Journaling life as a Novelist, Artist, Druid, Heathen, Mad dog mum and chicken lady, Volunteer Firey, Nature nut and Crocheter in the hills above Perth, Western Australia.
Mum is safely home from the hospital minus one gall bladder. I'm glad we stopped letting the local hospital keep faffing around and took matters into our own hands to find a different specialist. It is just another example of what Lymies learn or die: You have to be proactive in your own health and you can't meekly let someone else plot your course to health.
Drumming was fun last week. I got a little bit of video of the others.
And a couple of photos.
After that I was too busy playing!
We had a lot of fun at the annual brigades' picnic last night. I'll post some photos of that tomorrow! Yes I am so late with this Friday post that it is Sunday!
It's been a varied week. Monday I went to a Hazard Reduction burn because I couldn't stand to be left out, though am not a lot of use until I get some more red stuff back in my blood. Still, I wandered up and down and turned on the hydrant for them as needed, and fetched dinner, so was, in another way, very valuable indeed.
The fire started out in the afternoon. Andrew and sister Jen were both there, so that was nice. Actually there were heaps of us. A sign of a flourishing era for the brigade. It meant that no-one got too tired and the fire was watched and managed very well.
Andrew manned the pumps at the 1.4, but did do a little light fire control over the fence.
Jenny got a bit hot. No she wasn't really getting wet. It is an optical illusion. The tanks can get bacteria in them and are mixed up with a wetting foam at times, so we don't use the water to cool down and definitely not to drink!
Think she might need to tie her hair up a bit more. She looks a bit flammable here!
I like this pic of Andrew.
As the sun went down, the night became a confusing mix of flames and flashing lights and reflective gear.
This is what it looked like from over the fence where I was, without flash.
And with flash, suddenly the fireys managing the fire show up, like aliens appearing out of the dark.
Andrew got this amusing bit of footage of myself, Jen and Michelle trundling our way back up the road, gear flashing in the lights from the truck.
Tuesday we went to see a Gynecologist and the less said about that the better. Suffice to say, soon I won't be going on the fire-ground for a while, which sucks considering we are heading into fire season. Ah well, hopefully after that I'll be good to go, and unstoppable!
Wednesday night was drumming, and I got a bit of video of Andrew laughing and messing around with some of the other guys, doing a pattern where they had to sometimes hit the drums either side of theirs.
I was a bit tired by then, but as so often happens, the others could hardly bear to stop, so interesting things often happen after we are supposed to be all done for the night.
This week I've also been doing some leatherwork to replace a broken whistle lanyard I made many years ago for a fellow Gundog owner. It was good to bone up on the rusty skills. I learned how to cut kangaroo hide laces, using just my thumb and a knife, from a marvellous old feller called Bob Cameron. He taught me how to braid it too.
Braided and partly spliced.
I've taken the Turk's hats off the old lanyard to put on the neck of the new one so she gets some continuity of luck.
Next comes new Turks' hats to hold the ends of the splice and join neatly and prettily. Of anything, I am pretty sure making Turks' hats has gone most from my memory. The rest has come back to me as I worked, but will have to get the book out for this bit, methinks!
It's going to be hot here the next few days, and as you can see behind the next pic, our paddocks are dry already. This Phoenicia is the best I have ever seen it, though. I think they find it a bit dry here, though they are supposed to be locals, but with the extra rain this year this one has had a great season for flowering
I've begun work on the cover art for Land of Giants, though I haven't put pencil to paper yet. Still gelling my ideas. It did mean reading a few bits of the manuscript, and oh boy, am so looking forward to diving in and reading it for the first time! It's been 8 months since I began to write, and there is always an element of channeling that means you kind of write as a vessel for the Awen (divine inspiration) and don't really always notice what you are saying, so those first pages are almost as new to me as they would be to anyone else who picked it up. I like it!
Last night I went with mum to a singalong. I knew nearly every song, which is a reflection of the fact that we often have the radio tuned to the local oldie's channel, Curtin FM. I'm pretty eclectic with radio just as I am with any other sort of music, and we especially enjoy the mix of songs and the cheeriness in the mornings.
There has still been time for a bit of this too.
Summer's here! Time for playing music in the gazebo while the mozzies buzz away frustratedly outside. Jen came and played guitar with me one evening this week. We sat out there and messed around working out, "Patience," by Guns 'N' Roses, but not for the first time. Loved that band so much as a young tacker, and have great past associations with playing this song with sis, on good verandahs, with a glass of bourbon and coke close to hand. These days it is water, but it is still blissful.
We have three new chickens as of yesterday! I was tired of only getting one egg a day so decided it was time we perked up the old pensioner flock with a few youngsters. These girls are only eight weeks old so will be a while before they start laying.
It was a lot of fun to watch them begin to explore the chook dome as soon as they were released. At this age they love to run around flapping their wings, so they did a lot of that, and then they took about two seconds to find the little bits of grass poking through the wire and start pecking it, despite probably never having seen grass before. Not long after that they were turning their sweet little heads sideways to look up for possible perches, and in no time were jumping up to the perching spots in the dome. Amazing how strong their instincts are.
