Drought Breaker

No concrete was damaged in the taking of this photo

It is apt that the rain to break the longest, driest drought in NZ since eighteen-something should inspire my first blog. If only such a momentous event might be called something other than a blog – a log agog in a bog...

Back to the bedroom: I need my middle-age glasses to better see, and better believe the night’s rain on my grateful garden. 

Soft drops of sweet relief smile on the toughest plants - ah! The weaker ones look more surprised than relieved, like a person caught clothed in the rain, only sadder. They may not survive. 

We remembered to water, mostly, but sadly, could not remember to rain.

The cat TT (Tiny Tiger) or Mumma, on account of her broken tail and one surviving kitten, thinks I linger too long on the garden. She leads me to the laundry with her come along now meow: Time for breakfast.


Five folk and two feline (mother and daughter) live in this house. Two folk have already left for the city: one man; one grown-up girl. One to work, the other to study. Two boys, 14 and 19, still need to be mothered out the door...


Ham, cheese, tomato and lettuce on barely brown bread
A woman called Celia haunts my head - 
Though far from dead. 

My boys will grow up expecting women to serve them if I keep slicing this tomato and stuffing this lumpy lettuce into these Glad-wrapped buns, or so Celia says. Probably right too. They are old enough to slice their own tomato. But will they...? Not if you do it for them! 

Poisonous plastics, penned pigs and trans fats fight it out with Celia up there in the old cog. So many wrongs do not seem to make even a single right, no matter how old I get - drat!  


A glass jar is knocked over in a hurry – kerplunk! Clear liquid and two quarter pears gush-glug onto the tablecloth that won’t be washed today. Blame the rain, I say. Blame the rain and praise the child - out the door goes he. 


Women's dance class tonight at the Community House. Active Aging they call it. I call it my new venture -  into the past. Once was dancer. Not so my students, most of them. They struggle some to find their feet, but they love to feel the music raining down on their bodies, soaking into the bones, reviving them with movement and memory. 

Dance is meditation in motion, I sometimes say, right or wrong, I don't really know. I teach what I feel.


It’s a wonder my body remembers how to dance after all those sit-down books and carry-around babies. Just like the sky remembers how to rain, and the garden how to drink, I suppose.


But mustn't ramble on; leave the rambling to the rain. Bloggers don't ramble, just as joggers don't run...

Seriously,
Sacha

P.S. This doesn't count as a ramble because it's a post-script. We get very technical about such matters in this blog. 

The middle of the night now, several days later. Mother cat (TT) sits on the printer, washing, as if it's the middle of the morning; as if this is not a room of my own indeed. The printer grunts because it too would rather be sleeping, but begrudgingly sucks in and slides out a sleek blank sheet of paper...

Not only did last week's rain fail to break the drought, as it turned out, but I failed to publish my first log in a bog. Why? First of all I couldn't find the charger for the camera to take a photo of my rain-relieved garden to go with the drought-breaker agog log. Then, setting up the whole log in a bog required more time and assistance than I had anticipated - just a bit - and once the charger was found, the garden had dried up and  I had to wait for the rain that didn't come, didn't I? I did. I was determined to have a photo to go with my first blog, just as I was determined not to ramble on....  

Welcome to my world...