.
An NZ fantail looks over its shoulder at the photographer.
A loaf of wholemeal sourdough bread fresh from the oven, somewhat scarred by its enthusiastic rise
The setting sun lights the slopes of Waipara’s Côte d’Or
A fittingly named Iceberg rose struggles to cast off the morning frost
The cover of Tintin in America showing the Belgian boy journalist celebrating scoring a goal against team USA
Carbonnade of Beef Serves 6 Time taken 3 hours 6 large onions
50 g (2 oz) butter
1.2 kg lean stewing steak·
1 rounded tablespoon flour salt freshly milled pepper 600 ml light ale
1 tablespoon brown sugar 1 teaspoon vinegar
slices of French bread French mustard • Peel and slice the onions. Melt half the butter in a saucepan, add the onions and fry gently for about 15 minutes, or until soft and golden brown. Trim the meat and cut into pieces. Melt the remaining butter in a large frying pan and add the meat. Fry gently, turning the meat to brown on all sides. Sprinkle with the flour, stir to blend and season with salt and pepper. Gradually add half the ale and bring to the boil stirring well. Draw off the heat. Spoon half the fried onions into the base of a large casserole dish. Add the meat and the liquid from the frying pan. Top with the remaining onions and add the remaining ale to just cover the meat. Add the sugar, cover with a lid and place in the centre of a slow oven (170°C, 325°F or Gas No. 3) and cook for 2.5 hours. About 45 minutes before the cooking time is complete, bring the casserole out of the oven. Stir in the vinegar and place a few slices of French bread spread with French mustard on top of the meat. Put in as many slices, mustard-side up, as the casserole will allow. Push the bread down into the meat-gravy; the pieces will rise again to the surface. Replace the casserole in the oven without the lid; this allows the layer of bread to become crisp and golden brown. Complete the cooking time and serve. From The Times Cookery Book by Katie Stewart, Pan Books 1974
A white-faced heron, aka matuku moana, stands on top of a large circular concrete water trough in a paddock made muddy by heifers. Not a fish within kilometres...
The cover of the Beatles' Abbey Road adapted for the UK heatwave, showing John buying ice cream from a Mr Whippy van, while the others patiently wait in the queue.
A large West Indian man dances in a blue and silver costumer
Phil the Greek is just about to enter the frame from the left. The official photographers are wearing flares...
Same as the last photo, but going right to left.
A fearsome West Indian bowler is about to unleash a hard leather ball at screaming pace towards a plucky if ill-advised English batsman.
Monday of the Lords Test in 1976. The field is still green.
A weka splashes in a muddy puddle, enjoying an enthusiastic bathing session
A dramatic sky scene showing a black shelf cloud and associated rain blowing north over central Tasman Bay
Kotuku keeping an eye on visitors to Mapua Wharf
A partial rainbow over the Waimea estuary hints at rain on the way
The rays of the rising sun are lighting up the Moutere Hills and the mountains behind. It will rain later.
A container ship is unloading at Port Nelson. Haulaway island is silhouetted on the skyline. It’s a blue sky day
It is a sunny morning over Tasmania Bay. The tide is out and the beaches of Rabbit Island glisten. The ranges to the west have a few clouds clinging pinkly to their tops
A framed blue Blackburn Rovers shirt as worn by, and signed by Ryan Nelson
The sun rises and the hills glow red and yellow while a frost crisps the lawn.
A couple of sheep cleaning up the grass in a vineyard are seen through a frame of four pines. The soft light of golden hour makes the pre-pruning vines glow
Looking through the two windows on a garden door at the foothills of Mt Brown, the umbrella of a garden table, a fence with wintery clematis, and a shoulder of a big green egg.
The Lego model of Tintin’s moon rocket has been successfully completed. It is standing tall and pinky proud in a kitchen, with its crew in front.
The sun is about rise over Waipara’s Teviot Hills, and the clouds are lit up in reds and pinks fading to purple and grey.
