Come for a walk.....

Me & the little Whippy Dog go for a half hour walk every morning. We thought you might like to come with us..... The first bit is up our driveway.. It's always a good place to start I suppose.. I normally let her choose which way to go at the end of the drive. She normally turns right, because that is by far the most interesting way to go.











Invariably our first stop is next door, because thats where Woofy lives, & Woofy just adores the little Whippy dog...

We carry on up the hill. This fellow always says "good morning " to us in a big gruff voice. I don't know his name, because we haven't been formally introduced yet..

This is where Rosie lives. Rosie is a very enthusiastic Red Kelpie. She wasn't home this morning, but some morning when she is, I will try to get her to sit still enough to take her photo. This is her mate, Blue, who takes a very indifferent view of little Whippy Dogs....














We carry on up the hill till we get to the old concrete bridge . From there the walk gets pretty as we follow the creek up through a newly established native tree reserve.

Then comes the Whippy Dog's favourite bit. We come out into about 5 acres of reserve. There are all manner of interesting things here for a little dog to sniff at....















Dad to check on every once in a while Horses to look at across the valley...

















Up the steep driveway that makes Dad gasp
& wheeze & say rude words....

This is a ginger cat that swore at the little dog
& swatted her nose, thus proving that ginger
cats are the same all over... Attitude.......






The top at last























This pic shows the Race Course in the fore ground with the Waihou river behind & some of the gardens with the beautiful Hauraki Gulf as a back drop..


















More of the town & the Gulf & our friend Joy's house..
















The race course & on down the hill,....
















Last straight heading for home & across the bridge...















Along to Aunty Irises place. She is nice. she gives us bones for the Whippy Dog...... Back into our street at last !



And home at last.. Are your feet sore ? Are you ready to sit down & relax over a cup of coffee? Have you got a good honest sweat up ? Yes to all 3 for me. The benefits ? A happy little dog, the knowledge that I have gotten some good exercise in & a nice clear mind ready to face whatever the day should choose to throw at me. Yes, we both enjoy our morning walk. We hope you have as well.

The rain, the Park & other things

We've had a few days rain here. Other parts of the country got a bit of a hammering what with floods & all, but we had it relatively good here. It was good steady rain that has really soaked in & is doing the vegetables a power of good. Sadly, the lawns & the weeds seem to have found new purpose as well, but hey, thats OK I guess. Give me something to do at the very least. The little dog is not, I have found, terribly enamoured of weather, having to be physically dragged out of the house on her lead if there is more than a heavy mist in the air. Once past the end of the drive, she will plod along with dogged determination, making it plain to all & sundry that she is NOT enjoying herself even though she is off the lead. As compensation, I took her up the hill to the park, where she usually gallops around sniffing all sorts of interesting smells, but noooo.. Not when its raining.. All the grass means when its raining is that you get your belly wet as well as your back. As for any potty stops ? Surely you jest sir. Damn she can save it up, but everything started working again with a vengeance yesterday morning. Today it was back to being interested again. Lots of places to stop & sniff that she had been too miserable to give attention to in the last few days. We have a small creek at the back of us, that lately has been that low that it hardly seemed to be flowing at all, with lots of green weed in it & all the detritus that uncaring folks seem to throw over their back fence rather than dispose of it properly. Its now flowing briskly on its way to the river, with the stream bed nice & clear & clean again, looking quite rejuvenated.

Sadly, the humidity is back. I don't enjoy it & it knocks Jude about rather badly. It hurts to see her struggling for air. The new cooling fan is a help, but bed times haven't been all that pretty lately. We have an appointment with our doctor on Wednesday to see if he can recommend something to clear the phlegm from her lungs, Joan from Hospice Waikato due in this afternoon, Sally the physio coming Thursday & a massage with Val on Friday. We have only just gotten back to going to Val. We used to go all the time before we went down South & it just sort of slipped by when we got back. Too much of everything else I guess.

We had a good weekend. Chris & Melanie, Jude's youngest son & his wife, came down & stayed Saturday night. It was his birthday, & they were good enough to come down & spend it with his Mum. They are being very supportive, which is wonderful. Well, I better go. precious pot plants to bring in now they have had their drink of rain, Mealybugs to spray for on a couple of them, tomato plants to tie up & cabbage tree leaves to rake up ready to mow the lawns when they dry out. Who said retirement was a life of leisure?

Covers worth Listening to

I originally hit Youtube looking for Bob Dylan singing "Just like Tom Thumb's Blues," but it's not there. I really wanted to share it with you so I went looking through the covers. I was drawn, strangely enough to the Grateful Dead's version, but they were really stoned (surprise surprise) & the camera work was, at best, erratic. So I stumbled onto Brian Ferry. Not an artist I have ever really listened to for no particular reason, just never got around to it. Imagine my surprise to find that he has covered Dylan fairly extensively. First is JTTB. An incredibly moving & , to me, extremely desolate song that brings tears to my eyes every time I hear it. Ferry does a masterful version. Enjoy....

