Waimea Weekly
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Wednesday 29 January 2025
Fire chief’s 25 years
Mya swims to success
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Short-sightedness rising in Tasman kids SARA HOLLYMAN Local children are increasingly being diagnosed with short-sightedness, with more screen time and lack of outdoor time thought to be major contributing factors.
New research by Specsavers shows that, of the respondents, 100 per cent of Tasman parents said their children had more than the recommended daily screen time of two hours, while in Nelson it was 67 per cent.
Their children were aged 1-5 years old. Specsavers co-owner and optometrist, Bridget Rutledge, says she is not surprised by the results and she’s one of many around the country who has seen a “dra-
matic increase” in myopia – or short-sightedness, in children. Bridget, who is in her eighth year of optometry, explains myopia in simple terms as “children struggling to see things in the distance”.
It’s projected that, by 2050, myopia could be a leading cause of permanent blindness. “Kids would have trouble seeing things far away, its actually really
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Dahlias set to make a splash at flower show ANNE HARDIE Arch Crerar used to have a lawn beside his home in a Stoke retirement village, but now it’s filled with a kaleidoscope of dahlias, from giants the size of your face to spherical pompoms. There isn’t a weed in sight and not even a flower past its best. It’s a garden of show flowers in most people’s books, which is why he will have flowers at the Brightwater Horticultural Society’s Summer Show in February, as he has done for the past umpteen years. The 84-year-old used to sell dahlia flowers at the gate of his previous home in Stoke where most of the 1500 section was planted in dahlias. When he moved into the Ernest Rutherford Retirement Village four years ago, he just had to transform his lawn
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Arch Crerar and lead gardener Jo Robinson have transformed his lawn into dahlias, with blooms heading to this year’s summer flower show in Brightwater. Photo: Anne Hardie.
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