Dragonfly

Yesterday I was lucky enough to save a dragonfly.  It was a great experience for me!  I had opened the deck door, and was greeted by my 'mate' my teenage magpie (one of this season's new born) who always flys down to the deck railing each morning, to ask me what I have planned for his breakfast, (He's a very cheeky bird - I'm trying to teach him to talk, but he just looks at me with intensity at the moment). 

I went back inside to the kitchen, and was beginning to cut up some fruit for my birds - my wild magpies, honey eaters and lorrikeets, when I noticed a small dragonfly throwing itself at the kitchen window, trying to escape.  It had obviously flown in while I had opened the door to the deck and had left it open while I spoke to my magpie friend.

I explained to the dragonfly that it couldn't stay inside, it would eventually die, and that I could help it escape--but it had to trust me...

This went on for a few minutes as I tried to get closer to it at the window.  I tried to encourage it to step onto the back of my hand, which I thought was the most unthreatening position I could use towards the small, delicate creature. But, understandably, it was very shy and kept trying to climb the curtain and hide, or kept hitting the glass with no success. After a few minutes of my gentle urging, and a very quiet, soothing voice, the little dragonfly tentatively stepped onto the top of my hand. I just stood there quietly for a minute, letting it settle, and then very quietly told him/her that I could help and not to worry. I very slowly backed away from the window, and turning towards the open deck door, we walked through the dining room together and eventually stepped outside onto the deck.  I gently laid my hand down on the side deck railing and told my little piece of beautiful nature that it was safe it fly away now.....and off it went!  I felt very happy and connected with my surroundings.  A very nice feeling.

The weight of the world according to Strap

Just a short one.....

Today, after my trip into town, I parked my wonderful little blue convertible in the car shed, and opening the door to the the backyard, Jock met me with a grin and waited for his attention cuddle and head and ear rub.  I usually also grab his snout and play a game with him. 

"Have you been a good boy, Jockie?", I'll say gently shaking his snout.  He'll stand there and put his wet nose back into my hand.  "What!  You have been?"  He'll grin at me and nudge me with his nose again..."Go get'em boy!", I'll say and he jumps and runs ahead of me - trying to act like a puppy again--It's just a thing we do.....

Strap normally joins in and wants to play with his soccer ball, and will drop it at anyone's feet, just for a chance to have them kick it, so that he can chase it.  But today was different.  If Strap had been a girl, I would have said that he was having PMS--but being a boy---he must have just been very tired or full of too many dog worries....

He was laying at the side of the back door, his head resting on his favourite stone (I know, sounds strange - but he likes it), and he just couldn't bring himself to have any enthusiasm.  I asked him if he was going to get up to say hello, but he just gave me one of those sad, please know I am having a bad day looks, and rolled onto his back and raised his front paw.  I shook it, saying "Oh, Strappy!  I hope you feel better soon!"

He accepted my hand/paw shake and continued to lay like that until I went into the house. I think he was hoping for a bit more sympathy--our Strappy is good at that.

The leaking drip

I am telling this tale on myself in order to give due credit to my ever understanding husband, Chris, and for my dear friend Leone who already knows that I am not like most people!  They both accept me for who I am - and if you are still reading my blog - you must be like them, and recognise this oddity of human thought that is behind a lot of the stuff I write about.

This story began about 2 mornings ago - very early in the morning.....

I had just been into the bathroom and washed my face quickly with a fresh, cold face washer--just to wake up a bit, and feel refreshed.  While I was patting my face dry, I noticed a dripping sound which sounded as though it was coming through the bathroom ceiling and hitting the floor in droplets.  Even with all of the lights on in there, I still could not see any leaks coming from the ceiling.  It was really a mystery.  I went to the cupboard and pulled out a torch to have a closer look at the ceiling, but still could not see anything....

I went upstairs to the other bedroom and ensuite to check out any leaks that may be coming from there, but all seemed to be fine. 

By the time I made it down to the middle bathroom, (the one I had just noticed the drips coming from) it appeared as though the dripping had stopped.  I figured it must have come from the new vanity and taps which we had just had installed.  I decided to keep an eye on it, and see if it happened again.

