Celebrating my 46th birthday and our 19th wedding anniversary

Ultra-healthy, best-value, made-with-love muesli

Ingredients

• 1 x 10 litre bucket
• 1 x gardening trowel
• 1 x 750 gram packet Home Brand rolled oats
• 1 x 500 gram packet of Home Brand processed bran (looks like laying pellets)
• 1 x 500 gram packet of Home Brand unprocessed bran (looks like chook food)
• 1 x 500 gram packet of Home Brand oat bran
• 1 x 1kg packet of Home Brand sultanas
• ! x 250 gram packet of Home Brand shredded coconut
• 1 x 500 gram packet of Home Brand apricots (Made in Australia apricots preferable, but Made in Turkey is a cheaper, suitable substitute), chopped.
• 5 x 1 litre air-tight containers (preferably glass)

Method

1. Tip all ingredients in the bucket and stir with trowel.
2. Tip into the air-tight containers.

Serves the army of a small nation! 

Our very own forest bath

Tony and I decided to road test the forest bathing theory.  We chose the bike trail down Rifle Range Road in Atherton, not far from the CBD.  It was a postcard-perfect Tablelands day and there was a gentle breeze, ideal to stave off litres of sweat that would otherwise flow during the 3.4 km hike to the summit.

     I recalled a saying, advice for people planning to enjoy the natural environment:  Take nothing, but photos and memories and leave nothing but footprints.

Setting off

When forest bathing it is important to use the five senses.  Listen to the calls of the crows or the clicking pedals of high-speed mountain bikes barrelling towards you.  Smell the sweet and pungent lantana and African sedge grass.  Gaze in wonder at the forest around you and the convenient path cut by human hands up the side of the hill.  But don't touch the flora or fauna and don't taste any fruits or berries in case they are poisonous.

     We made a few sounds fellow forest bathers were able to take in.

     "Kibbim, don't pull out the black boy stalks!'

     "Sutchy, you are not stoning any creature!"

     'Savannnah, if you watched where you were walking, you wouldn't trip over!"

     'Seffwen, you'll have to carry your own water bottle!"

    And a hell of a lot of "Just be quiet and keep walking!"

At the top.  Still smiling.  No doubt the kids were looking forward to my home-made fruit loaf with unprocessed, processed and oat brans and of course, my made-with-love muesli (recipe next post).  Funny, they mustn't have burnt up much energy because they didn't eat much.

We passed up the opportunity for a cooling dip on the way down.  Things had got a bit steamy since we were facing west; in the lee of wind and the afternoon sun.

Almost at the bottom.  Tony growled Kibby for repeatedly throwing sticks (black boy stalks) at Seffwen who is squatting in the background, monitoring the growling.  She likes to ensure Tony deals appropriately with Kibbim's bad behaviour.  Too often, Tony lets his little gapu (sucker fish) get away with murder.

Tony gave Kibbim a damn good growling this time.

Almost back at the carpark, except Kibbim who is keeping a safe distance from Tony.

Back at the start and into the bargain, everyone was accounted for, although a little dazed.  Kibbim is still smarting from his growling!

     It was a energetic and fun day and I'd certainly recommend forest bathing to all and sundry.  Firstly the kids were so worn out following 2.5 hours of walking, there was no fighting or backchatting for the rest of the day. Secondly the kids didn't eat that much and there was enough of my fruit loaf left over for afternoon tea.  Thirdly it provided in excess of the recommended 60 minutes plus of physical activity per day for children and finally and most importantly, it enabled us to spend quality family time together, aside from Kibby throwing sticks at Seffy and Tony clipping Kibby across the ear and me nagging the kids to stop complaining.

     We took nothing, but photos and memories and all we left were footprints and urine.  And of course, the echoes of our parental reprimands.

Cassettes, iPods, Cliff Richard and Nicki Minaj

I discovered the musical wonder of the Top 40 and Countdown when I went to boarding school in the early eighties.  I reckoned (and still do) Cliff Richard’s Wired For Sound was the best. I’d been raised on a musical diet of my mother’s tastes - Glen Campbell, Maureen McGovern, Helen Reddy and The Carpenters - which I played over and over. 

    Chart music was so refreshing because it was refreshed each week with new songs.  So it’s easy to understand how I developed a curious fascination with the ever-changing musical scene. There was Rick Sprnigfield’s, Jessie’s Girl, Eddie Rabbit’s, I Love A Rainy Night and Kim Carnes’, Bette Davis Eyes.   