Next on the list is Positively 4th Street. Dylan wrote this when he was going through a particularly messy break up with Joan Baez & it's a particularly bitter song. Baez retaliated with "Diamonds & Dust." A somewhat gentler & remonstrative reply. Once again, a very faithful & sensitive rendition of this song.

Speaking of faithful,(Like the segue there !) I found this by Marianne Faithful herself. I have a lot of time & admiration for her. She managed to recover from a very severe downward spin in her life & come back to be even better than she was. I just love her rich smokey, nightclub too many cigarettes voice that is somehow reminiscent of a glass of 30 year old Artillery Port sipped slowly on a warm summers evening.. Enjoy

Reflections on Serendipity

The word serendipity, so we are led to believe, is one of the hardest words in the English language to translate. It owes its origins to the old Persian name for Ceylon, Serendip, which I think is a much nicer name than Sri Lanka, Don't you ? It has come to mean over the years the art of finding something that you aren't looking for, or didn't know was lost.

Just over 12 months ago, Jude lost her engagement ring. She was very upset about this. Out of all proportion to the monetary value of it. You see, when we got married, we were on a very tight budget & couldn't afford an engagement ring, so a few years went by before we could afford one. We got this particular ring from a lady in Pukekohe. It wasn't incredibly expensive, but it was very pretty & it just felt "right." haven't you ever bought something that just felt right? So, the sentimental value far outweighed the monetary value. You can imagine then how distressed Jude was to have lost it. Not that we didn't search diligently for it you understand. In fact, we turned the house upside down looking for it. I even resorted to taking all the u bends out & checking them, but to no avail. We have both made half hearted searches both on line & in shops for a replacement, but nothing seemed right, so we went without, but I don't think Jude ever stopped feeling bad about losing it.

So, here we were yesterday afternoon, sitting in the lounge, sheltering from the heat & thinking up excuses as to why we weren't doing anything when Colleen breezes in. Colleen is Jude's caregiver. She is also a long standing dear personal friend & the most infuriatingly kind hearted & optimistic sweetheart you could wish to meet. So in she comes looking brighter & cheerier than normal." Have you guys lost a ring?" says she. "Why yes we have ," says us, ( really just me saying it with Jude nodding her head vigorously) so she opens her hand & there is Jude's ring!

Turns out that some time ago, Jude lent Colleen her jar of ring cleaner & Colleen had only gotten around to using it yesterday. On giving it the customary shake, she heard it rattle. Investigation showed Jude's ring nestling safe & sound therein. So everybody's happy. Colleen is happy because she has made a friend happy. Jude is happy because she has her treasured ring back & I'm happy because she is happy.

Now if somebody could find the thermostat & knock back the temperature & the humidity.......

Not much change

It's still bloody hot. Well actually, more humid than hot, & I don't like humid. Jude is firmly ensconced in front of the tellie watching tennis. Me , I spend a lot of time watching paint dry, or grass grow. Not a big fan of tennis really, but it delays installing the new point & click games I have been given, thus keeping her occupied for a lot longer. I took her to the doctors yesterday. It seems she has been having dizzy spells since before Xmas. She didn't want to worry me ! Therefore she didn't tell me. So here was I fretting my heart out because I thought she was going downhill fast. Its a hardy annual argument/discussion that we have from time to time. i can't help her if she doesn't tell me what is wrong. The doctor seems to think that it might be due to electrolytic imbalances in her blood, so we have had blood tests done & should find out Tuesday or so.

As you know, I have been gardening lately. I keep telling myself that its good for the soul. I might even believe it soon. My little vegie garden has got useable parsley already & the cos lettuces are very close to being able to clip the odd leaf for a salad as well. I spent about half an hour outside, putting up a runner wire for the grapevine, running a hoe through my vegie garden to get rid of the Oxalis, (A never ending job) & having a look in the shade house to see what is in there in pots that I can transplant into the gardens. There is quite a bit actually. That I guess will be the next task. Its really quite pleasant out there now that the grape vine has grown enough to provide pleasant summer shade. All I need to do is empty some of the pots to improve access. Its actually quite pleasant out there with a little dog dutifully trailing behind & one of the Ginger Ninja's in attendance, (Fattums of course) strictly in an administrative role of course.

It aint half hot mum......