About a half hour later Chris came up, and also washed his face with the cold face washer to wake up.  Before he could turn on the tap I ran into the bathroom and asked him to watch what happened next.  He looked at me strangely, and just stood there!  I replied:

"Go ahead, wash your face - I just want to watch something!"
"What?"
"Well, maybe we'll find out - just turn on the tap!"
"Turn on the tap?  Are you OK?"
" Yep.  Something weird is happening with the water and the ceiling in here, I just want to watch this.."
"OK.....you're acting strange again..."
"I know, but just do it...."
 
Chris proceeded to wash his face with the face washer, turning on the tap to wet the washer, and then turned it off.  I kept my eyes firmly sealed on the ceiling.  As he was hanging the face washer back on the towel rail, he turned to me patiently and said:
 
"OK.  What is going on?  Why are you looking at the ceiling?"
"It's not leaking!", I replied.
"Was it supposed to?"
"It did earlier this morning, then just stopped."  I showed him the puddle of water on the floor under the rubbish bin, where the water had leaked through.
 
"Could it be from the very wet face washer that had been hanging here before?"
"What?"
"Very drenching wet face washer--I had to wring it out before I could even begin to use it.....could that be where the water had come from?  Not the ceiling?"
"But I got a torch and everything to find the leak - I went upstairs to that ensuite to check out the plumbing- I looked everywhere!"
"Did you look at the face washer directly above the wet area?"
"No."
"Why?"
"I dunno"
"OK"
 
As he was walking out of the bathroom, I followed him saying how happy I was that we wouldn't have to call in the plumbers, and how lucky we were.  Chris just turned and looked at me, shook his head and headed to the kitchen for his early morning 'calming tea making ceremony'.  He does that a lot!
 
 

My early morning birds

  Each morning at about 6:30 or 7:00 am, I am up and checking out the day, trying to determine what I can possibly achieve that day, and whether the wet weather that we have been experiencing is going to stop me. 



Lorrikeet sitting on a branch of a pencil pine tree

For the past few mornings I have been been having a lot of fun with our bird life outside in our front yard.  We have a great variety of birds - I think I've spoken about them all  before- but we have been inundated just lately with a flock of beautiful lorrikeets - which are very cheeky and inquisitive birds. 



Eating the berries from the Schefflera tree



At the moment our Schefflera tree (Umbrella tree), is flowering and its bright red berries are a favourite of the lorrikeets.  As I feed the birds every morning I was very happy to notice the large flock that was here at the moment!




Group feed

 

A couple or mornings ago, I was feeding a large flock of lorrikeets, who eat in community style.  Each small group gathers around a piece of food and gently peck at it, while the magpies are more serious and do not like intrusions, but are learning to share with the lorrikeets.  It's fun to watch!

Magpie trying to be gracious


 They are funny birds, and Squirt who is now living downstairs in the family room in her large aviary sings out to them each day.  They answer back and at times it can really get noisy here! 

  



Is this my best angle?



I also had one of my favourite birds stop by for a sticky beak- literally - and kindly posed for some photos - a kookaburra!  They are just stately birds!  They have such a proud demeanour and give me lots of joy when I see them.  They even pose when they see I have my camera!

But then the lorrikeets decided to play a game, and I think it was hide and seek, as these pictures show:

8,9,10...ready or not, here I come!

As you see, they do have fun, and so of course they bring me a lot of pleasure and fun.  It's never a dull moment!



You're not even close!



Enjoying married life

I married Chris in 1999.  During our entire married life, we have only had 3 holidays on our own, without children.  This included our honeymoon, which began with Maddie in our room at 6:00 am on our first morning as man and wife, as she had discovered at the age of 7 how to find us in the resort, and left her older sister 'sleeping off' our wedding from the night before!

In fact, after being married only about 2.5 months we took all 3 girls overseas with us for about 2 months, to the USA, London and Paris.  While it was a great bonding experience for our mixed family, it was a learning experience.  But very much worth it.  Just never had any privacy.  Travelling with 3 girls and the two of us through all the cities we visited was a massive planning experience, but well worth it!