At bedtime, when it was nearly dark, so they were sleepy, I tried to settle them in a warm nesting box with hay in it, but they wanted up, so I lifted them one by one up to the sleeping shelf to sleep beside the big girls, and they settled down in no time, just a little way away from the grumpy old chooks. So far the old girls have been fairly horrified by them, but I haven't seen any bullying. I think getting them young like this offers them some protection because they still make baby peeping noises and perhaps chooks are wired to be nicer to peeping babies. It truly is the most charming sound.
Kitty, Cyrano, makes a cameo appearance in this too, looking bright and beautiful in the spring sunlight. :) I think you can just hear the baby chickies peeping, that and the local wild birds, and the mortally offended adult chooks in the distance complaining about the babies, and the kids screaming across the road at the school. It isn't always peaceful living here!
It's so funny when they run around madly, flapping their little baby wings at the end.
The nice guy at the local stockfeed store picked me out three somewhat different-coloured ones so I can tell them apart. One is spotty so I was calling her Spot a lot, so I decided this generation can have cliched dog names. So, we now have Spot, Rover and Fido to go with Nanny Ogg, Madame Blavatsky, Mrs Guppy and Spock. I am nothing if not eclectic in my chicken naming. :D
I'd been very tempted to get a heritage breed this time, but with being sick and all, the thought of raising day olds just now was too hard, and anyway I truly do love the outgoing personalities of the Hylines.
I got a photo of Andrew heading off to work yesterday too, with his new work ute. I am so happy for him I could cry.
He is so close to his work now, he can even join us for our dog walks before heading off. This morning he got this photo for me of the thickest bunch of trigger plants I've ever seen in one area.
Can you see all the white flowers? There are some blue Leschenaultia there too.
It was this area that was burned just last year. Trigger plants apparently like a post-burn environment. They are amazing plants. Every smallish white flower has a little stem that sticks up and away form the centre, and when an insect comes to take the nectar from the flower, the little trigger-stem pops over and daubs the insect square somewhere on the body with pollen and collects pollen left there by other plants. hey even have different contact positioning for different types of trigger plants so they don't mix up the pollen! How clever is that?
Spang! Gotcha!
If you go to the site this pic came from, you can see a little bit of film showing it happen.
I must say, I found the walk exhausting this morning though we didn't go far. I'm still post flu, and also very anemic which is an issue because I can't tolerate taking supplements, so I am limited to using a skin cream with iron in it, and eating steak as much as possible. It's a horrible feeling of being both weak and tired. Reminds me way too much of the Lyme Disease years, I can tell you. Flashback to the bad old days! Scary!
We went to drumming on Wednesday night because I was determined to get there to farewell one of the circle leaders, Simon, who is off to the Eastern States to live for a few years. We went to his house to drum at his drum circle. It was worth the effort. Such lovely people and a great place to drum. I got pretty tired so was not at my best in my drumming, but Andrew had a lot of fun with the doons.
And Glenn, Michelle and Simon were having fun too.
Altogether there were eight of us drumming, which was really good because we could play around a lot with parts.
I must admit we left earlier than the others, because I was just weary to the bone. I've missed two controlled burns this week too, dammit. Hope I'm back to normal soon! There is so much to do here around the property and with the brigade, and I still haven't started writing again either. You'd think by now I'd know all about letting my body dictate what I can do, but nope, I still fight it, in fact I think I'm worse now because I just don't want miss a single day of my new active life that I still appreciate so much!
Andrew was at the night burn this week and got this great pic of Andy. It was perfect for the banner of our brigade's facebook page.
Hopefully by the time I post again I'll be all better and able to post more interesting stuff that I've done as well!
We had a beautiful stormy day the other day. The wind was really pushing the clouds fast. Our evening walk found us admiring this amazing cloud effect. The sun was setting and picking out the top layers in reds, pinks and golds, while the lower layer was rolling by super fast and black.
A video seemed to best way to capture the way the clouds were moving with the wind. It made the wild birds get very excited, especially the Pink and Grey Galahs, who don't need much to set them off and who you can hear in the video.
Last Saturday, we had a camera guy come to the station to film us as part of the award that our 1st Lt Angus is shot-listed for. It was a bit different. Of course he wanted us to keep doing things over and over while he shot each scene from different angles, and we had to be fully geared up so that no-one would complain about our safety standards. :)
My sister Jenny is smiling and rolling up the hose here and my bro in law has his back to us and is also the supporting person to the hose guy in the pic above.
Mirline and I got to do the Light Tanker stuff together but no-one got a photo of that except Nick the camera guy. When the video comes out, we'll get a copy so hopefully I can post or link it here.
After this bit, they went out in the trucks down our famous power-line trail, and he even used a drone, so those scenes will be cool!
I love this pic I got of hubby and wife, Elton and Michelle, watching someone else being filmed.
And here's Andy and Phil up in the monitor bay. Phil is our newest member. He has a Liverpool accent just like my aunties on my da's side. It's an accent that I love.
When they headed out on the trail, there were too many people to go out in the vehicles, so Andrew and I stood back, rather thankfully, and let them go without us. A movie star, even of a limited release thing, I have no desire to be!
