As is obvious, while house sizes haven’t changed much, lot (section) sizes have shrunk significantly in recent years.

It will be remembered that the pushers of the Scamdemic virulently opposed people using Ivermectin as a cure for their manufactured virus, instead they insisted on everybody being jabbed with that dangerous substance.

The State of Florida is launching a study on Ivermectin to see if it can potentially cure cancer.

This is HUGE. pic.twitter.com/sj6LCYx4N8

— Dr. David (@DrDavidivw) July 24, 2026

By Roger Childs

You have to take what’s offered. –Odette Vermillard

A family history drama across 150 years

This is another quality movie from the 2026 French Film Festival. Twenty descendants of Odette Vermillard are summoned to a Parisian lawyer’s office in the mid-2020s and learn that they have inherited a property in Normandy which has been abandoned for over 70 years. A local company wants to buy the site to build an expanded shopping mall and car park. Four of the group – a teacher (Abdel), a bee keeper (Guy), an IT engineer (Céline) and a film maker/digital creator (Seb) – volunteer to investigate and enter the house, and keep in touch with the rest through Zoom sessions.

In 1895 an illiterate 21 year old leaves the Normandy property to travel to Paris where her mother Odette Vermillard had gone to work when Adele was a small child. She abandons her shattered boyfriend Gaspard and catches a steamer on the Seine in search of “Mommy”. In the French capital she finds her mother working in a brothel and tries to untangle what’s going on. On the boat she has met up with two young men – Lucien and Anatole – an early photographer and a budding painter. With nowhere to stay she moves in with the lads at Le Rat Mort but sleeps with a sheet hung between them.

The story moves backwards and forwards between La Belle Epoque – a time of cultural creativity, lively entertainment and the early days of impressionism, and the present day. The contrasts and comparisons between the two eras bring the film to life as the stories unfold. Four and a half stars. 

Then and now

Adèle is cautious in the big city, but is also realistic and resilient. She agrees to become Anatole’s artistic model in exchange for his teaching her to read and write. 

Director Cedric Klapisch keeps the two stories seamlessly moving along with tight editing and plenty of colour, and cleverly blends the two eras. There are many creative touches. Adèle in cumbersome late nineteenth century travelling clothes climbs up some steps from the river-side path in 1890s Paris and then down comes a black athlete in modern running gear. There are also some nice touches of humour. A lively cat features in the centre of the Zoom group and does some talking as well! 

Cinematographer Alexis Kavyrchine makes a meal of the wonderful French scenery and the classic cityscapes, and brings the “two” French capitals to life in evocative style. The recreation of La Belle Epoque Paris is beautifully done, and the settings in Normandy and the capital provide wonderful visual contexts for the evolving stories. As expected there are plenty of surprises in the unfolding tales of Adele’s life in one era and the relationships between the four investigators 130 years later.

The investigating quartet discover some fascinating photos, paintings, journals, letters and other artifacts as they unravel Adèle’s story and one painting could be very valuable. All the actors are excellent, but the standout star is Suzanne Lindon as Adèle.

Highly recommended

Colours of Time (124 minutes) shows yet again the wonderful skills of modern French film making. This is a highly creative and charmante movie which never drags and neatly blends two fascinating eras and dramas. Catch it if you can; Waikanae and other Kapiti folks can see at it at Shoreline.

This was seen on Quora, one of many social media sites. It’s unclear when it was written, but the description was true 3 years ago before the present government took power and things began to improve.

Other issues like Free Speech, social harmony free of career grievance merchants, government honesty and transperancy, ceasing the widespread use of poisons, and others are just as important of course, and much is needed in these areas.

Tuan Vu · Accountant

Is New Zealand the poorest Western country?