A few years later we managed to fit in a week in Cairns while my eldest daughter and Maddie flew to Melbourne to visit relatives.  That was a fresh break for us!

Then on our 7th wedding anniversary we flew to Fiji for a week and enjoyed the ability to do things as adults and not have to consider the children or family in every activity.  It was heaven.

We have now been married - approaching our 12th year in May, and for the first time, we are the only two here.   We are discovering that when we want to do something, we don't have to run it past the girls, or make arrangements.  We can just be us.  It felt funny at first.  But you know.  I think we are beginning to relax and enjoy it!

We are, after almost 12 years, being allowed to have a marriage that just includes us for a change.  It's not that we don't love all of our girls.  We sure do.  But they aren't living with us anymore. If there is a mess in the house - it is our mess.  If we don't want to cook, we don't have to.  It's kind of nice.  A bit more quiet - but relaxing, with a lot of humour that follows us around everyday!!

Oh, and girls --you are welcome anytime.  We love you and miss you, but we love us too!

Sometimes it's difficult

I started writing this blog because I really do want to express how happy I am and how much appreciation of life I do feel.  But sometimes it's difficult.

Family issues happen and unhappiness occurs. 

My eldest daughter grows up and moves away and out of my life literally. 

My second daughter dies in a car accident at the age of 19.

My youngest moves away from home to start a whole new life --a very good thing for her - but still difficult for us all to go through at the moment.  She is only a phone call away though, and still is in my life.  What a great future she has because of the choices she has made!

Health issues happen, and family members face serious illness and the ending of life.   This is very difficult, as we know there is nothing we can do, but have to stand by and give support when we can.

My original family lives in the USA, so consequently I only get to see them once every few years, when we visit there - it is the distance and the financial decisions that make our closeness difficult.

But despite all of these sad and emotional issues, there is still so much love in my life from friends, my immediate family and my peace of mind. 

That is why I love my life.  Every day.

Moving on

We are getting closer and closer to finalising all improvements on our home here.  And it shows! She is really loving it.  Every day she shines and holds her head up proudly.  At night she hugs us, and keeps us safe and comfortable and exudes charm.  She is so proud of what she has been able to do.  We feel proud of her too!

But as much as we are enjoying her transformation from what had always been to what is now the much improved model, we know it is time to leave her soon. 

There are new adventures that we have to face, and new steps that we need to take.  Life is too short to just keep following the one pathway. 

I know that we will discover a new life and a new home.  Will it be the same?  Probably not.  Will we like it? I'm sure we will.  Will we miss our life here in this lovely home?  You betcha!

But what is life without adventure and challenges?

Besides, we'll still have so many memories!

Bud and Elna - Part 2

On Sundays in our home, Mum would always cook a lunch-time Sunday roast - usually a roast chicken, with vegetables, mashed potatoes and gravy.  Not every Sunday, but at least one or two Sundays a month my Grandma Erickson would come and visit with us and share in our Sunday roast.

After lunch, when Mum and Dad, and Grandma would leave the table and go to digest their meal in the living room, it was up to Joyce and I to clean up the kitchen and wash and dry the dishes and put them away.

My Grandmother was fairly religious, and really didn't encourage a lot of singing or dancing on the Sabbath, unless it was to celebrate the church and all things religious.  So Joyce and I would close all the doors to the kitchen and sing and harmonise while we had to do this horrible task of washing the dishes.  We would sing our little hearts out!  Loud and strong, and would experiment in harmonies, and would occasionally throw soapsuds and whip each other with the dishtowel, but we eventually got the job done.

As the years went by, Mum and Dad sold that house and we moved to our new home.  By this stage, Joyce was on the verge of getting married, and I was 14.  Very grown up!

A couple of years passed again, and I ran into Bud in town one day.  I stopped and gave him a hug and asked how Elna was and asked about the old neighbourhood where I had lived so many happy memories.  Bud told me about the new people who were moving into the neighbourhood, and how things had changed.  He did say something though that has always stayed with me:

"When your family moved away, we lost a lot.  On Sundays, I used to go sit on my back stoop, and listen to Joyce and you sing as you cleaned up the kitchen after lunch.  I used to love that time each week.  It was like you were singing to me.  Nobody does that anymore!  It was special."

