The Importance of Community

October 6, 2026 / Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment

Western culture seems to lean more heavily into individualism all the time. We’re encouraged to look out for ourselves, celebrate our own uniqueness, prioritise our own needs, focus on increasing our own wealth, our own wellbeing.

It hasn’t made us happier.

In fact a 2015 study of happiness found that the pursuit of happiness in individualistic cultures left people feeling less well off than before. Conversely, they found that the pursuit of happiness within collectivistic cultures led to increased well being.

When we seek happiness as a group, we are better off. When we engage with others in a collective pursuit, we benefit.

The past week has been an excellent reminder of this for me.

On Friday, I enjoyed a sailing excursion on the NZ Maritime Museum’s sailboat, Ted Ashby. The boat was manned by a crew of retired volunteers. Every one of the volunteers was having as much fun as the tourists on board. The fellow I chatted with gushed about how volunteering gave him the opportunity to hang out with other sailors, enjoy the water, sail on a historic boat (without the expense of owning it), and share his passion for sailing with others. He was happy because he was sharing his interests, his time, his energy.

On Saturday and Sunday, I attended the Storylines Children’s Writers and Illustrators’ National Hui. I enjoyed two days of talks and workshops, and chatted with dozens of other writers during breaks and meals. Although the weekend was exhausting for introverted me, I came away bursting with ideas, charged with purpose, and ready to tackle my own writing with renewed vigour, and with a feeling of support from countless others.

On Monday, the gardening group I’m a part of met for our bi-weekly catch-up. As always, our stroll through a member’s garden was accompanied by discussions of everyone’s successes and failures so far in this growing season. We discussed ideas, techniques, and frustrations. During the post-stroll cup of tea, conversation wandered freely to all aspects of rural life. People exchanged seeds, plants and produce, shared photos of recent projects, and commiserated about the weather. I know that whenever I’m in need of advice, plants, or anything, all I need do is reach out to the group. My glorious garden is a testament to the influence of the community. I could not have created it without them.

We cannot hope to succeed as individuals without a community of support around us. We cannot hope to thrive without others who thrive alongside us. We cannot hope for happiness without feeding the happiness of others.

Our leaders, our governments seem to have forgotten this. Collectively, we have forgotten this. We cannot simply take, we must give. We cannot expect support unless we provide it, too.

Life should not be about you. Life should not be about me. It should be about us. Together we are powerful, we are nurtured. We lift others up, and they pull us up with them.

I am blessed to be part of several communities of people who gather for mutual support around a particular passion. I’m also thankful to be part of a physical community made of the people who live in my town—a community that hosts a produce exchange and a little library, one that organises a trick-or-treat map of participating households, one that rallied with sidewalk messages and games, painted rocks, and window messages during Covid lockdown.

What communities are you part of? What communities can you nurture? How can you chase happiness with others?

The Importance of Adventure

September 24, 2026 / Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment

A few days ago, on our nightly walk, my husband and I passed a couple of kids out after dark. They were fossicking around in the water race and had just caught an eel (barehanded!). We watched as the hapless fish wriggled in their hands before they released it back into the water. The kids’ excitement was as wriggly and sparkling as the eel.

We congratulated them on their catch and carried on with our walk, leaving them to their watery exploration.

And I couldn’t help smiling, thrilled that two kids were eeling after dark on a school night. I have no doubt they learned more in that 30-second encounter with an eel than they had all day at school.

Don’t get me wrong—school is important. But mucking around in the natural world, without adult supervision, is where lifelong passions germinate, where lasting learning takes place.

School simply can’t provide that. Thirty kids (or more) in a room with a responsible adult who’s being judged on how orderly the classroom is and how many reading levels the students have progressed is not a place experiential learning can thrive.

I know. I tried. I was lucky to have a little more leeway than a regular classroom teacher, but the constraints were insurmountable. I was still there—a sensible adult who was responsible for messes and injuries when they occurred. I was an impediment to the sort of wild learning I hoped to inspire.

And the tragic part is that school shouldn’t have to be the place where kids get experiences, but I was fully aware my students weren’t getting those experiences outside of school, where my generation got them.

No matter how hard I tried, in the confines of a classroom, with the need for accountability, safety, and justification, I could not make up for my students’ lack of solo ‘adventuring’.

So I was thrilled to see at least two kids bucking the trend, up to their knees in a stream with eel slime dripping off their fingers. And kudos to the parents who let them explore!