     In fact, some of the soppy ones were almost unbearable like Kenny Rogers’, Lady, Air Supply’s, The One That You Love, Leo Sayer’s, More Than I Can Say (please cut your hair) and Lionel Ritchie and Diana Ross crooning Endless Love. But the main thing was they weren't on the charts for too long.  There was always something else around the Top 40 corner.

     I didn’t necessarily like the music, but what interested me most was the inane-ness of the lyrics.  Few of the lyrics made sense to me and I knew it wasn’t because I was young and naïve.  They were simply absolute nonsense created by artists who were having nothing more than a jolly good time. Think of Whip It by Devo.

     Whip it. Now whip it good. I said whip it.  As an adult I am now wondering if the lyrics had some arcane and meaningful connection to those funny bowl hats and a cult.

     Here’s another one.  Justcan’tgetenough,justcan’tgetenough,justcan’tgetenough by Depeche Mode.  Those lyrics made lucrative songwriting look easy.

    Never in the eighties did I hear an expletive in the songs.  Remember, there was no internet so if we wanted the lyrics we grabbed a pen and paper and played the cassette, pressed Stop, scribbled furiously, rewound the cassette and played, pressed Stop and wrote and so on.  Perhaps the naughtiest song was The J Geils Band and the reference to pornography in Centrefold. 

     I am now thinking, I may have misinterpreted the words considering the audio quality of cassettes was so poor and there may have been some swearing.

     My interest in chart music waned in the early nineties and picked up again in the mid-noughties when TK started buying So Fresh CDs.  I assumed lyrics would be equally as brainless as those of my youth and I was in a state of blissful denial about the chart music TK and then Sutchy then Seffy started listening to.  I considered it such awful music I simply tuned out. 

     About five years ago I became aware how frequently swearing features in music, not to mention the denigration of women in many rap numbers.  I found I needed to relax on the swearing front mainly because if I wanted to vet the music I’d first have to work out how to operate one of those small electronic musical devices the size of a AAA battery and then I’d have to listen to the tuneless twaddle.  I never managed it.

     Recently I was reminded of why it’s a good thing to monitor what your children are listening to and I mean 10 to 15 year olds, assuming younger children are disinterested in the chart scene.

     During the school holidays we were eating lunch.  The kids munched on sandwiches and Tony and I, a bean salad.  I was lauding the merits of beans and pulses to the kids.       Savannah and Seffy started singing, Beans and pulses, I’m over-eating, beans and pulses, I’m over-eating.

     I was filled with pride at their musical and poetic genius.  They could teach those song writers of the early 80s a thing or two.

     ‘Girls,’ I said, ‘that is so clever.  Did you just make that up?’

     They shook their heads.  

     ‘It’s a Nicky Minaj song,’ said one of them.

Nicki Minaj

     For the uninitiated, Nicky Minaj of Super Bass fame is none other than a singer who appears to have been artificially created with straw-like hair, artificially inflated lips and breasts and a Barbie doll vacuousness.  In fact, she is a bride of Frankenstein in the film clip of Turn Me On. And yeah, yeah, I understand she is very talented and/or very marketable.  Whatever, she is not the sort of role model I want for my daughter.

     So when the girls said they were inspired by a Nicky Minaj song, my stomach turned.

     ‘What were the real lyrics?’

     ‘Pills and potions, we’re over-dosing.’

     I suspected a reference to drugs, but even after I checked out the lyrics on the internet (it's quick and easy these days) I wasn’t sure because there was such a mish-mash of pills and potions, over-dosing, ain’t, nigga, luv and yo! 

     I appreciate it is a chart sensation, but it’s just not good material for 11 and 12 year old girls even if most of it goes straight over their heads. 

     If only my daughter would listen to simple, brainless, upbeat music like Xanadu by Olivia Newton-John or Our Lips Are Sealed by The Go Gos?  Or Wired For Sound?

   It then occurred to me that maybe the stuff I listened to and wrote off as inane might have had sinister, debaucherous, drug-fuelled, seditious and mysoginist undertones that went straight over my head.  I always thought Cliff Richard was too squeaky clean to be real.  I need to youtube Wired For Sound and get to the bottom of this.   