He was right.  Not that we were special necessarily with our singing (but we probably were!), but that the whole neighbourhood was special -I always knew that. 

The intruder!

About 3 weeks ago, I was driving down our 1/2 kilometre driveway, when about half way down, I suddenly slowed my car, and almost stopped as I gave way to a large, thin blackish brown snake who had apparently been sunning himself on the track. It was about 6 feet long, and tried to quickly slither away into the bush on the other side of the driveway, to get out of my way. I stopped at the time, as I did not know what kind of snake it was, or if it was poisonous, and saw no reason to run over it and kill it while it was in its own environment.   I thought it might have been a tree snake, or possibly a king brown, but just wasn't sure.

Then about a week later, I was just about to walk down the back tiled stairway leading from our central hallway to the family room downstairs, when sitting on the bottom step I spotted a very similar looking snake laying on the bottom step.  The shock of seeing it in the house and so close to me, made me slip on the tiles and I screamed out -"Snake! Help!  Snake!"  As the hall doorway was shut I wasn't sure if Chris would hear me, but he did come running, and while he didn't see it as it had already been frightened by my screaming, I continured to follow it to watch it as it slithered on down to the family room.  Chris ran for a spade or something to attack it with.  By the time I made it downstairs, I could already see it slithering behind the desk and the filing cabinet, and then it disappeared.  When Chris arrived, we couldn't find it anywhere.  As snakes sense with their hearing and vibrations we tried to remain calm and just chose good positions to sit on opposite sides of the room, to see if it would eventually appear as they do sometimes.  But after about 1/2 hour there still was no sign of the snake, and as much as we moved things, we just could not find a trace of it. 

Needless to say, this appearance of what could possibly have been a King Brown snake, made us both very cautious when walking around the house, and we tried to find any possible nook or cranny where it may have slid in from outside, and filled the crack with filler to seal the area. 

A few days later, I was walking down the same tiled stairs into the family room early one morning, ready to sit at my computer and write, when suddenly I saw on the very bottom step, what looked like a thin electrical cord which didn't seem to be normal. I had never noticed it before.  Then it moved.  It was another snake--it quickly slid down the stairs to the floor and crawled into a packet of photocopy paper which was laying opened on the floor next to the printer.  I quickly grabbed a spade from outside, came back to the folder of paper, and moved it.  The snake slithered out - it was a light brown, and resembled either an immature brown snake or a young taipan.  Either way, it wasn't going to live.  It was in my territory now.  I hit it with a spade, and it died quickly.  It was only young, and not quite a foot long yet - but if it had been poisonous, it would have carried enough venom in its system to have done a lot of poisonous damage to me if I had been bitten. 

I will respect all wildlife if they stay out there, in the wild.  But this is my home, and once they enter they take their chances.  We have experienced too many poisonous snakes here over the years to be flippant about them.. We take each snake seriously.  I often photograph them first, if I can reach my camera in time...but when in close proximity, our theory is a good snake is a dead snake.  (I know that the wildlife people out there are now screaming out), but too many intrusions by King Browns and Taipans over the years has taken its toll on us.

I will admit though, that we had one snake which intruded about a month or two ago, and it was obvious it was a young python - we caught it and put it in a garbage bag, and Chris walked it halfway down our front track and set it loose.  Not all snakes are poisonous.

Well, the reason I am telling you this is that about 5 days ago, I was driving down our track when suddenly in front of me was the same, or similar to it, dark coloured snake that I had seen originally.  I stopped and sent it a mental message.  I agreed to always respect its right to life, if it stayed in its environment.  But warned it that if it were to ever enter our home again, it would not be leaving alive.

Lets hope the message got through!!

Bill and Anna

I have been thinking about it today, and I probably grew up in one of the most interesting neighbourhoods that any kid could have wished to be born into!  There were so many characters, and because I loved talking to them and visiting them, I got to know them very well.  Probably more visiting on my part than they wanted, but what the heck - I was a kid--there were things I needed to do and see!