Stop and Smell the Daffs

September 16, 2026 / Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment

There’s a blast of winter forecast to blow in overnight, so I thought I should enjoy the blue sky day while I could. Ignoring all items on my to-do list, I had a wander around the garden …

Spring 2026: A review

September 9, 2026 / Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment

I acquired my copy of this year’s spring season a week and a half ago, and so far it has performed largely as advertised. Spring 2026 has opened with the appropriate day length, and a healthy mix of sun and rain, so the basics are well covered.

The daffodils have begun blooming, although it remains to be seen just how spectacular they will become. The signs are promising.

The pea and lettuce seedlings have also grown as expected for Spring, though the performance of the onions has been a bit of a disappointment.

The birds of Spring 2026 are abundant and noisy. Lots of house sparrows, which I know are cheap filler, like the peanuts in nut mixes (probably my fault for not buying the Deluxe Edition). But there have been some excellent white-faced herons, a few little owls, and a generous number of paradise shelducks. The pīwakawaka of Spring 2026 are also abundant and extra cheeky. Good value for money there.

Though I haven’t had this version of Spring for long, I am concerned about the abundance of wasps and the lack of honeybees. I hope that as the Spring progresses, these issues sort themselves out.

And of course, I wish there were a pollen-free version of Spring on offer. I would definitely buy that over the current model.

Overall, Spring 2026 is a reasonably solid, if somewhat average edition of the season.

Rate your experience:

★ ★ ★ ★☆

Lime Filled Cupcakes

August 11, 2026 / Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment

For the first year ever, we have a citrus tree that is happy and producing copious fruit. Our Bears Lime sits in a half-barrel in a little heat pocket in front of the garden shed, and it is absolutely dripping in deliciousness right now.

Lime is not a fruit I’m accustomed to having on hand. Limes often cost up to $49/kg in the grocery store, so to have an overabundance of them makes me feel like I’m incredibly wealthy.

Naturally, we’re putting lime into everything, sweet and savoury. A few weeks ago, I picked up a new cookbook, Bake Your Sweet Time, by Tat Effby. In the book is a key lime pie cake that I made a couple of weeks ago, in a bout of stress baking while dealing with the demise of both our vehicles within days of one another. It was excellent, and it got my brain spinning about the combination of cake and lime curd.

So on the weekend, I made lime cupcakes, filled with lime curd, and topped in a buttercream frosting.

Oh. My. God.

For days, I’ve been living in anticipation of the next time I can legitimately eat one of these delicious morsels. It’s taking all my willpower not to live on cupcakes alone, with these in the house.

Here’s the recipe, in case you have an overabundance of limes, too. Or even if you don’t. These might be worth spending $49/kg for limes.

Lime curd (make this at least a few hours ahead of time):
Combine in a medium saucepan:
3 large eggs
1/3 cup sugar
grated zest of 1 lime

Add:
1/2 cup fresh lime juice
3 Tbs butter, cut into cubes

Cook, whisking, over medium heat until the butter melts and the mixture thickens. Simmer gently for a few seconds, then remove from the heat.

Stir in:
1/2 tsp vanilla

Scrape into a bowl or jar, cover, and refrigerate. Keeps for about a week.

Cake (makes 18 cupcakes):
Whisk together in a small jug:
4 large eggs
60g vegetable oil
60g water

Combine in a large bowl:
200 g sugar
320 g all-purpose flour
1 Tbs baking powder
pinch of salt
grated zest of 4 limes

Add to the flour mixture:
120g butter, softened to the consistency of yogurt
60 g vegetable oil

Mix with an electric mixer on low until it looks like damp breadcrumbs.

With the mixer on high, slowly pour in half the egg mix. Beat for up to a minute, until the batter becomes thick, fluffy and lump free. Then trickle in the remainder of the egg mixture, beating until smooth.

Spoon the batter into paper-lined cupcake tins. Bake at 160℃ on fan bake (or 180℃ if you don’t have a fan bake option) for 22 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out clean.

Take cupcakes out of the pan and allow to cool on a wire rack.

Frosting:
200g softened butter
1/4 tsp vanilla
2 cups icing (confectioners) sugar
1-2 Tbs hot water

Cream butter until light and fluffy. Add vanilla. Gradually beat in sugar, beating until smooth. Add just enough water to achieve a piping consistency.

To assemble:
Using a knife, 2 cm round biscuit cutter, or cupcake corer, cut a well in the centre of each cupcake, leaving plenty of cake around the edges and bottom so the cupcakes don’t disintegrate. Fill a piping bag fitted with a large round tip (or a small zipper bag with the corner cut off) with lime curd, and pipe each cupcake well full to the top with curd.

