I woke up this morning

merging from the dream into the bed

into the opaque early morning birds twittering and cussing about

the wind that had been blowing its head off all night and still roaring.

twice in the night I had got up to close the door to the verandah after it had blown open.

the second time I said oh fuck very loudly and climbed back into bed disgruntled with the wind and the effort of getting up.

I slid back into bed into the dream …

somehow yesterday morning I got out of the wrong side of the bed and fretted fussed and cried over spilt milk of whatever grabbed my gall

refugees   our local council   stupid stupid politicians

anything everything I spat chips.

hey says John you’ re angry

sorry love and I snuggled down onto his chest breathing deeply and sanely back into connection with me myself  I and the rest of it all

but it didn’t last that long.

I got most of the way thru my yoga practice gave up on the meditation my head too full and busy with bullshit.

after porridge I went to Bermagui to visit the doctor

not an everyday occurrence for me, more in the hardly ever realm.

under duress I went advised by my case manager to compile a body of evidence to show why I cannot be expected to work.

Oh dear the truth is out

I am a hopeless case an all time bludger  a no good layabout

a want it all for nothing sort of person.

where is your work ethic girl?

looking at thirty years of  chopping wood, carrying water, digging and shoveling ,cooking and cleaning, making and creating home  family  garden  community …

of time always available for life and death

time for soup for the sick, meals for the poor, chats with the depressed, cuppas and creative plans and celebrations with the river and the forest and the flowers and the birds and the air and the rainbow and the mountain.

of time for circles of healing and ceremonies of planetary business

of time to be .

so there I am this morning merging into wakefulness my head still pressed into the pillow my face turned towards the windows and my body warm and soft and I say …oh fuck …

again

that’s twice

and then I heard myself and I have been feeling guilty all day.

what a way to wake up girl.

how rude how sad how out of it????

ok my head was hurting and I am so sick of that state but really no excuse I say to myself sweeping the floor no excuse I say to the self doing yoga the self bringing in kindling the self dreaming in the spring garden.

pushing my back hard against the mud brick wall I mutter sorry sorry so sorry

this life this most precious gift and my response on waking this morning was oh fuck.

the sky so magnificently blue not a cloud to mar the perfect clarity

the spotted turtle dove lands on the tank for a drink and I sing

“two turtle doves and a partridge in a pear tree”

the new hollands are making out in the daphne bush or were they arguing, hard to tell sometimes with birds the love act itself is so quick and covers much jostling and chasing that well…

the swallows are completing work on the interior of the nest

the wongas continue their stately walk around the yard and wallabies take shortcuts across the verandah.

and whom is it I apologise to?

to you goddess to you my friends to you my self divine

wake up get a grip as they say.

sitting in the surgery waiting my turn watching a foreign language movie unravel between receptionist and patients and nurse and doctor and ins and outs and tick tock tick tock tick tock…

an hour late he appears and welcomes me into his office.

here I am in the heartland of the white coats as Carole calls them

don’t tell her I am here she will give me a right telling off

do I want any help he asks or am I happy left alone?

there are preventive measures he wants to suggest but decides not to push it and leaves chat of  pap smears, mammograms and heart stress tests for another time.

That’s what happens when you take your family into the room with you

all of a sudden you become a repository of all that has previously gone wrong.

how would you feel about a blood test? he asks this nice young man dressed so casually in jeans with his sparkling eyes and dark curly hair.

I might be able to do that I reply .

previously when I had blood to give I gave it month by month to the Mother to the garden to the renewal of life itself.

that gave him a form to fill out which complimented his function and I left  one visit down in my evidence kit.

the frenchman rings the other night a rare enough event and tells me that our mutual neighbour Patrick the new kid on the block is clearing his bush and is there a law against it.?? he figured I would know because and here he blustered a bit unwilling to say out loud about   my propensity for  activism perhaps.