My neighbours who lived at the top of the block, directly next to our house block, were brother and sister.  Both of them seemed quite old, well, at least to me anyway at the time.  They weren't very sociable, and mainly kept to themselves.  If the truth be known the neighbourhood talked about them as being misers - I had to look that word up in the dictionary at the time, and didn't think that that was a fair description.  Sure they were loners, and Anna especially was kind of scary, but I eventually just invaded their lives, and they eventually got used to me.

They owned a lot of property in town, and apparently were fairly wealthy, but to look at how they lived, I would never have guessed that.  Anna grew beautiful flowers in an area of their garden and Bill grew the largest raspberries and blackberries that I had ever tasted. (I knew that I wasn't supposed to raid his berry patches, but I figured that any berries that escaped through the fence and into our yard were fair game - and I would lay on the lawn and eat them and love them!)

Eventually Bill started meeting me in the alley-way which I would walk down every day, past his house, to get to my house for lunch during the school week.  I was probably about 7 or 8, and Bill would time it so that he occasionally gave me a punnet of fresh berries to have with my lunch.  I loved him for that!  I would skip into our kitchen and would tell Mum I had more raspberries, and she would say:

" Janice, stop harassing that poor man.  Stop taking his berries - it's not nice!"  I just looked at her in awe, as if she were from another planet--of course I was meant to take Bill's berries - they were a present!

I was a very capitalistic child, and was forever trying to make money.  I sold lemonade at my lemonade stands, made hot pads on my little loom and sold them around the neighbourhood from door to door, but one day I thought I had come up with a brilliant plan!  I had recently been able to invite myself into Bill and Anna's house, and occasionally sat in their kitchen and had a cold drink with them.  I was about 8 years old.  One day while sitting and talking with Bill, with Anna hovering in the background, I noticed that their  kitchen was fairly dark, and seemed dusty and murky, even to a kid.  I decided to look around, something I don't think they expected, and walked into their living room.  It was even darker, and all the windows had long blinds drawn down low.  Without even asking, I just walked over and pulled on a blind and watched it roll up to the top of its coil, throwing years of dust everywhere.  Suddenly a ray of sunlight lit up the room, and I stood and just looked around the room.  The room had older style furniture in it, lots of dark wood and brocaded material, but with a bit of cleaning, I figured they could really like it!  Bill grabbed me before Anna could, and suggested that it was probably time for me to leave, and Anna was quickly closing the blind again.  I figured the light must have hurt her eyes - but then couldn't understand how she could plant such beautiful flowers and not want that sunlight which smiled down on her flowers to also shine into this room!

So a couple of days later, I knocked on their back door, which led into their kitchen, and Bill answered the door.  He was a bit surprised to see me, and I just took that as a good sign.  I excitedly turned to Bill, and blurted out:

"Bill!  I have a plan!  I want to make some money, so I have decided to sell my body to you!"

The look on his face was one of shock and then a lot of confusion.  Anna was muttering something in the background, but I just kept explaining:

"If I sell you my body, I can come in and clean your kitchen and open your windows and let the sun in and you will be very much happier - you just have to pay me for my body to do this work!"

Bill replied, somewhat worried, "Have you been to anyone else's house and said this?"

"Nope, just came here first!  Figured you guys needed my body the most!"

Bill just stood and looked at me, was speechless for a short time, then reached in his pants pocket and took out a dollar bill.  He gave it to me and said:

"Janice. What I am going to say to you is very important.  You cannot go from door to door to sell any part of you.  You are very young, and probably don't understand, but you must promise me not to do that again.  Take this dollar, and remember what I am saying to you.  There are better ways to make money.  One day when you are older you will work it all out.  Now - just go play!" 

Bill then closed the door, and I stood looking at the dollar, and wondered why he gave it to me.  But I figured that perhaps he was renting me, and would ask me to do the cleaning later when I was older.  I just went home and put the dollar in my piggy bank, and layed on my bed, trying to think of another way to make money.  I don't think I ever told my family about this adventure until many years later.  It just didn't seem important at the time - I just had to grow up more, before I could earn that dollar I figured........