Fit a second piping bag with a large star tip, and fill it with frosting. Pipe frosting onto the top of each cupcake. The frosting does need to be piped on, because if you try to apply it with a knife, the curd mixes into the icing.

Because of the lime curd filling, I recommend storing these cupcakes in the fridge. Microwave individual cupcakes for 10 seconds to return them to room temperature before eating.

Enjoy!

Why Spring Matters

August 7, 2026 / Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment

I wrote a blog post today, and realised I’ve written essentially the same post before. More than once. This same week of the year.

My post was about seeing signs of spring, despite winter weather.

And I thought, “Why does this matter? It happens every year.”

But that is exactly why it matters.

And, perhaps, that is exactly why I will mention it again, and again.

Especially now, when the fabric of what we consider ‘civilisation’ seems to be fraying. When world leaders have confused ‘lead’ with ‘greed’. When the air, water, and food we depend upon are increasingly poisoned. When the very planet that sustains us is threatened by our own actions.

We crave the familiar. We crave a sense of normalcy, a sense that, at the end of it all, we’ll be okay.

As a gardener and a keen observer of nature, I’m well aware that little is familiar anymore. It is too dry or too wet, warmer. New pests are encroaching, and planting and flowering dates are changing.

But spring still follows winter, and every year plants anticipate and herald spring with swelling buds, emerging shoots. It is familiar. It is comforting.

Like the story tropes we love, the sitcom formulae we watch over and over again, we know there will be a good ending. We understand that all will be lost, but we can tell how close we are to the resolution, where all will be found again.

That is what the month before spring is. Frosty, snowy, and often miserable, but the days grow inexorably longer, the sun a little higher every day. The plants begin to stir. The magpie sings in the darkness before dawn.

And the gardener experiences it all and knows that, whatever happens, we’ll be okay.

Hot and Bothered in the Land of Oz

July 16, 2026 / Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment

After 21 years living in Aotearoa New Zealand, I finally visited Australia. I know, I know—pathetic, but it is what it is. And, no, I wasn’t really hot and bothered (not much anyway), but the song Open Road was playing non-stop in my head for our whole visit, and that line seemed appropriate for this post.

After a miserable start (flight delays, missed connections, etc), we had a nice holiday, despite it raining nearly every day.

We tend not to be the organised tour sort of people, but on this trip, we did a number of very ‘touristy’ things. From Port Douglas, we took the Wavedancer Low Isles cruise for a day of snorkelling, which included a naturalist-led snorkelling tour and island tour. I’m not much of a snorkeller (I love the water, just not the snorkel), but we got to see lots of fabulous reef fish, a sea turtle, and (my favourite) a giant clam. And for me, anything on a boat is great. The weather was squally on the way back to Port Douglas, and the views across the water were fantastic.

Port Douglas afforded me my first real experience of sulphur-crested cockatoos en masse—loud and obnoxious during the day, but the most spectacular experience we had with them was after dark. Someone began setting off fireworks on the hill above town. It must have bothered the cockatoos, because suddenly thousands were silently cruising overhead like winged ghosts against the dark sky, escaping the noise.

We had lots of boat trips on this holiday, which I loved. On our way to Daintree National Park, we stopped in for a crocodile cruise on the Daintree River (and ended up doing a second one on our way out, further upriver, because they were offering a 2-for-1 deal). The crocodiles didn’t disappoint—we saw babies to behemoths—and we also saw lots of birdlife and a pretty little tree snake.

After crossing the Daintree River on the ferry, we stayed two nights at Noah Beach campground—basic, but quite nice. While in Daintree National Park, we hiked up the Mount Sorrow lookout track, where we were tormented by butterflies who wouldn’t sit still for a photo, and greedily descended upon by terrestrial leeches. The rainforest was full of curious plants and fungi, and we managed to photograph a wee skink, too. But the best sightings on this track, for me, were a dung beetle rolling a ball of poo along the path and a big black semi-slug with a gold Nike-like swoosh on its back (well, and the leeches, too, because, land leeches? How bizarre and cool is that?).

With no showers at the campground, we stopped in at Mason’s Swimming Hole afterwards to cool down and wash the mud and sweat off. Great spot for swimming, and the beer and chips afterwards at the associated shop/cafe was the perfect ending to the day.

All along the road in Daintree, there are cassowary warning signs, and finally, as we were leaving we were treated to the sight of an adult male cassowary with two chicks strolling along the road (see the bad photo below, taken through the car window).