‘ he has a bob cat the biggest there is and  is taking out everything up to 5 inches  round.  the noise is driving me crazy ,he goes in clears a patch then comes out and goes in another bit. what is he doing? ‘

I don’t know  I reply but if you want to talk about noise and neighbours let me tell you about warren and the hippie mover that sounds like a boeing aircraft engine or worse . we think it is a machine that mashes up ???? feed for his cows . called feedlot farming very progressive is warren.  sorry John  I got carried away there what were you saying ?

‘ he started 2 weeks ago then something broke and he had to get a part from america and then does it again this week it is no good ‘  the Frenchman continues   ‘I thought I would finish my life here in peace and quiet but now he do this I don’t  like it if he doesn’t stop maybe I sell.’ Like us John has been here 30 years  and  is  as gnarly and twisted as an angophora.

we had been hearing it too and for the first few days for the life of me I couldn’t figure out what the sound was. And then my John not french John said it sounds like  one of those mulching machines .

the frenchman wants me to do something . And then  Christa rings and talks to John with a similar vent against patrick and what he is doing. “he is opening up the canopy and then it starts drying out and becomes a fire hazard and  he is a bully you know.  Christa has already had a run in with patrick over the road and  the frenchman had a run in  over the sale of some timber.  So far we have been doing alright keeping out of the way.

I looked up the Vegetation ACT 2003  and  found that it is illegal to clear your  forest or the under shrubbery either but exactly who takes any notice of that? .  while there is a law and while a person could report the misdoings of their neighbour and while the environment and heritage office could investigate and have the  power to administer a fine it would all  be too late.

of course the libs in NSW are changing the law anyway to make it easier for farmers to clear their  bushy bits  coming into effect in 2014 not that patrick is a farmer unless he is intending some sort of cash crop.

lets go for a walk I say to John. Camo he asks. Of course .

so after porridge on a sunny warm verandah which is still a work site cluttered with nails and timber hammer  trestles ladders and wire all part of further rat proofing techniques  we suit up and head out ,. I chose to go with green  jeans hat and checkered shirt. John adopted blue bottoms khaki shirt and brown hat. Perhaps camo is more an attitude than a dress code.

we wandered along our track and out  the gate cutting thru Christas paddock to the gateway into patricks and the frenchmans. Both of them hold 100 acres here that buts up against our two 40 acre blocks. all of it forest . and behind that forest all the way to the next valley.

we walk the fenceline seeing nothing of any clearing , in places there is no fence as trees have smashed down across human boundaries and lie rotting given enough time back into the earth. We climb over trunks tangle up in vines and cutty grass skirt around thorny bushes slither down gullies and creep along tiny little would be creeks . everywhere  bandicoots diggings wombat diggings and burrows  scats of wallaby and kangaroo. beneath the tall stringybarks grey box silver topped ash  past the Casuarina and  wild cherries past the unnamed rainforest opportunists past the lichen and ferns and wild violets.

30 years ago Bill McVeity put up this fence red gum fence posts and 5 strands of barb.  today it looks like madness but John tells me it was madness back then too and he should know because he helped Bill do it.   We came across one huge tree that Bill  cut it down because it was on the fenceline. As I say madness. And yet it still continues.

30 years of living here and I think one starts to think like a forest like a tree and the world of human doings can look even stranger and weirder than ever before.

Bec rings and John tells her  we have a refugee problem .  yesterday evening before the curtains needed closing but the sun had left the forest John points out the window .four of the red wallabies  near  Kingston’s swing set nibbling grass dreaming one looking directly at us thru the glass had a pouch full .

It is unusual to see them around the house these days . once they were common place  but at some point they traded  places with the shy black swamp wallabies who  even now claim the verandah as their territory.

I had a theory that the swampies are harder  on the garden than the red ones were but hey they are all here now .

it’s all ok i am not going to try to garden anymore bugger it the lavender and sage were the last last last straw. When you look out and see so many wallabies that you run out of fingers to count on it is time to say goodbye to gardening.

probably kidding there because the daffs and jonquils are flowering  the air is perfumed with daphne and the swallows have added onto their nest .  the yellow robins are with me in a flash when I chop up no. twos for stanley gathering the tidbits that fall out of the logs . wattle birds and honeyeaters are swanning and clamoring around the callistemon outside the bedroom and  the male blue wrens have put their luminous blue coats on.

