The Big Flight

The cats are still pretty jumpy from weeks of being dive bombed by irate swallow parents. I managed to get a great shot of the babies a week ago by holding the camera over my head and snapping in their general direction. When a friend offered to get even closer we were startled by the four babies taking wing and flying out across the paddock. They each sat on a fence post while the parents flew from one to another before they all took to the sky again wheeling about in ever increasing circles. We were so worried that we'd frightened them away permanently but at 7.30pm that night and every night since the family arrive in a blast of excited chattering, the babies settling in the nest and the parents perching on the coat hooks on the opposite side of the back door. By morning they've all left for the day, only flying in under the carport every few hours or so.

From what I have been told swallows hatch two or three clutches per season and already Mr and Mrs have begun reinforcing the mud nest with dried grass, most of which is dropped around the door in amongst the piles of bird do do like some natural abstract sculpture. Perhaps I can enter it for some prestigious art award next year.

Briar's Pedicure

Briar had a pedicure this morning. Her beautician is called Mike. Soon as I put the halter on Briar went into Eyeore mode- her head drooped, her ears flipped back and her eyes filled with tears (well not quite but she looked pretty pissed off). She made a few desultory attempts to kick Mike's hand away before giving into the inevitable. Mishka loved Briar being tied up (not for any kinky reasons) and spent time darting between her legs in order to snatch little hoof shavings. Mike threw him a few larger hoof curls but Mish believes in take away (or steal away in his case) so only ate what he could snatch for himself. Of course we're all suffering the after effects of this feast tonight.

Meanwhile in cat world the cottage felines are under attack by the swallow parents whose offspring hatched over the weekend. I hear lots of bird swearing and open the back door to find Gypsy or Kit cowering near the house while swallows dive bomb them. Even this evening while Peaches crouched on the kitchen window sill an extremely irate bird kept swooping by the glass clacking some extreme obscenities. However Peachy Bum and I were both rewarded by the sight of two tiny beaks reaching up over the edge of the mud nest while the parents vomited up some goodies. Made Stargate Atlantis seem quite tame by comparison. I need to get a life...

Balls

Everything is springing away including the weeds. I have been trying to keep up with the garden but unless I spend at least an hour a day out there the weeds begin to win. This is the view in the evening from the sitting room window looking towards the Ruahine Ranges. The tidy bit of the garden...

So far I have unearthed 13 balls left by previous tenants including several sad deflated tennis balls and a rugby ball that looks as if Jonah Lomu sat on it. Mishka is terribly excited with each new discovery- probably because he was castrated as a pup.

Gathering Lilacs In The Spring

I have been enjoying lilacs for weeks now; photographing the flowers, picking bunches and bringing them inside, and gazing at them from my bedroom window.Obviously I've led a deprived life as I've never had a lilac bush in the garden before although when I lived at home my mother planted one which never flowered. She read in a magazine that if you hit the trunk with a hammer and then swore at it there would be a plethora of flowers the next season. Obviously someone was having a case of the funnies as the tree sulked even more after being beaten up by a seriously deranged senior citizen.

The garden here is bursting into life which means bursting into weeds. I am trying to do at least an hour's work each day but this isn't making much headway. Today I spent two hours weeding before planting a cutting on the burgundy Iceberg rose amongst the lavender. I also planted eight different coloured alyssum plants so I can begin making pressed flower cards again.

Gardening is as mystic as I get and whenever I see a new flower a verse from Dorothy Frances Blomfield Gurney's poem comes to mind:

The kiss of the sun for pardon,
The song of the birds for mirth,--
One is nearer God's heart in a garden
Than anywhere else on earth.

Two Swallows Don't Make The Spring

When I first moved in here last March there was a disused swallows nest situated above the back door. The day after moving "someone" removed it (not me) but for the past couple of weeks Mr and Mrs Swallow have been busy rebuilding it. It is an amazing edifice constructed of straw, dirt and bird spit. Now it has been lined with feathers and the female is sitting on some eggs while the husband keeps watch sitting on a coat hook on the other side of the door, carefully building up a pile of guano on the ground underneath.

The cats spend hours perched on the window sill above the kitchen sink watching all the goings on. Safer there than outside where they're dive bombed by the irate parents to be. Warmer too since we are having yet another cold snap with snow falling down on the foothills.

I have had several visitors this week. Rose helped out Monday, Tuesday we went down to Waipukurau and in the afternoon friends brought me out some much needed firewood. After art at Otane on Wednesday Gine visited for a couple of hours with little Moses. We sat chatting in front of the fire, trying to control Mishka who was certain he'd be very helpful cleaning Moses, especially while he had his nappy changed. Mish is a dog on a mission where pooh is concerned.

Peanut

There are some chooks that stick in your mind like- well like chicken poo. Peanut hatched on 2nd November 1994. Her mother "Squidgey" was an Old English Game Fowl, a tiny but feisty hen who was addicted to walnuts. One day she went missing and a few weeks later arrived outside the hen house with three tiny bumblebee chicks. Peanut took on her mother's colouring but was twice her size plus she inherited her grandmother Becky's tufted feather head dress. Over time Peanut has had a couple of clutches and lived to see her grand, great grand and even great great grand chicks. Not only that but she has moved six times as I had to move home.

Lately Peanut has begun to look a bit shabby but still was bolshie enough to beat up a young rooster who got a bit amorous a couple of weeks ago. A few days ago when a cold snap swept in her wings began to look a bit droopy and yesterday morning she died only one month out from her 15th birthday. I buried her in the flower garden and planted a lavender dentata cutting on her grave. Another superannuitant chicken has gone to the big chook house in the sky.

A Woman Who Stares At Goats

Friday was a beautiful yellow day. After going to portraiture class in Otane in the morning I came home to lunch and discovered that Tikokino School had rerun two of my advertisements I'd placed the previous week in their newsletter. I had vowed that this would be my last attempt to advertise for my missing goats as I had exhausted every avenue I could think of.

In the middle of the afternoon I found a phone message from someone at Gwavas Station saying that four goats were living on a cliff. I spoke to a manager who said that there were two white and two fawn goats and they'd been living there for two to three months. He had been going to shoot them but one of his friends said he'd read somewhere that someone was looking for their pets but couldn't remember where he'd seen it. Of course then my ad was rerun in the newsletter and the rest is history.

Saturday morning it was pouring with rain. Rose and her husband Matthew arrived in their four wheel drive and we made our way down State Highway 50 to Gwavas Station. We were met by a very nice guy on a motorbike with a fox terrier riding pillion. We followed him across the road and into a bumpy paddock then through a gate into another bumpy paddock. By this stage we were overlooking a steep gorse covered cliff to the east. We waited while Casey drove his motorbike down a hill in order to scare the goats out of cover and up into view.

I saw four fat hairy goats break out from the trees and start to run vertically up the cliff face. I tried to look at them through some small binoculars but couldn't make out any collars although one of the fawn goats seemed to resemble Xena. Rose and I were sure it was too much of a coincidence that four long haired goats should be there a few months after mine went missing but I was at a loss as to why two had changed colour.

Casey came back and asked where I used to live. I told him and we worked out that Xena must have gradually brought the herd along the river, under the bridge (or even across the highway) before finding shelter on the cliff. She was probably only 10 kms from where I now live so I try to fool myself she was trying to find me. He said he would ring the neighbour whose farm abutted Gwavas and ask him to help muster them down and into the sheep yards so I could collect them. I thanked him and thanked him again, unable to believe that after nine months I'd finally found them again. Note to self: make offering to the guardian angel of goats who looked after them all these months.