Next stop was the Atherton Tablelands. We swung through Kuranda late in the day, hoping to snag dinner before heading to our campsite, but discovered that the entire town closes at two, after the daily tourist train leaves. So we picked up food at the grocery store, and popped out to Barron Falls nearby before hitting the campsite at Speewah Conservation Area. A short night walk near the campsite was rich in cool bugs.

Having seen Kuranda without tourists, we decided it wasn’t worth returning for the market the next day. Instead, we took a nice walk at Speewah on a track littered with cassowary poo. Presumably the birds themselves were around, and saw us, but we never caught sight of them.

Then we were off to two days on the Atherton Tablelands waterfall circuit, with a westward jaunt to escape the rain and see kangaroos. We stopped in at a wide variety of falls, every one of which was worth visiting (check out my waterfall medley). Along the way, we also stopped in at a mango winery, the Golden Drop. The wine was surprisingly good, and I enjoyed hearing about their operation.

Sand bubbler crab sitting amongst its artistically arranged sand balls.

Leaving the Atherton Tablelands, we camped at Murray Falls—a lovely spot—and the following day, took a rafting trip down the Tully River. A fun and wet time was had by all.

Then it was back to Cairns for our last day of holidaying. We walked the Esplanade and hit the night market. Had a delicious dinner at Hecho en Mexico, then went back to our campground to watch the fruit bats squabble as they forayed out from the bat-laden tree near our campsite.

It was an interesting trip, and I ticked off a lot of cool Australian wildlife—crocodiles, cassowaries, kangaroos, tree kangaroos, fruit bats, kookaburras and more. But there were surprises, too. Having lived in Panama, the rainforest in Queensland was quiet and still by comparison—not much of a morning chorus, and not a lot scuttling around the undergrowth, either. And I never used insect repellant! I kept expecting mosquitoes, but came home with only two or three bites. So it defied my expectations in some ways.

It was nice to enjoy the tropics for a bit, but I’ll admit it was good to be back home. It’s back to the garden and the next book, now!

A Solstice Reckoning

June 26, 2026 / Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment

If you’ve been following my blog over the past year, you’ll know that my husband and I have been engaged in a little project to record everything we harvest from the garden for an entire year—winter solstice to winter solstice.

Well, we passed the solstice earlier this week, and with it, our project has come to a close. My husband, data wrangler extraordinaire, did some calculations and created a graph of our harvest to help us visualise and understand our data (see below).

Some quick takeaways from the data:

We harvested a total of 771 kg of food (91 different crops) from the garden over the past year!
Our largest crop was pumpkins, at 115 kg.
We picked a whopping 97 kg of tomatoes over a 7-month-long season.
Our chooks laid 1047 eggs weighing a total of 53 kg!
Although I tried to be reasonable when planting zucchini, we still harvested 51 kg of them.
We harvested 40 kg of sweet corn after a terrible, late start to the season.
Our smallest crop was saffron—dried, the entire year’s harvest weighed less than 1 gram.

What an amazing year!

I’m not sure I fully grasped the sheer volume of food our garden produces, and I certainly didn’t think I’d be tallying up nearly 800 kg of food from this property six years ago when we arrived on what was then an absolutely stripped and sterile piece of land. It’s amazing what a lot of hard work and tonnes of manure can accomplish in six years!

I don’t know the monetary value of the year’s produce, but it hardly matters. The garden has fed us like royalty all year. Provided us food of a quality money can’t buy, not to mention all the weird and wonderful crops and varieties we grow that never appear in the grocery store and simply aren’t available unless you grow them yourself. In addition, I’ve given away countless eggs, zucchini, cucumbers, pumpkins, currants, quince, and more, helping to feed those around us as well.

Eat your heart out, Elon Musk! Your trillion cannot possibly give you as much joy as my 771 kg of fresh produce.

Garden graph 2025-26 — Each crop is represented as a ring of the graph. Each individual harvest is a dot, and the size of the dot indicates the size of harvest. The grey line shows the total weight of all produce harvested since the winter solstice. Only some crops are labeled on the graph.

Ch-ch-ch-changes

May 21, 2026 / Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment

I’ve been writing (and publishing my writing) since the 1970s. But, to be honest, I never considered myself a writer until 2015, when I closed my science outreach and interpretation consulting businesses in order to pursue writing full time.

The change felt like losing an arm, even though I chose to do it.

Because I didn’t consider myself a writer. I was a heritage interpreter, and who was I really if I stopped being an interpreter?

It wasn’t until I ran into a fellow heritage interpreter at a writing conference the following year that I reconciled with the change. He said, “But you’re still telling stories, just in a different way.”