A blue rally car with the driver and navigator waving at the photographer
A ginger tom of great distinction is sitting on the photographer’s lap, clearly intending on staying for the morning
A large lenticular cloud looms over a brown hill with two water tanks on its top, rather like a split nipple on a moob of no great dimension. The sky is blue tinged with white brush strokes, and the wind is beginning to blow.
Two sheep looking forlorn in some long dry grass. Behind them a paddock sown with seed a month sits brown and dusty. The north end of the Canterbury plain stretches out to the south, while the hills of Banks Peninsula pool through the haze on the horizon. The sky is blue, as it has been often this May.
The sun has peeped over the horizon and its low rays are making a small sun dog or mini rainbow in the high clouds over the Teviot Hills. Waipara stirs.
A half buried log is being washed by breaking waves, one of which is on its way. The sky is blue, and South Pacific a chilly turquoise.
A stony beach (some sand included), stretches away to the south. Waves break under a blue sky, and through the haze on the horizon the Banks Peninsula hills indicate the position of the big city.
A ginger tom of great distinction has rested his head on the photographer’s thigh, preventing him from going to the kitchen and getting the ice cream that was the reason the cat jumped up in the first place
The low winter sun backlights the coastal bund and waves crash as we look north towards The Rocks, and Motunau
A large very black bull is wondering what to do about the orange clad person taking his portrait. The answer was nothing, because he was in the same position as I passed on the way home.
A blue sky is being coated in high cloud, while a strengthening Nor’Wester sculpts a select few into feathery curved layers
A frosty lawn and fastigiate oaks clinging to the last of their leaves frame the view down into the Waipara Valley, where a bank of fog hangs over the valley floor.
A deep blue sky streaked with salmon pink sunset clouds over the sharp angles of commercial buildings. A little sliver of moon peeps through.
Three wild-shot venison sausages nestle in a pillowy bed of crisp yet succulent Yorkshire pudding, and no, I didn’t manage to eat it all.
Two juvenile black swans and their mother have their bottoms tickled by tuna (eels)
A large box full of Lego that will construct a model of the rocket that Tintin piloted to the moon stands next to a smaller white 3D printed version of the same thing
A row of trees seen end on are rapidly losing their leaves, bright yellow in the late afternoon sun
The cover of The Monkees first LP, from 1966, with the grinning faces of (front to back) Davy Jones, Peter Tork, Mickey Dolenz and Mike Nesmith
A ginger tom cat of great distinction has tucked his nose under both front paws, curled up on a chair
Three ghostlike gums emerge through the blowing fog
Three statuesque gum trees are made mysterious by the mist blowing into the foothills from the fog-clad plains
Is it fog or low cloud? Whatever it is, the Waipara valley is having a grey start to the day under a bank of cloud. From where we sit, the morning sun illuminates its top, while we bask
It is 1985 in a Surrey country club, and a wedding lunch is descending towards speeches. The groom is being censored by his bride, her hand across his mouth, while best man with his dashing moustache offers a quip to the photographer
A small breaking wave caught in mid collapse is about surge up the blue-grey and brownish strand that is Amberley beach today. Behind, the turquoise tones of the Pacific Ocean in Pegasus Bay have shrugged off the morning’s fog and reasserted their beauty.
The pinkening of sunset lights autumn trees and the Teviot hills
It’s a beautiful morning in the Waipara valley, as the early morning sun lights a faint haze over the vineyards on the slopes of the Teviot hills
A small grey, green and brownish bird with a very distinctive white circle about its hazel eye is perched on the stumpy remains of a ripe fig, and is challenging the photographer to complain.
A cloud sculpted by norwest winds into a smooth feather echoes the gently swelling hills below
Afternoon sun makes a gleaming rainbow in the water arching from the end of a big irrigation rig
Early morning sun casts shadows of fastigiate oaks across a glistening lawn. In the horizon the Teviot Hills appear through a light haze. Yellowing poplars make rows across the view.
A kereru looks down from the branch of a poplar tree, wondering what those silly apes are up to now.