MH17 and an old, eerie building

In 1981 when I started high school at Stuartholme in Brisbane, there was a two-storey building called Joigny.  It was separated from the main building by a short walk across the bitumen where we girls sat cross-legged in groups to eat our morning tea and lunch.  The fibro structure was burning hot in summer and freezing in winter.  Mrs Spiller, who always wore court shoes, taught typing upstairs and Mrs Moodie, who often wore what looked like a tea-cosy as a hat, taught art. There were store rooms that were forever storing things and always locked up.

     The floors were wooden and every footstep of every brown Bata school shoe and Mrs Spiller's court shoes echoed eerily in the wide open spaces.  The walls and ceilings were marked with scratches and smudges and paint was peeling.  The windows were jammed or panels of glass missing. It was a lonely place and enough to make me dread typing and art.  There were rumours about it being haunted which wasn’t surprising.  The main building, which was converted to a military hospital during World War Two, was definitely haunted.

     I was twelve and thought Joigny was the strangest name for an unwelcoming building.

     Jawani was also an island off Lae, PNG where my family lived. Joigny.  Jawani. Homophomes, but antonyms.  Where Joigny was a sad, hollow place, Jawani was a warm, tropical island where coconut palms leaned languidly over snow white sand that sloped beneath the warm equatorial sea to a reef of aquamarines and magentas and emeralds that took my breath away when I was snorkelling.  There were nautilus and cowrie shells, red and black sea snakes, lion fish, purple starfish and thousands of iridescent fish darting this way and that.  

     I was a rebellious teenager who constantly questioned the existence of God which frustrated the nuns at Stuarthome.  But the reef off Jawani was the nearest I came to proof there might actually be a god.

     When I heard about the MH17 disaster, I planned to not follow the news, out of respect to the victims and their families.  They would never know me or my intentions, but I imagined they would be horrified to think people became fascinated, in a macabre way by the tragedy and read and re-read the minute-by-minute reporting.

     However, my home page is the ABC News and information about the plane is hard to avoid, though I tried.  I didn’t need to read any of the headlines except the small blue ones on the far right.  However on day one of reporting a word in the main article jumped out at me, perhaps because of its foreign nature.  Joigny.  A word I hadn’t seen, heard or mentally spoken for thirty one years, in an ABC article.

     ‘… Sacred Heart, returning home from attending a retreat in Joigny in France.’

     Joigny.  Ja-wa-ni.  The face in the image attached to the article was unsettlingly familiar, unsettling because the article was about the MH17 tragedy and images associated with tragedies are always of victims.  It looked like an older version of the Sister Tiernan who was a nun at the convent at Stuartholme, a Sacred Heart school, in the early eighties.

     I am certain it is the same Sister Tiernan.  I pictured her back then when I guessed she was in her early thirties (though it must have been early forties), smooth-skinned and rosy cheeked, slim with thick, wavy hair, cut simply and short as most nuns kept their tresses.  She always wore white-collared shirts (with a cardigan in winter) and plaid skirts with sensible pumps. 

     It’s strange what one remembers after three decades.  I don’t remember if she taught classes or perhaps it was only religion. Whatever her role, she had a heavy presence, maybe as a boarding supervisor because we girls often chatted with her. 

     Sister Tiernan is the one who explained my confusion about the bible.  I refused to accept the stories in the bible because they could not have happened such as Jesus walking on water, restoring sight to the blind and humankind descending from Adam and Eve.  We were in the hall.  I can picture it.

     ‘Cathy,’ she said softly, ‘they are stories to illustrate a point.  They don’t need to have happened as facts.  They help people understand Jesus’ word.’

     I wondered why the hell someone couldn’t have told me that before.  It made all the sense in the world.

     I do remember Sister Tiernan had the same handwriting as the other nuns such as Sisters Toohey (the principal), Lentaigne (the music teacher), Carroll (the science teacher) and Banon (English, I think).  It was similar to italics, angular, sloped to the right.  It was deliberate, strong, the sort of handwriting I wanted and practised, but could never achieve.  I remember questioning one of the nuns at Stuartholme and was told it was the handwriting of order of Sacred Heart, or something to that effect. 

     But what I remember most vividly about Sister Tiernan was her soft voice, gentle caring smile and serene nature.  It was the sort of quality found in people who are compassionate and tolerant of all, including rebellious teenage girls who struggled to reconcile religious theory with the science taught by Sister Carroll.