Because of course, heritage interpretation is all about telling the true stories of people, places, and the natural world. He was absolutely right. I had always been a storyteller. The shift from interpretation and science outreach wasn’t so much the removal of a body part, but the growing of a new one.

It made all the difference in my attitude towards the change.

So when the family’s financial situation changed and I needed a steady income, it wasn’t too difficult for me to switch to writing part time while working as a teaching assistant—I could see the connections between the two. I chose to view the change as growing a new limb, rather than cutting off the old one. And when that role evolved into a specialist teaching role focused on science and extension literacy and maths, it felt like the best of all worlds.

I began to think of myself as a communicator who used a variety of media to communicate. And that change in thinking has led to the next change.

This week I handed in my notice at my ‘day job’. Six weeks from now I will transition into full-time writing. It will be my second foray into this territory, but I am infinitely more prepared for it this time. With seventeen books under my belt, I have a base to work with. And with the understanding that I am doing the same thing, just in a different medium, losing the daily teaching from my schedule doesn’t feel as tragic.

And now that my plans are in motion, I’m allowing myself to explore all the possibilities this new phase will open up.

I will miss my students and the amazing people I’ve worked with for the past seven years. And I’m a little nervous—a bit overwhelmed by the sheer quantity of items on my growing to-do list. But I am more than excited to dive into my writing full time. I have heaps of plans for fiction and non-fiction, and I can’t wait to begin making them happen, and share the finished products with you all!

Annual Geekout at Cass

May 8, 2026 / Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment

Last weekend marked the 2026 Cass Mountain Research Station bioblitz.

The weather was perfect, and the views from Cass Hill were spectacular.

Twenty-four enthusiastic naturalists participated in the weekend—a mix of university students, former students and faculty, and others like me, with ties to those students and faculty. A great mix of expertise and enthusiasm.

The weather was gorgeous—sunny and calm. On Saturday, the group I was with followed a maze of pig trails out towards the northernmost tip of the research station, where the Cass River meets the Waimakariri River. Then we climbed the ridge to the top of Cass Hill. Along the way, our group recorded a variety of lichens, mosses, fungi, native and exotic plants, and insects. We scared up a pair of pigs, and watched a harrier lazily circle the ridge above us.

We returned to the research station, scratched and sweaty, in the late afternoon to find it buzzing with the enthusiasm of our fellow naturalists returning from their own adventures.

Throughout the afternoon and evening, people shared photographs, examined specimens under the microscopes, and debated about identifications as we started to log our observations on iNaturalist.

By the end of the evening, we’d already passed our goal of increasing the total number of species recorded at Cass to 1000.

On Sunday, I decided on a mission to find stick insects. There is only one record of a stick insect at Cass, from 2021, and they have not been recorded at the previous bioblitzes. I am convinced they’re more common than the records would suggest, because they are easily overlooked. They also have an irritating tendency to hang out in the forest canopy, far out of reach.

In other locations, I’ve had good luck finding stick insects on forest edges, where the canopy is lower, and stick insects hang out at eye height. So I took a beating tray and a few other participants willing to tolerate my obsession, and slowly crept along the shrubby forest edges, peering at foliage and shaking branches.

Alas, I found not a single stick insect, although I did record some lovely little spiders, a beautiful moth, and a few interesting plants. Undaunted, I will try again next time. The creatures are out there, I know.

Indeed, lots of living things are out there at Cass. Every time we’ve had a bioblitz, we’ve set what seems like an ambitious goal for recording new species at the research station. And every time, we blow our goal out of the water. In 2023, we were thrilled to exceed 500 species. In 2025, we sailed past 800. Last weekend, we added an amazing 119 new species to the list of life at Cass, bringing the total number of observed species there to 1093.

The more you look, the more you see.

Unfortunately, I fear many of the native species at Cass are at risk. The population of feral pigs at the research station has exploded in recent years. Five or ten years ago, pig damage was confined to certain areas, but today there’s barely a square metre of the station not impacted by the rooting of pigs. Other mammals, too, have an impact on the native flora and fauna—rats, stoats and possums are all present there.

My worry was shared by many over the weekend, and we dreamed collectively of a predator fence around the station, combined with intensive pig, stoat, possum, and rat control. What a jewel the station could become! I wonder what our Bioblitz species counts would be like ten or twenty years after effective mammal control?

For now, Cass Mountain Research Station remains as an incredible resource for scientists and others to study and explore. Our bioblitzes show there’s much out there to be learned.