I would like to have an answer for the frenchman but I don’t.   Perhaps it is enough that after 30 years he is  now able to reach out and ring us .

it is sunday and out there in paddock land the guns are shooting .

perhaps it is not enough anymore  to hold the space of generosity and compassion to keep the light burning as a beacon of kindness to those that are persecuted  perhaps it is time to say refugees are welcome here.

I am sitting at my table  in the bedroom.

It is jammed up against the windows looking out to  the mandarin and lime trees, the pink salvias  flowering, the Callistemon home and harbour to lots of birds also flowering, Buddleia flowering, the bay laurel with its fresh new light green tips,scrubby grasses tangled with  carpet left over from the war against Kai Ku Yu all merging into the thick impenetrable orchard of   towering black wattles.

the faint echo of  chooks is  heard at odd moments when the membrane between  parallel realities  collapses and the past bleeds thru to the present bleeds thru to the future bringing thru all possibilities.

the Sun is playing peek-a-boo , the Wind is painting broad brush strokes and the temp remains at, ‘ I  think I’ll put a cardy on.’

first day of Autumn .

with a practiced flip of the calendar seasons warp and flex passing our summer into memories and calling up leaf fall in glorious colours, cooler mornings, shorter  sharper days ,abundant harvests  and golden hours.

above me in the roof sits a rat looking ‘sick’ according to John who brought the ladder into the pantry and with flashlight in hand climbed up thru the manhole to take a look.

only a couple of weeks ago John and Greg finished if there is such a word in bushlore  the rat proofing of the roof. they completed the stretch in the glasshouse effectively  blocking off all access ( we hoped). the  patter of tiny feet continued .

with a new staple gun John went back over areas where the old gun had begun to fail. would this be the final nail  ?

quiet for a day or two but maybe  because the rain was so heavy on the roof that all other sound was blocked out. this morning we heard a  scurry and a gnawing.

now it sits there  waiting for its final scamper back into the arms of the Great Spirit.

I can see a skeleton over  the kitchen sink,’ he shouts  to me.

oh that would be the one that rained maggots down into the kitchen while we were lolling   at the beach and Greg was home here working.

We got a message  from him telling us how creepy it was  at home . maggots were dropping out of the ceiling  onto the benches and floor and wriggling their way towards the  rest of their lives.

Greg was on constant clean up  until the skinks joined the party.  like the calvary they turned up in the nick of time only without the bugle and set to with relish . next time I went back home to water the garden the kitchen was clean as a whistle.

a few days ago we could hear  a rustling and tussling under the loquat tree. eventually   we could make out a red belly black snake with a skink  in its mouth.  two legs hang limply  in the air as the snake slowly expanded its jaw .

someones else s horror is someone else s meat .

last night before dark a  mother and child were  nuzzling each other  in the garden. It looked very like love to me.

I  watched  the mama wallaby gently cradle her childs face between her paws and tenderly lick it clean, from there they moved into play .

in the  french documentary  ‘Babies’  the african mother  cleans her baby  with her tongue.  She rolls her tongue all over the body and spits out whatever grit she encounters .

I don’t so much lick Kingston but I do enjoy sniffing him and I do love to nuzzle my face into his sweet baby body and I do smooch noisily whenever I can.    at two and a half he is leaving babyhood behind and I ask him,  how much longer can I get away with this?   He smiles and ducks away from  me to get back into his play.

the girls will  testify that I am still a bit of a  smoocher , the joy of   plastering  my love all over their  beautiful grown up faces  and drinking in their fragrance of being.

I imagine the rat upstairs if it is a mum is probably as loving to its young as we are,

and yet we have  decided that they  have no place in our house.

no apologies,  yes remorse .