     A beautiful soul. A terrible loss.  

     Sister Tiernan was returning from a retreat at Joigny.  So after 31 years I learned Joigny was a place, but where?  A quick Google search revealed it was the French birthplace of Madeleine Sophie Barat who was called to God from an early age.  To help people heal following the turmoil of the French revolution, she established the Society of the Sacred Heart in 1800 and shared God’s love through education and spirituality.

     An eerie, unwelcoming building named Joigny?  In joigny, I guess we students were supposed to find a sort of contentment during our typing and art classes.  

Forest bathing

The other day my friend Pam sent me a link to an article about forest bathing.

     She knew it would set loose a bee in my bonnet. I get frustrated by unfounded claims that good health can be achieved through super foods (goji berries, acai, quinoa), the occult, ancient wisdom, protein shakes as substitutes for meals or any exercise machine promoted on informercials.  I thought I'd seen and read it all.  Forest bathing topped the lot.

     And before I knew it I had shot off a comment. 

I am happy to consider all practices that foster mental and physical health, but for most people suffering from the effects of stress ... taking a full of half day walk in the forest would be a luxury considering they need to drive for a while to get there.  Walking through your local park for the same time would likely produce the same results ... Anyone who can walk a half or full day has a good level of fitness, committment to health and probably makes a whole lot of good choices ... But I guess articles that promote common sense through easily achievable and cheap means are too pedestrian these days and people want to hear about ancient forest wisdom, advice from first peoples and magic properties that can solve all our first world woes!

My favourite comment by Kalea:

I was relieved to know that going nude is not required.

Pam text later she was taking the kids for a bush bath. 

Then she text:  How's the serenity?

My reply text:

   But does it make for a more harmonious home with less carrying on between kids?

Pam's reply:

The downside of bush bathing.  With a less harmonious bush and more carrying on ....

     I am guessing that bottle behind the patient was put to good use after the Dettol bath!

The whale vomit and the enchanted forest

There is no known connection between a sperm whale and a dream home in the forest, but for Peter Cook there is a very close relationship.

     In the mid-eighties, Peter Cook, a jeweller was living in Hervey Bay and dreaming about a home in the mountains.  One day he took his horses for a run on Fraser Island and while walking on the beach he encountered a massive, brown, stinky lump. Most people would have written it off as a massive, brown, stinky lump, but Pete immediately recognised the mass as ambergris, colloquially known as ‘whale vomit.’ 
     Paul Jennings wrote about ambergris in the delightfully smelly children's short story, Greensleeves.  But for something authoritative Christopher Kent refers to ambergris as ‘floating gold’ in Floating Gold: A Natural (and Unnatural) History or Ambergris.     
     Ambergris is the substance formed in a sperm whale's gut to coat indigestible matter like the cartilage from squid eaten, enabling it to be smoothly passed.  It is used to make perfumes such as Chanel No. 5 which makes it valuable.  Once expelled by the whale, the ambergris, coloured from dark brown to grey, depending on its age, bobs around on the ocean until it washes up on a beach to be found by a very lucky person.

     The 64 kilogram buoyant nugget netted Pete a cool $90,000 and the following year, he realised his dream to buy his home in the mountains near Warwick in south-east Queensland.  In the tranquil forest he was free to work on jewellery and other intricately carved treasures.

     A few years later Pete met Becky Northey who was keen to learn about jewellery making.  Pete and Becky became partners and not long after Pete was doodling on paper and creating patterns.  He had a light bulb moment for shaping a tree into a chair.

Pete's first chair design done in 1996, the same time as the design above.

     Tree shaping is not new.  It has been practised for hundreds of years by the Khasi people of north-east India through the creation of tree root bridges.  It’s a refreshingly simple process; the roots of giant banyan trees are guided across creeks and rivers on bamboo poles to join other banyan tree roots and form walkways for the people.

     Pete’s version of tree shaping was to guide the thin and flexible branches of the native wild plum tree along wire into shapes such as the chair, figures and Celtic-like patterns.  

    Pete and Becky have also created coffee tables.  The results are slow, several years, but spectacular and unique.

"I'll have a long black with a side of milk, thanks."

Becky and the dancing couple.

Pete and the scary man.

       A uniquely crafted tree needs a unique name.  Pete’s nickname has always been is ‘Pook’ as an abbreviation of P Cook so Pooktre became the perfect name for a perfectly crafted tree.

