Thrive

editor

I never thought I would edit another magazine in my lifetime. Over the years I have edited a lot of magazines, and that part of my life was definitely over, or so I thought. But then Thrive came along. This wonderful creature who needed someone to create her, and I couldn’t resist the urge to get the key out and open up the magazine-editing part of my brain again. I have never had the opportunity to create a magazine entirely from scratch before – something that is completely born out of Aotearoa and representative of everything we as Kiwis know and love. As I was putting the final touches to this June issue, I whipped over to Sydney once the bubble opened to see my daughter Hannah – another wonderful creature. When I…

this month

Compost GLORY When I started Thrive, one of the first articles I ran was about compost, and how to make a great compost bin. Since then I’ve been a bit obsessed with my compost – reading books and watching online tutorials. I am now the very proud owner of a massive wooden bin of compost, which is teeming with not only worms, but all sorts of insects, lots of spores of interesting fungi, and a wonderful dark, peaty substance which I am applying to my garden at every opportunity. I know that all those wheelbarrows full of cowpats, chicken poo, seaweed, comfrey, lawn clippings, dried leaves and sticks, which I layered in most weeks have done their job and given me some magic I can add to my soil to help…

get active

HELP Celebrate the volunteers in our community during National Volunteer Week, which honours the collective energies and mana of all volunteers in Aotearoa. National Volunteer Week 2021 runs from June 20-26. This year’s theme is Recognise, Connect, Reimagine. You can share your stories of volunteering and help reshape mahi aroha for the future, on social media using the following hashtags: #NVW2021, #mahitahi, #teamwork, #tautoko, #support, #whakamiha, #appreciate, #volunteers, #thankyou and #AotearoaOfKindness. If you think you might be able to join the thousands of volunteers around New Zealand, go to volunteeringnz.org.nz to see how you can help. SIGN Join the 35,000 people who have signed a petition to demand the Government bans bottom trawling for seafood on delicate ecosystems, such as over seamounts, and stops issuing permits for bottom trawling in international waters. Go…

be true to who you are

Siouxsie Wiles is running late. Not late, late. Just 20 minutes late, and it’s okay. Because as we all know, the microbiologist and science communicator is a very busy person. It’s thanks to Siouxsie, 46, that many of us waded our way through the beginnings of the Covid-19 pandemic last year, and understood what was happening to us through her well-written columns, and the cartoons and diagrams she worked on with Toby Morris. If you were at all confused, Siouxsie was there to take the science, interpret it and let us know what was happening. She helped us feel safe and calm. So if she’s late, that’s absolutely fine with me. It’s a rainy, early-winter morning in Auckland and Siouxsie arrives, not on her bike, which is her usual mode of transport, but…

the upside of failure

“I don’t failure.” This is something many of us have said in the past, including myself. Embarrassingly, quite recently. For high achievers, and perhaps women striding confidently into the corporate world, where hard work and success supposedly equal happiness, it’s a common sentiment. That was certainly the case in the 1980s, but these days we are more likely to give ourselves a break – to be happy with what we’ve achieved and how we’ve achieved it, and to accept our failures as a learning experience rather than something to be avoided. ‘During the first season of the podcast, every single man I approached, apart from one person, said: “I don’t think I have failed. I’m not sure I’m right for this podcast.” Whereas every single woman I approached said: “Oh my gosh I’ve…

the truth about salt

Salt is the main mineral in the ocean, making up three-quarters of the 3.5 percent of dissolved minerals in seawater. Salt also occurs naturally in mineral deposits, and this is known as rock salt. Because New Zealand has no rock salt deposits, salt was imported from the time of European arrival in the early 1800s until the country developed a sea salt industry in the 1950s. Today, much of our domestic salt comes from Lake Grassmere, a 15 square kilometre lake near Blenheim. Seawater, fresh from the Pacific Ocean, is pumped into Lake Grassmere. Warm winds blow across the exposed lake, evaporating water and increasing the concentration of salt. The very salty water is pumped into deep holding pens, then into shallow crystallisation ponds. As the water continues to evaporate, salt…