And again yesterday evening  standing at  the door of the lounge room I call out to John.  What, he says when he comes to look , as if you havent seen a wallaby a thousand times before?

its true I have, but that little fella that is big enough to nibble  on its own  still likes to bury its head in its  mothers  pouch and stand there for ages drinking.

And I like to watch them. I like to watch it all.

I am still as captivated and fascinated as the day I entered this forest thirty years ago .

I am as bewitched as the first day we met.

It feels like love to me.

the rain came down all night

it teamed it bucketed it pelted  and it poured.

just before dawn another storm joined the party only this one turned up with the orchestra

the  bang and crash of drum , the  wind instruments and the loud voices of bass and tenor added a melody   of gusts  that slammed into us  whipping the rain up and slinging  it around, spraying our  verandahs soaking the tables and chairs, the fire wood , lawnmower , the towels and shoes.

it seemed to be dark when Kingston knocked  on our door , John heard it and  wished  he would go away but quickly   realised  a frustration was building so he let him in.

with  two dogs under his arms he clamoured into bed and snuggled  me, singing songs about the monkey that fell off the bed and had to get mummy to call the doctor and the doctor said  no more monkeys climbing on the bed.

he has the song word-perfect  and loves repeating it endlessly.

feeling we needed  to change the record him and I got out of bed

and decided that it was exactly the sort of morning for pancakes .

outside the kitchen the  waterfall from the guttering was cascading  into the  tank and everywhere  the world  was sodden.

speaking of waterfalls

John took me to meet a waterfall at Nethercote  the other day,

not far from the town of Pambula on the Yowaka River in very steep country there is a series of cascades that  pour water from pool to pool

some of them as small as a bath tub others of swimming   pool size.

first we had to negotiate a steep  track that said  4wd.

I hung on , a bit put off  by the sticking up rubber rollovers that  have to be flattened down  to drive over and the powdery gravel that loves to skidd a back wheel  but John took no notice and we made it to the car park .

from here it was another steep walking track  thru thick forest sporting a lot of rainforest opportunists and the commanding  ping of the bellbird.

a sign halfway pointed out  to us  the rare and precious species of flora and fauna  to be found in this reserve, some at  its southernmost range,

mostly the vegetation reminded me of home.

at the bottom we crossed the river and wound our way along   the side of a hill only occasionally able to see the river.

the sound of the waterfall moved  closer and closer.

a picnic table,  a couple of tourists from Victoria, a gravelly rocky shore and a gorge about 40 metres long that dead ended.

water gushed  out of an opening in the cliff and dropped 10 metres  into a very deep clear pool.   the cliffs towered on another 100 metres up into the sky and behind the waterfall there appeared to be  a dark recess .

in places shrubs and wattles grew out of cracks in the cliffs.

the gorge is made up of a rock known as rhyolite  which is a volcanic composition  of quartz ,feldspar, mica and hornblende containing a very high silica content.

they are beautiful cliffs holding lots of patterns in their blocked up shapes, faces are easily seen, but there is also an edge of quiet danger as if any one of the cracks could snap and send a slab of rock tumbling down into the bottom of the river.

according to the tourists the waterfall was not at peak and the pool was lower than they had ever seen it.

we ate our tomato sandwiches, chewed on a cucumber, drank our tea hot and strong from the thermos and shared an orange almond cake from Wild Rye bakery at Pambula.

the sounds of the falls plummeting mingled with the voices of young people exploring , breezes ruffled our curls and teased us with stories of  a blackfella time ; fire, food gathering and community.

in some  ways nothing has changed, the river is the river, the rock  is  rock and still people come and explore  raising their voices in excitement and wonder to be playing with the edge of  nature.

no one jumped that day but they do , they scale one side of the gorge and leap off disappearing into a mountain of bubbles coming up and flicking wet hair off their grinning faces.

after eating we sun baked lazily on a rock  like lizards before slipping our bodies over  and into the water,

it was shockingly cold and luxurious  at the same time

a melding of cells, an assembly  of molecules, a joining of  relations,

the blood that flows thru my veins meets the blood that flows thru the arteries of this planet.

tiny fishes dart around, taddies nibble at weedy stuff clinging to the slippery rocks and on a climb up the cliff to get a better look at the cave we spot an eel.

ooh gross, says one of the fair haired campers  from Victoria who had asked how the hell we had ridden down the road and how we were going to get back up ?

that is an interesting question says John.

we returned along the river skipping over rocks skirting around pools occasionally plunging thru shrubs and over fallen logs.

by the time we reached our starting point we were hot and had to embrace the river one more time.