I lived in New Zealand and I had to escape to Australia, I can confirm that New Zealand is one of the poorest Western Countries. I can describe life in New Zealand for you to understand deeply what’s really happening in the poor country New Zealand. Houses and rent are overpriced and extremely unaffordable that make lots of people to live in cars, caravans, tiny houses and homeless camps, cost of living in New Zealand is crazy expensive, basic things like fuels and groceries are almost double compared to the same ones in Australia, fuel in NZ is $3.2–3.5 nzd per liter while fuel in Australia is $1.4–1.8 aud per litre (1 nzd ~ 0.93 aud). Public hospitals are free but all other healthcare services like GP, blood test, fertility,… you have to pay full price and there is almost no rebates from government. NZ Wages are 30%-50% lower than Australia wages for the same positions. Crime is out of control, they use cars and utes to ram into stores and malls to rob cigarettes, beers, jewellery,… it happens in almost every cities and every places in New Zealand, for example, they robbed jewellery stores in almost all malls in Auckland such as Westfield Albany, Glenfields mall, Westgate mall,… You can see homeless people everywhere in NZ, they can’t have a place to live. People have to pay 50%- 70% of their income for rent or mortgage as income is too low, they almost have nothing left and face huge debts, most average people feel depressed and many of them have already moved to Australia permanently and never want to move back, there are nearly 1 million NZ citizens (20% of NZ population) living in Australia now, you can imagine how bad life in New Zealand is.

Dr Mototaka Nakamura has called climate models mere "toys."

They're tuned with guesswork, he says, ignore key drivers like clouds, oceans and the sun, and cannot predict climate.

Dr Nakamura is far from fringe.

He earned his doctorate at MIT, worked with NASA and Caltech, and… pic.twitter.com/IMpDvbvL8e

— Electroverse (@Electroversenet) July 25, 2026

We came upon this on homes.co.nz — a 37 sq metre apartment in Hill Street, for $265,000 — you wonder, how can people live in such a confined space with no view? They do in New York (in fact often less and pay ridiculous amounts for it) but that’s a different situation. Perhaps the fact that this is literally just up the road from the Parliament grounds complex is a big factor, but otherwise — sheesh.

by Wally Richards

PRUNING ROSES

It is about that time of the year when gardeners oil up their secateurs, put on their gloves and go out to do battle with their thorny, but well loved roses.

Just how you go about pruning your roses is really up to you, but the most popular cut is to prune somewhere above the third or fourth outgoing buds.

This will create a champagne-glass shape which means that the inner part of the rose will receive adequate light.

Some in-growing buds can be rubbed out as they develop to prevent the centre of the bush becoming too congested.

If you prune low to second outgoing buds, you will end up with strong new growths which will bear fewer flowers, but better blooms.

If you prune high, say to the fifth or sixth outgoing buds, you’ll end up with a denser bush with a lot of flowers.

Pruning climbing roses is a somewhat different affair.

Assuming you don’t want a rambling rose which grows where and how it wants, you need to shape your climbing rose to form a framework of main branches along a wall, a fence, or over an archway.

The aim is to have the new season’s growth sprouting from this framework and producing the much-wanted floral display, but to get to that stage requires careful training and selective pruning.

After planting your climber, let the branches grow and tie them to the support over which the rose is growing, to cover the desired area.

A reader recently asked me how many plants he should buy, and how far apart he should plant them, when putting in Dublin Bay climbing roses to create a solid “wall” along his fence line.

I replied that the normal distance apart would be one metre, but it would be his subsequent pruning and control which would determine how thickly the lower part of the floral structure would grow.

For example, I explained, take the lowest buds and train them sideways to fill in the space between the rose plants. Take the next buds at about 30 degrees, then 60 degrees, then 90 degrees until each rose has a fan-like structure from which each year’s new shoots will grow.

Once the wall is nicely covered, it is simply a matter of cutting back or tying in those growths extending too far from the wall.

Once you’ve established the basic framework of the climber, the only pruning needed is to remove any branches which have grown outwards and detract from the desired effect, and remove any dead wood, spindly growth or dead branches.

Over time, replace the old main branches with new ones which you have trained during the season to become part of the framework.

