Monday 14 March 2011

Roses and Evening Rambles


So here I am, on  Monday afternoon, starting my long-ish leave from work a week early.

On the weekend, we fumigated the study and -tada!- Taranis stopped itching and scratching. (David - on the plantain maceration I said I'd keep you up to date with: my maceration seems to have contained too high a proportion of alcohol. The wounds on Taranis' face have healed and scabbed over nicely, but it seemed to truly hurt him to apply it. I've diluted the mixture again and am leaving it to stand for another couple of weeks, whereafter I'll guinea-pig it myself.).

That took half a day. The rest of Saturday and the whole of Sunday almost we spent replacing the burnt wiring in the car - and then trying to start the bloody engine. We gave up an hour before sunset and harnessed up the dogs, and went for a walk to the nearest petrol station for milk, bread and cigarettes.

It was a good walk - over an hour there and back, with Scylla straining in her leash and Warren walking a dancing, joyous Taranis a few steps ahead of us. The middle-aged ladies (me and the daughter of Ceto) took extra comfort along in the form of my staff, a rune-carved pole as tall as I am wound with copper wire and topped with a large fluorite crystal and enough found or gifted feathers to ensure the guardianship of the avian community always.

Had you walked along with us, through our suburb which is coiled in on itself like a nautilus shell, you might have been as shocked as I was to discover how many people leave their gates open on a Sunday evening, and share their land with dogs. These dogs would often rush through the open gates upon hearing us approach down the road, and take up a snarling position of aggression. But they mostly didn't come too close. Other dogs sense the gay abandon and take-on-all-comers attitude of the PitBull Terrier, and most retreated into their properties again. One pair which didn't got a taste of being threatened with a Shaman's staff - although I would dearly have loved to have brained the moronic humans instead.

This morning I got the go-ahead to move my leave a week forward -I'll still be celebrating Rushing Dark Water (Mabon) this time next week -and we spent a long frustrating time trying to procure the services of a mobile auto electrician. Not much fortune to be had there I'm afraid. Eventually we called a fairly-nearby service franchise, and got a tow truck to deliver the car to them. Warren has accompanied the car, so I'm left at home watching last night's devastatingly powerful thunderstorm dry up from the sky and the ground, and tending the poor roses and yucca which were rudely assaulted by the huge tow truck coming down the driveway.
I'm also contemplating how to assimilate this sudden onset of vacation. Doubtless I'll find plenty of ways to enrich my embedded-ness in the weave and weft of Life. Especially if I get to take hour-long walks with my beloveds again.

Oh - a familial Olive Thrush has just pop-hopped by the kitchen door and the pharmacy has rocked up with a delivery in record time (I don't take deliveries of anything very often, especially not pharmaceuticals, as it tends to revive some very nasty memories of when I was addicted)...the signs all look good. Now, just to get the car mobile again.

Oh, and yes again - Owsley  has left the room. Bear, beloved Shaman technician to the Grateful Dead and celebrated by Steely Dan, was killed in a car crash yesterday.Go well, my brother.

Pic: Some of the roses on my land

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