11-7-04

This week is a week of some significance to us.  The property is up for auction this coming Saturday.  Tomorrow, I go to look at a rental property that seems good for Alice and me, but perhaps Brian will not like it.  It overlooks the Hopkins River, its backyard leans on to a lovely park, and it is a pretty two-storey place.

It is no place for animals other than Mowgli.  So perhaps I should keep looking.  I will know tomorrow night.  Alice loves it already.

 

This may be my last week of full employment, too.  Next week, I have an interview for my job, at 4:30 on Tuesday, so please pray for me and mine, if you will. 

 

Our ducklings have all died, but more hatched out, although the hunter, Mowgli, not knowing that it would be against my wishes, killed two of the nine.  I have given away Ash, our rabbit, and if the gentleman who expressed an interest in Porgy and Bess for $500 for the pair does not mean his offer, which I will find out on the weekend, then they will probably go to market.

 

I must needs advertise the German Shepherds soon, and have received Anna's blessing (Anna was their previous owner).  It would be a rare rental place indeed that would accept three dogs, two of who are extremely large and occasionally vociferous.

 

Anna maintains that I should sell them.  I protested that they should be given away, as I was given them, but she told me, "No, they are good dogs."  Brian agrees.  He says that I have put in too much work on them, but they are good dogs and very loving, and I cannot say that it was all my doing.

 

That they obey silent hand commands given the little amount of time that I spend with them is more their intelligence and willingness to be obedient servants (I think as Kipling put it) than to any great mastery or understanding of animals that I have.

 

Brian says that even $50 each would be good, and on thinking on it, I am inclined to agree.  Who of us will look after something of this World that costs more than we would, normally, something that is free?

 

I have sold only a few of my books.  Darryl and Trudi came yesterday to look through my cardboard covered library and eventually paid me $120 for a few garbage bags full.

 

I think it would be a good idea if I sold them on the day of the auction, providing the weather is good.

 

They were kind enough to winnow through and all of my Grass Roots and Earth Garden magazines and books have been put to oneside by them.  How sweet is that?

 

Also on Saturday is the Koroit Agricultural Show.  I have been asked by Ken Smith, who hosts regular Country and Western shows, as well as a local community radio station show, and will be hosting the Koroit Show itself, to please come and do story-telling, so I will have to brush up on my jokes and stories.

 

I have hosted this Show myself on a couple of occasions, and wondered who they would get for it this year.  Since the breakup of his marriage, Ken has moved into his deceased parents' property which is on the other side of Koroit to us.  So now he, too, is a local.

 

I sometimes wonder why I shoot myself in the foot on a daily basis.  I really need to be packing, sorting and discarding.  Instead, I am volunteering to boost my own ego and engage an audience in a trivial waste of time.  Ah, me!

 

Smells

 

I love the smell of gum leaves burning

the rich incense assails my nostrils happily

and it invigorates and yet relaxes me

 

Home! 

 

How sweet the Spring air - the subtlest of perfumes

my lungs fill with gentle clouds of scent

as though I was born to live on this

 

Paradise!

 

And then the rose, in all her glory

whose Heaven-fragrance like fine music

lifts me from this Earth-bound world

 

Spirit free!

 

Ahh!  The scent of grapefruit

Sun-ripened apricots

Strawberries in perfect season

delight, tease, inhale

 

Ahh!  Life!