THE REASON I DO NOT MAKE (MANY) PROMISES…

…is because I always honour them. If I don’t make ’em I can’t break ’em. Or something like that.

I thought that this would be a year of catching up on things at home. Boring stuff, mainly, but stuff that needed doing. The house needs cleaning. I mean cleaning beyond the regular Hoovering. Repainting, maybe. The garden! Well, that had become a jungle, and a very scruffy one, at that. Other things, too. I thought I might draft some new pattern blocks and start sewing again. And the only keyboard my fingers touch these days is this one. And various art and writing projects that I’d started and then lost my focus. And things I had agreed to do, assuming I had plenty of time.

Funny  how the things one thinks seem to rearrange their order, quite independently.. .

Suddenly, a trip to New York seemed, then was, doable. New York! What a mad, magnificent place. I was on a ‘plane to JFK ( with further bookings to England and France!) before any more dust had had time to settle. Or maybe it did settle and I just didn’t notice!

Back home in July, I thought I’d tackle the overdue art projects (only 3 of them;piece of cake, really.No great rush.)

And suddenly, I was fastening my seatbelt for landing at Vancouver!

And now the shops and lamp posts have tinsel and ho-ho-ho-ing* Santas and I’m still nowhere near that fabled land of Allcaughtup. Where the hell IS it? Not even Google Earth has co-ordinates.

But…I promised. So these things will be done.

Now, back to domestica. We share our home, our lives,  with cats. But you know that. Mostly, they are good cats, discounting Geiger’s sworn intention to shred every shoe and all upholstery, not matter what deterrents we apply. But they do use their litter trays.Oh yes. Not so the cats that wander the streets at night. There’s a tom who, almost every night, sprays the wheels of the car. And they do not have litter trays…

Some of the tamarind pods were knocked off the tree when the casuarina was felled. I picked up as many as I could see amongst dead leaves and mulch. Remarkably like dry cat turds…*

 

While my neighbour has been away I  have been watering his garden. I regard it as an extension of my garden! The other day I took the camera and was glad I had.

Not very clear, but he was rather a long way up a very tall tree and I was standing on a delicate wrought iron chair and trying to avoid a garden sprinkler. It’s my friend, the Koel. A lot of people think his call is annoying. It doesn’t bother me, but I think there is an audio clip in that link (if not that link, I’m sure google can find one!) so you can determine whether he’d  annoy you.

And the header? It’s a Cedar Bay Cherry.Yummy! Birds had already pecked at the fruit so I ate what was left and planted the seeds.

 

And now, having kept that promise (to write a blog post) I had better do further hose duty. If the Met chaps honour their promise (rain) I might be able to get on with other unfinished symphonies. Geiger is still on about the comic strip…

 

*you don’t want to know how to tell the difference!

* why does Santa say that? Doesn’t he know he could be arrested?