Olala!
Ola is the little gosling turning the ‘wrong’ way in the picture below – ha! If you have seen previous posts, you will know that Godfrey, our godfather gander has been trying, for nearly a year now, to whip these babies into shape. Ola not only defies him, she ignores him!
See! This Ola and her sister Seli (both pseudonymed afer Mandy’s first borns).
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I thought this was a bird blog!
Well it was. It’s a blog that keeps misbehaving and deviating from its initial stance, which was cheer-upish!
So, let’s get back to the birds. The following is one of my favourite pictures of the peaceful peacocks trying to break up a fight between the pheasants.
Unfortunately their interventions didn’t work!
Jane, Anthony’s niece, took these photographs while the rest of us just watched the unexpected drama unfold. Yes, I have possibly posted these before and, no, Phoenix 2 has never come back.
‘Alas’ is rather a good word which resembles ‘aha!’
Anti-heroism and honesty
My post about Anthony coming home yesterday elicited a few encouraging comments for which I am appreciative, but also humbled, because I am not this hero I have somehow cast myself as, so I need to remedy that impression. No, I am much more the anti-hero, regardless of my good intentions. So this post is about honesty.
When Anthony comes home and wants to be the workaholic he once was, and draws attention to the things Son and I haven’t kept up with (lawns, garden, sweeping pathways, cleaning out the washhouse, washing the car), I become bitchy and resentful and say things like, “I’m doing my best. Why do you always have to find fault?” and sometimes I add a few expletives for good measure.
When Anthony comes home and can’t walk properly, I sometimes hurry him along and then (because he is heavy) thrust him into his armchair in a way that is not gentle and he says, “Why do you have to be so rough?” and I retort, “It’s the only way I can get you into the chair!” and he says, “Well, do you have to throw me?” and I snap, “Yes!” Sometimes we both then collapse into laughter so it’s okay, but sometimes we don’t.
When Anthony comes home and is in the armchair, asleep or semi-conscious, I sneak away and do other things because if he doesn’t want to watch Black Books or look at my blog or do anything except slump, I avoid him – yes I avoid him.
When Anthony comes home, I count the hours before I can take him back to the nursing lodge because he has somehow transmogrified into a job, rather than a person who I love and, even though this is difficult to admit, I love him more at a distance (both geographical and temporal). In other words, I love him the way he was and I find it difficult now to reconjure that.
He and I talk about these things which I realize probably seems strange, but he has always been my mentor, my confidante, my best friend so sometimes I tell him about how difficult he is as if he is another person, and he gives me advice.
“You will always be my hero,” I say, “but now Parkinson’s has got you.”
“I can get better,” he always says.
“No you can’t,” I say.
“But I love you,” he says.
And, just as I leave him at the nursing lodge, I say the words too – “I love you” – then I drive back home, sometimes teary, sometimes nostalgic, but always relieved, guiltily relieved to hand him over – my hero.
The picture below is of our two male golden pheasants who nearly fought to the death over a female and the one on the right, Phoenix 1, won the battle and now Phoenix 2 has been banished. I don’t know why, but it seems an appropriate picture for this post.
Walking the emus
Our three (now adult) emus – ‘the Emerys’ – are very tame, however their natural curiosity and wanderlust means that we keep them in a big yard of their own. Many blogposts ago, I described how we lost them for a few days because they wandered onto an adjacent farm. So now, when we let them out of their yard, we don’t let them out of our sight.
It’s not an unusual request for me to ask Son to take the Emerys for a walk. He does so rather reluctantly but he is much better than I am at herding them back into their yard after they have eaten all the roses.
Emu chicks
In about three weeks I will get my emu chicks. I have decided to get two and this time I am getting them newly hatched so that the imprinting thing will happen and they won’t wander off as our three adult emus like to do. Here are some photos from the internet:
Instead of calling the new ones ‘Emery’ I am going to give them different names. Any ideas?
Here are two of the Emerys we lost to that rotten fox:
And (yes I know I’ve put this picture up before), my very first Emery, also killed by that fox.
He used to love me!
Godfrey, the gander, whose other name is now ‘the Godfather’ was, to begin with, our only goose, and he adored me. He was given to us as an adolescent.
Then we got little Pearl, who Godfrey cherished so much that as soon as Pearl was out of the brooder and free-ranging, Godfrey started to bite me, hiss at me and our relationship is still at a stalemate. Here is little Pearl when she was little!
Since then, our gang of poultry has grown and I was hoping they would all roam around freely during the day in a playful way, but the Godfather has them all organized into a kind of army! They all come to me for bread and lettuce but they do it sneakily because Godfrey disapproves so violently.
Pearl is the one on the far left.
I really miss Godfrey loving me – oh well!
jmgoyder 