Your work during the growing season of a climber consists more of training and tying back than anything else, as the branches will grow quickly from new shoots in the spring and summer period.

The chances are, they will initially grow away from where you want them, but all you need do is tie them back to the framework.

Then in winter, you can remove them if you want to prevent the framework from becoming too congested, or you can leave them in the framework and remove older branches instead.

It is really important to remember to never cut a climber down as low as you would a bush rose.

Climbers treated in this fashion can revert back to bush roses.

Always leave a few branches of a metre or more in length, even when doing a hard cut-back such as might be the case when you’re repairing or painting the wall or fence.

Whatever rose you are pruning, and whatever technique you use, there are some invaluable tips you should adopt for the post-prune process.

First, you must spray each rose with Liquid Copper immediately after pruning to protect the wounds.

Don’t, however, prune on a cool moist day as silver leaf disease is likely to be air borne in these conditions. It is also crucial to keep in mind that diseases can be transferred from rose to rose so use methylated spirits.

Simply fill a cup almost full of the meths, and dip the partly open blades into the cup, making sure all the cutting edges are well soaked prior to moving onto the next rose.

In a nutshell then, pruning consists of cutting back the rose, spraying the remaining canes with Wallys Liquid Copper, and then dipping the secateurs blades into methylated spirits.

Then move on to the next rose and repeat the procedure.

That’s all fairly simple isn’t it? But let’s have a few extra tips.

Take your bottle of Wallys Liquid Copper, (it has the great advantage of already being liquid so there is little risk of blocked jets in the middle of a job) and double the normal amount (which is 3.5 ml to a litre of water) to 7 ml per litre, add in one ml of Raingard so the spray stays on, rain or shine for up to 14 days.

Mix up and place in a trigger sprayer and use this spray after pruning each rose to cover the wounds.

Once made up the spray will keep for sometime but you need shake the sprayer well as the copper will settle. When using Raingard or its spray on frost protection cousin, Vaporgard, you must remember that these are films which set on the areas sprayed, to obtain their benefits.

This means that after you have finished spraying with these aids, that you should flush and spray some clean water through your sprayer, otherwise the residues left will set and block up the jets.

Hot water is best to use for this purpose and spray the water till it runs clean.

If on the other hand you forget to do this simple task, then when you come to use the same sprayer again and find that the jets are blocked, you need to dismantle and clear the jets with a bit of fine wire and soak them in methylated spirits.

Choose your day to prune carefully, it should be after a few days without rain with sun and wind to dry the soil and air. This is very important as the deadly silver leaf disease favours entering fresh wounds when the air is moist and cool. In areas where silver leaf disease is a major problem extra care should be taken.

It is also a very good practice in the spring, after a reasonable amount of new foliage appears, to give the roses a couple of sprays, a month apart, with Perkfection.

This builds up the immune system of the rose and can allow a rose to recover from the silver leaf disease if it is not too far advanced. It also protects against a number of other diseases as well, through fortifying the rose’s immune system.

Two weekly sprays of Magic Botanic Liquid with Mycorrcin added will greatly assist the health of your roses.

Neem Tree Oil can be added for pests such as aphids, scale and possums (possums don’t like the taste of the oil).

If early in the season when the new shoots are out, we have a cold snap you can protect the delicate shoots with a spray of Vaporgard.

Those with grapevines should do the pruning of them soon before the sap starts to rise and cause ‘bleeding’ where pruned.

Phone 0800 466464
Garden Pages and News at www.gardenews.co.nz
Shar Pei pages at  www.sharpei.co.nz
Mail Order products at www.0800466464.co.nz

And now for some good news.

Our legacy media is in a death spiral. No one I know watches or reads them or listens to them any more.

TVNZ totally betrayed the truth during the Convid Years – and during the Freedom Village, they painted Kiwis in a terrible light for suffering… https://t.co/erBOyGS2bb

— Liz Gunn (@LizGunnNZ) July 25, 2026

“Say Chloe, why does your party appeal so much to weirdos?“

“Look, just Stuff off!”