I rode home on the back of the bike feeling refreshed and nurtured but more than that was a feeling of connection

a sense that I had encountered an old friend.

a river, a gorge , a forest  a waterfall.

a friend that revealed  itself  and invited  me to share.

that place exists within me now

in my heart and my memory,

a space I can return to whenever I like

a space I can tend and hold dear

a friend I was truly glad to meet and bring home with me.

the world is softly wet

soft shoosh sounds  tinkling dripping plunking and plinking

water on metal water on earth,

water softly fielding its heavy grey skirt over our garden and forest.

the skinks are napping today,

subdued

not a day to play chasing,  not a day to bite our toes.

Greg is convinced that they are getting more aggressive , he swears he was eyed off the other day.

ever since he saw a planet earth show of the komodo dragons wearing down a water buffalo on some island in Indonesia he has had a ‘thing’.

actually, it was rather gruesome

the dragons  attack as a mob isolating a water buffalo and harassing  it until one of them manages to get close enough to  bite .

then follows a three-week period of hell  in which the poor animal  is inexorably poisoned becoming weaker and weaker until in the final days the dragons are circling hovering licking their chops  watching and waiting .

and then they feast.

it gave us the heebie jeebies at the time especially the watching and waiting and so when Greg says he felt eyed off…..

and who is say in what  direction the evolution of our skinks is going  ???

they take advantage of us particularly at morning tea time on the verandah, not just eating crumbs but also having a nibble on a toe .

we get a fright let out a squeal, it runs off and pretends to do something else. is it dead skin that is so appealing, the flavours of walking or a prelude to something else?

I walked on one in the kitchen yesterday,

they blend into the colour of the floor lurking in the shadows at our feet.

I looked down and observed  the tail section wriggling and twisting around with the upper part of the body missing, probably bolted off under a cupboard to lick its wounds.

I got sick of watching the jiggling around and went in and complained to John,

there are some things a girl shouldn’t have to face.

they are all over the plates waiting to be washed up  sometimes even  needing a hand up out of the sink

shinnying up metal surfaces is not one of their skills.

they havent discovered the kitchen table or the bench yet but lets face it, is only a matter of time.

I went to The Crossing  for a deep ecology weekend with Skye and John Seed

meeting a bunch of strangers and a few good friends.

love flowed freely and generously served up in large helpings with the food  honked out by the geese and teased out of exercises designed ‘to deepen our connection with nature ‘

how deep can we go??

already here we live on the margins of existence while the wallabies, oh they are so cute eat rhubarb leaves and snip our marigolds

the possums oh they are so noisy thundering along our roof

the rats oh they are eating the tomatoes

the black snakes oh they are making out again

the wombats oh they are on further construction

the rabbits oh they have found the berries

the wrens oh they live in Johns room all the time now

the flies the mossies oh just plain annoying

and  wasps that build their nests in our pumps chain saws  pipes mufflers  the pram the recorder.

the daddy-long-legs  take over our windows and the huntsman always grabbing a lift to town with me.

is this deep enough??