Damn but its hot here. I have actually refilled the spa pool & kept the temperature down to about blood warmth level, just to cool off. Jude has been doing it very hard. She has actually resorted to using her BIPAP machine during the day, but its awkward. Very difficult to either read or watch telly while wearing it. On Attilla's suggestion, I went looking for a dehumidifier, but with no joy. I did however find just purely by chance at the Red Shed, A thing called an evaporative cooler. Basically, you put ice & cold water in the top & cool air gets blown out the bottom. It helps immensely, for which I am very grateful as she was finding it very hard to cope..

We have had Chris & Melanie staying with us for a few days. Its been an absolute delight. Mel is one of these folk who just have to be doing something all the time. It's been wonderful. The washing has been done, hung out, brought in & folded, the kitchen gets miraculously tidied. All those hundred & one jobs that you don't realise how much you share until one of you is too ill to play their part. Christopher came down to help me tidy up the garden. Its been that hot, that we have just dashed out in the early evening to get about an hours worth done. Its been enough though. The gardens are now cleared to the point where I can see what I'm doing. I'm not sure what I'm going to plant in them though, but ground cover is going to be fairly high on my list, I don't like weeding.

But, they have gone home now sadly, so its back to the grind again. I guess I better go. Vegetables to water, Sherman to put away, washing to bring in, tea to cook, sweat to drip. God, I lead a busy life..

Oh, P.S.

We got a pleasant surprise when we came back from Auckland at Xmas.. A sort of a late Christmas present I guess you could say. This was in bloom. pretty isn't it ? And, like all cacti, ephemeral. It only lasted a day or two, but absolutely stunning while it did.. Enjoy..


Oh, & a dear friend sent me this one suggesting I should modify Sherman accordingly... Cute Cwnda, cute...

Grow dammit...

I've been procrastinating over my vege garden, but have finally got my act together. Bout a week or so ago, I hauled & heaved a trailor load of weeds out of it. Its not a very big garden as you will see, so you can imagine how overgrown it was. Last week I zapped all the regrowth weeds with me old mate, a glycophosphate weedkiller. Today I really bit the bullet. out came the trusty rake to level it all out & aerate it a bit, then opened one of my compost bins & spread 3 good wheelbarrow loads of good, rich black compost. Then off to the garden center.

I made it quite clear to Jude that all we were buying this trip was vegies. She is a bugger for buying stuff to put in the main garden, putting it down somewhere & when I find it, its past redemption. Having given a lot of thought to what i wanted to plant, we set forth. With Jude in her wheelchair,(Stops her wandering off looking at stuff) & one small dog in tow we sallied forth amid the bewildering array of plants various & sundry. This is what we ended up with...













As you can see, its not a big garden, but then there is onlyme to feed out of it. The beans on the rack are self sown from last year & the rhubarb just grows regardless of how I ill treat it. Other than that, I,ve got the makings of a good salad I hope. Celery, Silverbeet, (Swiss Chard before you ask Barbara!) Cos lettuce, Tomatoes, Garlic Chives, Parsley, Sage & a first for me, Globe Artichokes. Now it just has to grow.

Of course, I had to have the managing Director to supervise each plant into its hole. Whispas really is a bright spot for both of us with her funny little ways. While I was hanging out washing the other day, she was very carefully picking Hips off Jude's miniature border roses & eating them.. no hope..... Oh yes! we have found that she is rather partial to a dry white wine if its suitably chilled to. She will drink beer, but only under protest if nothing else is available. Even Tigs is easing up on her campaign of terror & so she should. Whispas came to her aid big time when Mac , the German Short haired Pointer from next door was chasing her. Sent him home with a big flea in his ear she did.

Happy New Year

Well, another damn year done gone. We stayed up & saw it in though. Not a bad effort for a couple of old codgers like ourselves. We toasted it in the traditional way with a very good quality single malt whisky, ( Laphroaigh) Jude had a wee taste & put the main lot through her PEG. Even our little drunkard Dachshund had a tot. I must admit she has expensive tastes though. I keep a bottle of the cheap stuff on hand for things like a tot in the coffee, or a whisky & milk if I fancy it, you get the picture, but she's not interested in that.. Oh no! nothing but the good stuff for our Whispas.

I haven't made any New Years resolutions. I never do if it comes to it. The only thing I would like to do is lose a bit of weight & I'm doing all I'm prepared to in that area already. I think I have enough happening in my life without eating food I don't enjoy & starving myself. Thats my story & I'm sticking to it anyway. I dont know how to do any better concerning my main goal in life, namely caring for Jude, so its pointless speculating in that area anyway.

So Happy New Year to you all. Thank you for your support & your care. It really is appreciated. If you have made any resolutions, how about adding another to the list. That of setting yourself realistic, achievable goals & sticking with them. I have learned that its the little day to day accomplishments that give the most satisfaction in life. So go for it.