so much rain again this summer

places an autumn air upon our mornings where mist and her attendants swirl around the hills dancing until after breakfast.

the valley shines emerald

and here in the forest we wrestle leeches off us everytime we step off the verandah.

goannas large and small harass our hens and like to commandeer the one egg we are almost getting every day. we cant buy eggs with a yolk colour like ours even when we source them free range from the neighbours down the road.

our three girls do enjoy a diet rich in wild greens, invertebrates and kitchen scraps and we thank them for adding that richness to our diet.

 

 

my bedroom verandah on the north west corner of the house has become a shortcut for creatures to use such is the wild growth all around us.

why fight your way thru that jungle when you can step onto the boards beside the bank of batteries and meander across exiting down a couple of steps near the paper maiche room?

in the night possums take time out from galloping along our iron roof to shimmy down a pole and muck up outside our bedroom. they have  so enjoyed the grapes this season.

wallaby and wombat make use of it  and if we forget to shut the hens in at night they will make a beeline for our verandah and cackle loudly until one or other of us blearily hunts them off.

early dawn also sees the swamp wallaby sitting on the verandah eating the leaves of the pink salvia.

quite a highway out there – just waiting for one of us to trip over someone when we go out for our nocturnal visits.

a rasping scratching sound on the boards had me looking out the window just now to see goanna has also cottoned on to this pathway.  I think it has fled hassling the hens because John went after it with the rake.

I got up and pulled the door shut so it wouldn’t get any ideas of joining me

perhaps I am mistaken but it does seem as if they are all very interested in what goes on this side of the glass and mudbrick walls. or maybe they are trying to find ways to avoid the leeches and the ticks.

we made a scoot for the kitchen door the other afternoon when Jess saw red belly black snake sidling along behind stanleys stove wood and I managed  to close it closed before it could take a slide  thru the fly screen  and investigate.

on two separate occasions we have had a red belly check out our pantry/kitchen and then there was the rather large  goanna that could not find its way out the door out of our lounge room for simply ages.

suffice to say the forest is in awesome form – wildly chaotic and flourishing pushing fungi thru in any number of places…

dams are full and frogs are plentiful

turtles have had a great breeding season and wallaby babies poke heads out of every pouch.

 

 

indeed this spring/summer has been the season of the baby

and we have been blessed to welcome two new beings into our family

two girls born to two sisters

will they be warriors like me? queries Kingston John who has an obsession with warriors star wars and lego.

he insists on warrior training with his dad carrying shield and wooden sword and both return sporting bruises,

obviously no quarter is given.

of course they will be earth warriors we tell him just like you but right now it is milky breasts and cuddles that they want .

the miracle of new life

of attending to the journey of nurturing a tiny being.

possibly one of the most awesome tasks we ever undertake and yet a career is deemed more valid.

the twenty four /seven sacrifice of parents with a baby lies unseen beneath the text of lives.

all of us have sprung from a womb some of us suckled and some of us were deeply loved .

not really something one thinks about as life takes us on into the next stage and the next and the next 

and then as a grandparent it all gets revisited  

and I observe  the girls doing it differently.

I become  privy to discussions about parenting ( oh how I went ‘wrong’) and learning new terms like ‘co- sleeping’ and ‘supervised tummy time’ and and .. ‘lactation consultants.’

whaaattt…the…

all a bit heady for me.

I am not sure how I did it but I ended up with healthy adult children despite ticking most of the no-no boxes.

 

 

the wee king has started school-

a steiner school with soft curves, grace and gentle harmonics splashed with colours of the rainbow and cubbies in the yard with chooks and veges and songs

rooted in the notion that the child is a spiritual being.

sort of wets my eyes to take him there and reinforces that change is possible when I contemplate my start at the age of five.

sobbing … in a long corridor without end and being yanked  off my mother and shoved  into a classroom where I was scared and nervous for the rest of my school days.

one early memory involves being made to stand in front of the class

– hold out your hand – and then wacked several times with a ruler because I had done the ‘wrong’ page of arithmetic for homework.

I thought I was five but others in the family insist I was six.

oh well thats alright then isn’t it?

and then at ten I was made to sit outside a classroom again that long austere corridor because I refused to take my cardy off when the teacher told me to.

yes always rebellious – never did like to be told what to do.

eventually got carted off to the principals for a chat where by virtue of being a girl I avoided the strap.

And so when goanna and wombat and wallaby like to make my verandah a short cut I secretly applaud them,  I admire their I’ll do it my way style and I absolutely wish for all creatures the right to Be 

 

the right to Be themselves.