I am in the web of their existence while still trying bravely to eke out our food supply.

how envious I get when I see urban backyards with  banana trees and rhubarb and a thousand and one veges and  fruit trees with peaches and apples and plums.

we had an orchard once, it  still exists down to the west of the house where we no longer venture hidden and hemmed in by  the tall strong black wattles and the falling down chook yard.

sometimes  the trees even flower ,sometimes they set fruit, sometime you catch sight of a loquat or a peach but then before you blink it is gone.

the grapes so lush this year, big bunches of them but  before the ripening could advance  it became possum central with their squabbling and yowling and feasting night after night outside our  bedroom .

some nights I  would wander out  trying to look menacing with my witches broom and say get along you, go, only to be  stared at  by  big luminous and dare I say it, righteous eyes.

eyes claws teeth and fur lay claim to these fruits and I had better get used to it.

so here we are, the faerie embassy ,a place where we can all live in harmony, where we listen to the voices of the wild where the wild have a voice

and  their voice is loud and clear.

I want I want and ruthlessly with no thought of sharing  they take  and leave  me the squashed skins to sweep off the verandah  the next day .

I know it is up to me to find a path of communion thru this

if only I can learn to go deeper ,deeper into the connection maybe then I  can  forge a link of sharing in which I too eat the fruits but really we are too soft and we did offer up this place as a sanctuary .

the reality outside of this forest, outside of this  haven  is war , war  upon all things wild.

they are refugees .

there is naught else we can do but love them in their wildness and honour them for their magnificence in Being.

2013

trying to get back onto the horse

not that I have ever been a rider

never been my thing.

today Jess Kingston and I called in to see Carole,

we took a pair of thongs  and  an apple turnover bursting with fresh cream that sent her  into a clutching  excitement.

she is pressing  wool at the moment and has promised scraps to John for insulation.

we had to hear about her ‘ road troubles ‘ and how she has fallen out with her neighbours .

you know that Glen, he came down here and told me this was a public highway, but I told him…

get away ,its only a track.

and Naomi wanted those blackberry bushes to go,

no way that is my hedge

and my jam I say.

what is it with people that buy acres way up some rutted track and then demand  a highway to get to it.???

I dont know the answer to that one either . we too have a neighbour that wants  more than a track.

I asked for a couple of bags of sheep manure for the garden

I’ll pay you, I said.

oh you don’t need to do that sandy, just take away a load of rubbish

but but  but  John did a load the other day didn’t he ??

John couldnt stand the sight of her yard any longer and went over, hauling the rubbish   onto the trailer and up into the paddocks where they chucked it  over a fence and  down the hill to a  wash away.

I hope that isn’t going to offend anyones environmental sensitivities.

yep ,but I have mountains more of it she says.

ok  I mutter ,never was going to get out of it lightly.

the marmalade cat came and lay down near us

a beautiful tom and  I remembered those story books I read as a child about Orlando the marmalade cat that had adventures and I bent down and scooped him up into my arms .

It has been a long time since I held a cat to my heart and felt that deep connection

that well of cat trance

that purr of satisfaction and contentment and for a few moments I dived right in.

I stroked and Kingston jigged around patting and yabbering to it.

the ginger puss endured our attention and then  returned to its business.

such a sense of self, such masters of their identity, such dignity.

there is a road issue going on amongst some of our neighbours at the moment

a carry over from last year.

we got called into a meeting on a fork of the track while we were still camping at mystery.

we listened we talked we left them to it.

it isn’t over, not by a long shot but apart from remaining gracefully pleasant I have no interest in the situation or the outcome

and I am a little surprised by this.

maybe it is a 2013 thing

maybe now that we have survived the end of the world things look different and we dont have to fuss about any of it anymore.

maybe now, we can relax and surrender,

catch the prevailing wind and sail into our hearts desires.

my main mode of transport at the moment is hobbling

sometimes with crutches and other times using the limping method

either gets me from one end of the house to the other and both are equally restrictive.

each day the pain factor lessens , the swelling reduces and the colouring of the foot changes the ouch palette of things wronged beneath the surface.

it had started as an OK  day, a meeting at Chalk and Cheese to discuss our workshop program

and then a skip across the street for a good-sized bag of dried fruits, nuts and grains from Sweet Home.

me and the little king clutching a black dolly and his lime green handbag full of cars , a tractor and a ride on mower and his Mum.

he is often quiet when we are out, looking away when people address him

nobly ignoring their advances.