     Pooktre Forest has an enchanting quality with its figures and shapes and it was easy to spend hours walking between the trees, mesmerised by the circular shapes and twig-thin branches that curl in and around each other in a never-ending way.  And a little bewitching since it seemed the human-sized figures were moving, just slightly, each time I turned my back.

     Large Pooktres aren't the only focus for Pete and Becky.  They have developed tree shaping on a smaller and faster scale by crafting jewellery and most recently bonsai-style trees, perfect for inner city balconies or courtyards.

Becky wearing a Pooktre choker

     Pooktre designs debuted at the 2005 World Expo in Japan and Pete and Becky have since been known as world leaders in the craft of tree shaping. They have been interviewed by gardening and design publications such as inhabit and they have even featured in Ripley’s Believe It Or Not.  They’ve got some exciting plans including a trip to Portugal in August with their two children.  Pete and Becky said they’d consider a move to Portugal which would mean they were closer to much of the tree shaping activity in Europe.

     Life in Portugal would be a long way from Pooktre Forest, but their home will always be waiting for them and it will always have that whacky, but special connection to a giant piece of a sperm whale waste.

Confession

I’ve been burdened by my shameful secret for months now and must confess.  First a bit of background to mitigate my sin.

     Over the years I’ve heard many white people comment that black people look the same.

     ‘The dark-skinned people all look so similar,’ I’ve been told.  ‘Don’t you think so?’

     'Not really.' 

      Having spent most of my life in PNG or on TI I assumed these people hadn’t spent much time around black people.  To be honest I’ve never given the matter much thought, except to have a giggle.  And another giggle when black people, like my husband have said white people look the same.

     Well, I’ve been in Cairns for five months now and my confession is:  White people look the same and there are so many of them.   

     In the grand scheme of things it doesn’t matter if I confuse the white woman on checkout 3 at Coles with the white woman in the ANZ bank or the white man in the bakery with the white man in the post office at Trinity Beach.  I am not going to see them very often and I don’t need to remember them.

     The problem is at school.  In a class there are lots of pale skinned, fair-haired and blue-eyed cherubs, about 25 of them.  

     I thank the Lord for the average of two children with syrup coloured skin, dark hair and black-eyes.  I don’t forget the faces and names of these two darlings, but the creamy-skinned sweethearts, oh, it’s so hard.  Years ago a teacher on TI referred to the few white kids in her class as ‘the blondies.’       Well, I confuse the blondies with even the mousy haired little ones and the dark-haired white kids.

     ‘Yes, Indigo, where does the plant get its food from?’

     ‘I’m not Indigo.  I’m Taylor.’

     ‘I’m Indigo.’ A long, thin, pale arm shoots into the air.

     It’s not confined to the classroom.  In the playground I can confuse a child in year one with a child in year five.  

     You can imagine my relief when I was asked to do some teaching at a high school because I knew it was impossible to be confuse one young adult with another.  By the mid-teens, genes seem to have emerged enough so someone will have a big nose or a facial mole or buck teeth or artificially coloured hair. Surely.

     On my first day I met Tahlia in a year 12 Communication English class in the morning session.  In the other year 12 Communication English class in the afternoon session I was surprised to see Tahlia back. Surely if she loved English so much she would be taking the academic English class.

     I related to the class the task their regular teacher had set for them and moved around to assist students.  I glanced at Tahlia a few times.  It was her.  She had the same sub-bleached hair pulled into a short pony tail, the same hazel eyes and the same button nose.

     ‘Hi Tahlia,’ I said.  ‘Good to see you back.’

     Tahlia looked at me with the disdain only a teenager can achieve, a perfect roll of her hazel eyes and subtle sneer.  ‘I’m not Tahlia.  I’m Tahnee.’ 

     ‘Sorry.   Weren’t you in my class this morning?’

     She huffed and started writing.  ‘This morning I had drama and a double maths.’ 

     I moved on to the next student thinking, I bet she was tricking the relief teacher, but no student would take two Communication English classes.

     The whacky names parents come up with these days only confuses me more because they are so similar.

     Taylor-Tyler-Tileah-Tahlea-Tahlia-Talitha-Taneah-Tahnee.

     And Barton-Bardon-Brandon-Brendon-Brent-Brenton-Braydon.

     What ever happened to Susan and Megan and Damian and Peter.

