The African Queen

I finished 'The Horse Whisperer' the other day. I confess I choked back tears more than once in the latter stages of this book.

Lib went to a market Sunday before last, I think at Berwick. She came home with a book for me, 'The African Queen' by CS Forester, which she picked up for two three dollars. Now it's strange what can come back to you after more than 50 years but my response was immediate.

"I read that at school at Malvern Grammar as an English text, it's a great book. And I can tell you a line that is on page 84."

I flicked to page 84 and sure enough I was right. I'll cut to the line, it completed the chapter, this at the time Rose and Charlie Allnut became physically intimate.

"put her arms round Allnut's slight body and press him to her breasts while he did his will- her will- upon her."

Don't get me wrong, I'm not turning into a silly old smut. It's just that I had this flashback to my youth with amazing clarity. You can imagine how that line excited the 12 or 13 year old boys in 1964 or 65.

I look forward to reading it again but I've started another book, 'Unholy Trinity' by Denis Ryan and Peter Hoystead. This is Denis Ryan's story of his pursuit of paedophile priest Monsignor John Day while he was a detective in Mildura and how his efforts to have Day prosecuted were thwarted at every turn by the heirarchy of the Catholic Church and Victoria Police. I'm only 25 pages in but it's spine chillingly scary that such evil could exist and be protected. I bought this book through Booktopia after seeing it on the internet somewhere.

I love reading books. I can't imagine myself ever being bored or unhappy or dissatisfied with life, whatever happens, so long as I can read books. I find my mother's predicament, failing eyesight, most unpallatable. She has not been able to read books or print- unless it's abnormally large- for some time.

The weather has been fine and warm for a week and I have been busy with garden tidying and putting a coat of stain on the house. In spare time that is. I got honey of the bees for Leanne to extract, manna gum I think. Work has been pretty full on too. Bring on tomorrow, I have a 45 minute massage session booked in the afternoon with my Lisa at Belgrave Chiropractic and I can hardly wait, so good does it make me feel, during and after. Had my 7th Abatacept injection tonight. It must be doing me good, because despite being sore around the ribs and shoulders, I seem to have more mobility these last few weeks and more energy. I've surprised myself with my productivity and general higher spirits.

Flowers Today

I picked some flowers for the restaurants today as I do most Mondays and Wednesdays, as well as my foliage. The photo below shows some of them after I put them on the work bench at the farm for the ladies to pack.

Abutilons Fuscias Nasturtiums
 

I also picked elderberry flowers from a bush in a creek bed on the south side of Emerald which are not in the photo. At least it's light work and and interesting. Often I also pick rocket and borage flowers, and calendulas, but Meredith had enough at the farm to do these herself today. It always a bit of a struggle having what they want in the quantity the wholesaler wants. They've been strong on fennel flowers for a few months but they are finished now.  Most things are seasonal. Coriander and dill are finishing. Hearstease, pansies are hard to have when they want them. Often when things are flush there's no demand, I suppose because chefs access gardens themselves or there's plenty at market cheap. 

In truth I'm just glad we have our customers both wholesale florists and herb/restaurant people and that by good fortune as much as good planning, we have enough produce to  provide our income. One things for sure, industrious we are, and always trying to keep things rolling.

Tomorrow is forecast fine and warm and I'll have a look at the last couple of beehives that I look after, with a view to readying them for winter. I have a plan to put the bees in new hardened foodgrade polystyrene hive material next spring (imported from Finland), just because I have never heard of this or tried such before, and to get a couple of good queens of quiet stock, perhaps my last hurrah in beekeeping as I'm aiming to make life as simple as I can from here on and reduce my activity. The bees are not mine really, I have given them away, but I'm still helping as the new owners learn. It's a case  of necessity really, as well as desire, to slow down and have less work to do. The clock keeps ticking.

Books

I'm currently reading 'The Horse Whisperer' by Nicholas Evans and am enjoying it immensely at about half way through. I watched the movie a few years ago with Robert Redford in the lead role. My memory of it is not strong but I know I enjoyed it thoroughly, and the book, from which I assume the movie morphed, is grabbing me.

There's something very beautiful in the relationship between animals and humans, something that moves us all as a great connector between us and nature. I have never had much to do with horses but they are closely allied to man as are dogs and cats with whom I have had closer affinity.

The book I read immediately previous was 'All the Light We Cannot See' by Anthony Doerr, a long novel of over 500 pages set in WW11 France and concerning a French blind girl and a German youth, whose life stories came together towards the end, most improbably I thought, but it made for a good read that I'd recommend. To me it portrayed the stupidity of that part of history while giving a glimpse of the humanity in the circumstance.

Both these books were given to me as gifts by Lib, who consistently through our time together has provided me with reading material which has greatly improved my understanding of the world and how it works and my part in it.

UFO

About an hour ago I put two slices of fruit loaf in the toaster for supper and made a cup of coffee. I went outside to put a couple things in the deck fridge and took a little walk to empty the bladder in the garden.

As I happily peed away my eyes scanned the evening sky. A star, more yellow than the others in the north east sky seemed to be moving. I watched it closely, and it moved not in a continuous direction but back and forward and up and down, not much but perceptibly to me with my glasses on. I went in and called Gord who took a minute or two to come out. During this time the star went out, that is, its light faded and disappeared, but after I told Gord about it it came back on. He said yes he could see it moving,  and with eyes better than mine he said it was changing colour too.

We watched for a few minutes, it continued it's erratic small movements which we could discern from the tree branches close to the line of vision, and its light faded and came back or varied in its hue and configuration, if that's an appropriate word for it.

So I went and got the binos, the powerful ones that Boongus left here, and I had a good look at it before passing the binos to Gord. With the binos, and Gord concurred with all that I'm about to write when we described what we saw to each other, it looked about the size of the moon would to a naked eye. It was spherical and seemed to have many tiny lights on its surface which came on and off in different colours and in different parts of the sphere which gave the thing an overall different shade as the lights moved around and ranged through yellow, white, blue and  red.

Weird. I have no idea what it was. Could it be a satellite with a shiny surface reflecting light from all over space? But would a satellite move like that? I have never believed there are aliens from outer space visiting Earth, but this thing did look like a spaceship of sorts. I'll go with satellite, but I'm very curious now. I'm going out now before I go to bed to see if it's still there.

When I went out just now there was cloud cover and no stars visible.

Friday Update

I can report that I have had the best three days in recent memory (months) from a pain point of view. The savage unrelenting pain in my right arm stopped. I'm still stiff and sore in the shoulders and upper back and ribs but that is not too bad and i'm walking around and working fine and dandy. Let's pray that it stays that way. I do.

Those who know me understand that I'm not a big fan of the AFL. But I can't cut off from the footy. And tonight I had great entertainment as it turned out from the Richmond/Collingwood game. The first half was as much crap as you would ever hope not to see, but there was something about the wringing tussle on the scoreboard that promised some sort of a finale. And did it deliver; the second half was exciting as both sides lifted and despite the multitude of mistakes it turned out to be a great contest with the Pies getting up with the last kick to win by a point. I just had to laugh, it was great.

Maybe my abatacept injections are working. Who would know? But I am so greatly relieved of pain.
Touch wood, cross fingers, pray, I'm doing it all, begging that this respite continues.