The award breakfast will be next month. Fingers crossed for Angus!
Drumming was fun this week. Not many people showed, so it was just me and the two circle leaders, so i got to have a go at some more complicated stuff. If you are on Facebook, you can see the videos we did here:
Some videos, posted with the usual provision that I'm a very amateur amateur. :D
I couldn't believe it, I did one recording of, "The Wanderer," outside with my old camera and only did a tiny flub once, and the memory was full about 5 seconds before the end, dammit!
So we set up again with a newer camera with more memory, this time inside because it was noisy home-from-school-time outside, and I played the song about five times and came to a messy halt every time, so I had a go at this lovely tune, written for the Anglo-Saxon Lyre by Keith Seddon, to settle myself down a bit. It's called, "For My Lost Love," and was written for his wife, Jocelyn. It has sadness in it, but joy too. I always think of their love while I play it.
After that I flubbed, "The Wanderer," a couple more times and then Cyrano Kitty decided the table was where the action was to be had, so he joined me. I thought he might help and he did a bit. I eventually got it about as well as I was going to, and you'll just have to take my word for it that I can play this tune all the way through very nicely when there isn't a camera around. A born performer I am not! :D Still, I know that folks are very interested in my lyre, so here you go:
I learned this song by watching and listening to the video of Peter Pringle playing it, and now if you like, you can go watch his version, tuned a little differently and enhanced electronically. It is more impressive than my version, that's for sure, but I do love playing it, and you'll notice I slipped Odin in there. In the 10th C, it could have been either Odin or the Christian God he was praying to, and there is some talk that the poem is older and was perhaps modified to be Christian at a later date. Odin likes it better that I put him back into it. :)
Yesterday I finished my first edit and read-through of, "Freya and the Hairy Goddess." I did it in four days because I was enjoying it too much to stop. I really do let myself go a lot when writing these Freya books and it is always fun to read them and giggle away to myself at the situations and quips I come up with.
I have notes to help me go back and fix this place and that, and more grammar and spelling checks and read-throughs to do, but the book is good, if I do say so myself. Like the first Freya book, Freya and the Golden Bear, it is Sword and Sorcery, but far from serious or dark. It is rather naughty, and quite funny. Music may not come naturally to me, but writing novels surely does!
This morning we made a big trek across town to find me a Djembe. It still smells a bit goaty from the new skin (they have to be skinned here in Oz) and the dogs were rather keen on a nibble.
"Can I eat it mama?"
It was made in Ghana and the guy who buys them, Paul, from Akwaaba, purchases them directly from the makers, so that is a good way to make sure the artisans get a fair wage. It's going to be my Christmas pressie, but I don't think I'll be able to hold off playing it till then. It will be off to drumming circle with me next week! It has an antelope and a big old tree carved on the base and I knew it was the drum for me as soon as I saw that tree!
May your coming week bring you lots of lovely music to make or listen to, and some silliness and giggling too!
Golly, that year went fast. :) Guess that's because in a few weeks I'll be fifty. Time definitely moves quicker the older you get.
Biggest news this week is that I've finished the first draft of my tenth novel, Heroic Plans. As usual, I'll put it away now for at least six weeks and come back to it freshly after that. That's my favorite bit; getting to read the book as if it was written by someone else, before I've gone over it so many times I know it to death.
I'm looking forward to doing that with Freya and the Hairy Goddess, my ninth book, but I won't begin until next week. I've got my second full weekend of Firey training starting tomorrow and I still haven't finished my pre-reading for it.
Cyrano kitty says, "Whatever, as long as you have time for smooches and much admiration of my wonderfulness."
Nobody does contented like a contented kitty!
Andrew's crew of office amigurumi, bunny, batty, puffin and Cthulu, came home this week, along with his kneeling chair, since he is home now on sabbatical for three or four months before he begins another contract.
With Andrew home all the time, every day is going to feel like the weekend! He deserves a good rest, but he does plan on fighting fires, doing a lot of amateur radio, and doing plenty in the workshop too, so will be interesting to see what comes of all that. If not a rest, then at least he won't be having to commute!
The vegie garden is going great guns. We have tiny baby burpless cucumbers on the vines, and the tomatoes have already got away from me a few times, with rather large extra side branches having to be snipped off. Keeping them going up and not too bushy helps them avoid fungal issues later, but if one of the extras avoids me long enough to put out flowers, I leave it be and just tie it up with the rest.
I know I said I wouldn't show any Christmas Amigurumi, but I had to show you this guy. I won't say what he'll be become, or who he's for, but this middle stage is rather funny!
Now that Andrew is on hols, he is going to come to drumming circle. They got some more video this week. If you have a facebook account, you can go watch. Fun!
I played my lyre for them a bit too. Scary, but not as scary as it would be in front of strangers, and good practice for me. Andyroo has bought me some better recording equipment (Intimidatingly good for a plinky-plonk amateur player like me.) so hopefully will record some more songs soon. Right now all is geared to getting through this coming weekend of Firey training. After that I'll be able to think of other things.
