This Place Likes To Have Fun

 


Yesterday I made up a tea of crushed Juniper berries and Buchu leaves - a first time for me.
It tasted delicious, so I assume my body was craving something in the mixture. But more importantly, it started to work almost immediately. I've had one sore kidney since Sunday night's 'flu onset, and while not debilitating it was a bit annoying.
Juniper and Buchu are both great diuretics. Juniper helps blood flow to the kidneys - I'm thinking this is what caused the practically instant effect - and both have antiseptic properties when processed through the urinary tract. After three cups of this brew (just boiling water added to a tablespoon of berries and leaves) I'm feeling a real improvement. Buchu has other properties which were well known to this country's indigenous people; I think a digestive aid is one of them. But Juniper grows in my garden, in the shape of two sentinel bushes and a tall bouncer tree, and I feel absolutely at home with its fruits.



I've also been having run-ins with beaks over the last couple of days. First it was a Green WoodHoopoe, a little rain-bedraggled, perching just outside my window and cackling at me.

Next I found myself scolding three Scimitar Bills who were quarreling loudly in my neighbour's Kaasboom yesterday.

Right after I'd got them to quiet down, a bonded pair of African Hoopoes walked under the front gate and started drilling up the soil.

All of this Hoopoe-ing activity is quite apart from the odd behaviour of a pair of Hadeda Ibises which, for the past week, have seemed intent upon annoying and teasing Taranis and Scylla by landing heavily on the grass right in front of the dogs and yelling loudly from the Douglas Fir. All day.

Don't ask me, I'm just the Witch of this place - and sometimes, this place likes to have fun.