they think oh, how shy , isn’t he cute  ?  and then as soon as we hit home base he is a terror byte running around loudly demonstrating and arranging our world ; he is currently into testing his power by bossing us,

and it works , at least with me.

with finger-pointing he tells me in the kitchen today to  STOP and again the finger .. STOP and again the finger .. STOP … and gesturing at the chair says  sit,

and I do because he screams when thwarted and who wants that aggravation?

after Sweet Home we went in different directions me   back to Chalk and Cheese to have a cuppa with Rosemary while Jess and Kingston went to visit Shelley.

it was on leaving the cafe that calamity struck me and I still cannot say for sure how it happened except that as I walked down the steps my left ankle did a twist and a roll and I went down to the pavement where I sat moaning and groaning .

Rosemary was a little way up the street hugging Ken and they came back wondering  what I was doing?

beside me at a table was an ambulance officer waiting for his take away coffee on route back to Bermagui base,

he stood over me in his blue uniform and dark shades telling me to take it easy and not move,

not a problem I thought  movement seemed to live in another universe.

before two minutes was up I was surrounded by coaches.

Rosemary said  it ‘s ok to make noise which was good because silence was not an option.

Ken asked would I like to go to his place for some frozen peas?

I must admit I was hungry but I declined.

Diresha  (a nurse) arrived to meet Ken and offered – probably a sprain but   if the pain persists  see a doctor and get an x-ray,

not bloody likely I thought.

Elizabeth the community nurse on her lunch break explained the treatment for sprains was  RICE   -Rest   Ice   Compression   Elevate   –  and  offered a crepe bandage from her kit bag.

ice ,what a joke I thought when we don’t have the fridge on.

At some stage the whimpers ceased and they moved me into a chair.

the coaches wandered off about their busy ness and I thanked them all for their support. I waited for Jess  with my ankle  compressed covered in  a teatowel of ice  and elevated on a chair.

If nothing they were all very diligent.

The chef brought me water , the barista the teatowel of ice and then all I had to do was explain to everyone passing what had happened and how I was.

I found arnica and started taking it.

it was all good and it hurt like hell

though what my experience of hell is I’m not sure.

I must say I am challenged to be so restricted and have had to endure a few tellings off by people that have my best interests at heart and seem to think they know best how my foot feels and what will make it better but I am not naming names and no amount of arm twisting will get me to divulge.

on the way home Jess raced into the IGA and came out with a packet of  frozen peas ( couldn’t get away from them) and home we went where Greg and John insisted on carrying me into the house .

eventually the peas defrosted and we moved onto  finely grated comfrey root  which is the el supremo healer of  all things sprained broken and damaged.

I have been hanging around ever since reading resting elevating  and watching a vampire  series.

I know Elsie will be so proud of me that at last I have succumbed to a vamp show and lets face it she  supplied us with this one.

frankly I find myself  morbidly fascinated by it even though it is probably quite dreadful.

consider it research , to understand  this attraction seemingly normal young women have with this new genre of erotic bloodsucking.

is it a myth or a dark desire of humanity to extend fangs and suck each others blood.

I will watch a few more episodes and get back to you on that one .

Once it was the era of  the cowboy hero, now it is the  do gooder vampire  so I suppose in some respects nothing has changed .

the rain teamed down

the earth opened.

thru the legs of the mother the seminal fluid of the father poured.

blessings showered and dripped into the forest

and we all filled up at the fountain of love.

I light a candle at the altar for the people of Palestine, for the people of Israel,

for the families

and I know not what to say.

I pray , I feel deeply.

I care,

as I do about earth and tree and turtle,

as I do about you.

