Three droplets

   OUR homely, slightly cluttered kitchen has become a higgledy piggledy shambles!  Three distinct zones have emerged. The upper zone is much as usual, some Dutch still lifes, cobwebs, the rich reds and midnight blue of the Ton Shulten October calender and a 'Herbalists without Borders' calender with planting records and herbal remedies that I love too. Two little shelves above the sink with their familiars; a green glass vinegar bottle, a shimmering aventurine tumblestone of the same shade, a miniature Ganesh figure with inexplicably half a walnut at his feet,  a woodburning of Celtic hares gifted by a friend when we moved here and a champagne cork... There's a fake Victorian clock in soft reds, greens and blues, a mobile of sun ,moon and stars, spices on high shelves and fruit in baskets that I'm too short to see into.             The middle zone - table, worktops and every available surface is where a hurricane has scattered items in a miscellany of misplacement..

   I'VE been looking for photos...old grainy fading photos of long ago loves...    My boy Pedro - He was only a year or so old when I became a single parent and proved to be the best friend ever.  He was as friendly and easy as the day was long. He loved everyone, children and animals..would allow tiny ducklings to snuggle under his soft floppy ears and was always up for a journey - absolute saint (this is how memory tricks us isn't it?)...    Our first puppy as a couple was Nellie...she was a sleepy soul and wanted to be carried way beyond her vaccination date..Always at our heels, she was loving, smelly and a complete Bimbo.                    She moved house with us lots of times and didn't much like it but she always established the most comfortable and quiet place for her bed. She was an absolute gannet and especially favoured dead stuff that she could smell in the hedgerows  at a thousand paces.  We watched in horror as she consumed a rabbit that she had

                           The gardener arrived early to his work one sunny morning bearing runner beans for a favourite customer and quite unaware that within moments he would be called upon to save a life.  Rascally squirrels had managed to remove the top of a tall, enclosed peanut feeder - designed to keep them out- tipped out most of the nuts and made off with their bounty.  On arriving for his early morning peanuts, the jay, finding only a few nuts left, stuck his head into the plastic tube, wriggled and squirmed his way to the bottom and very soon found himself stuck fast, upside down and swinging helplessly in the rapidly rising heat of the day.      The ingenuity of the gardener is often called upon and this was all in a day's work but more than a little daunting. All there was to pull on were the tips of one or two tail feathers, the bird's claws were wedged forward under its throat and it was very annoyed.  A gentle tug elicited an alarmed squawk but

Chun Quoit,  West Penwith                It has been a while since I last wrote a blog.  Social media, with its immediacy and easy accessibility, seduced me away from my happy place at the keyboard, away to the world of memes and clickbait. I made some friends and lost some too...they say 93% of communication is nonverbal; 7% being verbal, 38% vocal and 55% visual...this leaves far too much margin for error in my humble opinion.  Of course I'm still addicted to the thing and spend far too much time reading stuff in which I have no particular interest or which makes me bristle with annoyance and naturally I hope that sometimes folk find my posts amusing or informative.  I'm opinionated to the point of bigotry sometimes and find myself hopping with frustration at other people's perfectly appropriate differences...over a cup of tea or a little smackerel of something..much would be be intuited  by our body language and tone of voice....and I'd have to let them ge