     I gave up.  In high school they are either 'excuse me' or 'darling.'  In primary they are ‘darling,’ ‘honey’ or ‘sweetheart.’  Then everyone is happy, most of all me.       

     Especially now I have that off my chest. 

No-so-sleepy Warwick

Just as I suspected, there was a lot more to Warwick than the sleepy country town it pretended to be.

     On the Monday Elia announced we were going for a walk.  I was expecting an amble through the dry scrub of a national park.  It was much better.  We, including young Helena took a stroll up the gentle slope of Mount Mitchell.  Five kilometres and two hours later we summited.  Aaah, what an achievement, bush walking in cool, crisp mountain air.  I wanted to keep going.  In fact I could do it every day, if only it was an occupation. 

     As we feasted on egg sandwiches and brewed coffee in the soft winter sunshine, I was puzzled by what appeared to be grazing land at the top of the next great mountain.  How would cattle get all the way up there?

     I asked Elia.  It was Spicers Peak.

     I’d seen the signs on the drive to the base of Mt Mithcell.  I wouldn’t normally have noticed, but there was something just not right about the wording that made my brain ring an editing alarm bell.    

Spicers Peak
The highest non-alpine lodge in Australia

     Shouldn’t it be the highest alpine lodge in Australia if only this was an alpine environment? Or something that it can claim to be?  The highest luxury resort in Australia?

     Why not something a bit more eye-catching? The highest non-tropical resort in Australia?  The highest non-backpacker accommodation in Australia?

     I had a giggle, but I assumed I was missing something.  Mind you, when I checked out Spicers Peak, I decided I’d Iove to visit, whatever the place isn’t.  Without the kids, of course.  I’d even leave my ducks behind.

Ciehan and TK who is about to put his finger up my nose to annoy me.

     On Tuesday I had a wee break from Warwick when Maura and I drove to Toowoomba to pick up TKido.  He'd bussed out the day before and stayed with Ciehan and Ashlea.  We had lunch together. It was really strange seeing the kids in winter clothes before they de-jacketed in the warmth of the University of Southern Queensland restaurant.

     On the Wednesday, Elia suggested a visit to the Pig and Calf.

     ‘For an ale?’ I said. ‘It’s a bit early.’

The Pig and Calf was the markets, ostensibly for livestock, but there was a pumping auction going on.  Happy buyers headed off, holding their bargains, a wine rack, CD holder and saddle.     

     A sad seller lamented into a Smartphone.

     ‘Couldn’t sell the printer, but we got $7.50 for the stereo.’

     All the while the auctioneer, a man whose face was shaded by the brim of his Akubra, let loose, a breathless stream of barely identifiable words.        

 ‘Eightdollarseightdollarsladiesandgentlemaneightdollarsdowehaveeightfiftyeightfiftyyes.

Poor dears.  They are probably smoked now.

     I went straight for the poultry, in particular the ducks.  The pubs weren’t even open, but it was the tail end of the markets and there were only three muscovies left, pressing against each other, I imagined, from fear.  Or because the cage was impossibly small.  

     I struck up a conversation with the duck seller, disclosing I had two ducks, as if I was a kindred spirit. 

     ‘What sort?’  He spoke in a monotone, much like the auctioneer.

     ‘Indian Runners.’

     ‘Hmph.  They’re all right.’

     We chatted.  His grandkids love raising the ducklings. I said I was keen to move to my father’s farm so I could have more ducks.

     ‘Really.’  He gave me a sidelong glance as if I wouldn’t know the first thing about life on a farm.

     ‘Do you mind if I take some photos to show my kids?’ I said.

     ‘Yeah, go for it.’

     As I snapped a few shots and talked to the ducks, I became aware of an unsettling conversation between the duck seller and a man behind me.

     ‘Oh, Bob,’ said the duck seller with uncharacteristic emotion, ‘that butcher in the main street of Stanthorpe’s been smoking the duck.  Delicious.  Won’t find a better smoked duck around.’

     ‘Are you talking about eating ducks?’ I said.

     ‘Love, if you’re gonna live on a farm, you’re gonna have to eat your ducks.’

     I told him I’d eat anything, but my ducks, even my legs and I thanked him politely. 

     Thursday’s outing was a real treat.  We visited an enchanted forest of Pook trees that were grown only after a magical event.       

     More in the next post about something wonderful in not-so-sleepy Warwick.