I wish this was not so but it is

there is an  insatiable machine of war that slices and dices with human lives

that rearranges the geography of place and leaves behind a chemical DUI poisonous  nightmare to be suffered by generations to come.

if they come

if  in our fury we  don’t end it all now,

if we can not possibly stem the greed, the nationalistic pride, the my god is better than your god   ‘dick’   kind of talking

what will be left seven generations from now?

if only a family can eat their breakfast without fear striking them.

some say the renaissance of love returns to planet earth in 2012

some say we are that love and if we are,

where is it hiding in those with war in their minds  and when will they allow it to emerge, take them over and befriend it ???

the tip of the mullein bends sideways with the weight of water

the puddles hold and the roof water falls into the  tank.

the day is cool and a cardy is needed

a break in the rain comes and the sun attempts to enter but the cloud is holding firm

even so the morning lightens and all things green shine with an ecstasy we would do well to emulate.

there is great thankfulness in my heart,

I eat my breakfast without fear

and when I watch the skies, it is because I am following the flight of the eagle,

and when I hear a loud bang, it is a tree returning to the earth to decompose and enrich life,

and when I drive to town there is no one with guns, no armoured tanks, no soldiers, no hostility.

it is as far as you can get from the streets of war.

the wind gathers strength now and sets the chimes ringing.

I am sitting on the verandah gazing,

literally watching the garden grow,

literally watching life explode  into being as it is meant to do,

if only we human can get out of the way

if only we human could take up the offer to be  co- creator instead of  bully

then the world  could be a better place for all.

it is daring I will admit

when every other morning we discover fresh assaults on  the garden,

but Shelley , an osteopath who practices from her home on Verona Road offered me some berry canes .

She is a self confessed mad food grower committed to growing every sort of food plant imaginable.

She is also  farms  hundreds of goats,  cows and  assorted breeds of chooks..

How does she do it we often ask?

And those hands that love the soil so much can take on a twisted body , unravell the kinks until the breath comes easier and you feel taller straighter and lighter.

pure magic!  but I hear there is a science behind it.

even kingston has had a turn of Shelley,

his knee he cried, knee.. sore.. especially at night when we all want to dream but also any other  time .

so off he went with his mama and sure enough Shelley discovered an ankle had rolled over at some point and set things out of kelter as well as a fall that had tilted a hip in the wrong direction .

would he actually let Shelley touch him was what Jess wondered?

And that very day just minutes before the appointment Shelley got a call from Quaama school to come and pick up her son who felt sick.

I think he  wanted  a day at home was his Mums comment .

So six year old Connor who loves succulents like his mum loves food plants and has his very own succulent garden sat and held Kingstons hand thruout the manipulation.

Shelley said to me the universe was looking after Kingston because I have no doubt that I would not have been able to touch him without Connor being there.

last year  she gave us strawberry runners and they started in a garden bed, did alright  for a while and then got lost among  other stuff, were weeded , loved up a bit and then wallaby took them out.

so Jess produced  a very large purple pot which she put at the bottom of the kitchen steps, the idea being closer to the house equals safer.

what do you know, they got snipped .I draped some  fishing net around a few sticks,  they recovered and moved into production mode.

everyday watching them change from a little blush to more red.

did I spell it up talking about them that evening?  ready in another day or two I said imagining Kingston picking his first ripe  strawberry .

the next morning blinking in the grey dawn out the kitchen window I did a long deep groan as I realised the net had been breached and all leaves were missing.

I was able to rescue one berry  and  when John came into the kitchen I burst into tears.

I know I know.  what a big suke,

and while I am sure it is character building  I did want to ring the neck of that young wallaby.

yes I immediately apportioned blame

it is the teenagers,

they have no respect not that their parents are innocent but they take it to another level.

the other day I picked up raspberry, youngberry, slyvanberry, boysenberry canes  from Shelley where I noticed they grow  unfenced and predator free.

I squashed down my jealousy because it really isn’t cool and constructed a  netted garden. Jess finished it off today and we moved the berries in.

as I said it is a daring move because while they waited in pots to be planted out and I had them in a safe place, a possum took a shine to a few of them .

too many of them too many of them.

I am beginning to understand overpopulation now,

and so far my only answer is to keep planting while I have the will,

and when that fades or I retire defeated ,

I will hopefully content myself with the thought that I provided for a lot of happy and well established colonies of wallabies , possums, bush rats

and birds

hopefully…