My sunflowers are blooming in winter. Photo / Warren Buckland
The world has gone mad. Britons have voted themselves out of the European Union, there's a very real possibility that Donald Trump could be the next President of the United States and there are sunflowers flowering in my garden in June.
I hadn't really taken much notice of the Brexit vote because I felt sure that common sense would prevail and Brits would want to stay in the EU.
Wrong. What really startled me though was the young woman on the news on Saturday night saying "Can we vote again? I didn't think my vote would count."
Good grief - of course her vote counts. How many others are there like her? I've read so much about it in the past few days that my head is scrambled with the pros and cons. A lot of the unrest in the country appears to be about migrants "taking jobs and filling up schools".
Migration is a fact of life these days, whether the migrants are from war-torn countries or New Zealand. People move about the world every day. Surely there would have been a better way to deal with the problem than this.
Who knows what the fallout will be? Already stocks and the pound have tumbled as global markets wobble and watch.
As for Trump, all I can say is no, no, no. Again I wonder if people will consider the consequences of their vote because I bet there will be plenty of people who will vote for Trump just because they don't want a woman as president.
Honestly, I fear for the world if Trump triumphs. Like many other people, I thought it was funny when he announced his candidacy for the race for president of the US. I'm not laughing now.
Now for something a lot nicer but still unusual - the sunflower pictured is one of several flowering in my garden. How crazy is that, sunflowers in winter?
It is one of several that self-set from summer. They started growing and I thought they wouldn't last long. They kept growing, formed heads and now three of them have flowered.
The winter weather has been kind to us but I fear we will pay for it sooner or later. The rain and cold will come.
We have had some cold, frosty mornings but they have been followed by glorious sunny days. So really, I have had no excuse not to ride my new (second-hand) bike which I mentioned quite a while ago now.
Everyone I talked to about it said I would fall off (it's a road bike with pedals that I clip my feet into). I've never ridden a bike wearing cleats.
Finally a few weeks ago I gave myself a good telling-off for having a bike sitting in the shed doing nothing and got on it.
I rode 32km and didn't even feel like I was going to fall off. Loved it.
Last Saturday off I went again. On the corner of Middle and Mutiny roads I stopped to check my phone because it had been ringing. Stupid move. When I went to take off again I clipped one foot in and lifted my leg to clip in the other, forgetting to move. I slowly tipped to the side and landed on the road.
Nobody saw me. I was fine. My bike wasn't. The chain had come off and it took me about 10 minutes to get the thing back on.
On Saturday I went riding with a friend. This time when I tipped over, on the corner of St Georges and Te Aute roads, I wasn't so lucky. There were cars all over the show. I'm sure they had a good laugh. Fortunately there is minimal harm to the body when going 0km/h. The pride, on the other hand, takes quite a bruising.
Thank you to the lovely man in a ute who turned around and came back to see if we were okay.
I'm not going to let this bike get the better of me. Practice makes perfect - so they say.
- Linda Hall is assistant editor of Hawke's Bay Today.