Storytime

Once upon a time there was a fairy. She didn't live in the meadow or the forests, in the sea or even the garden frolicking amongst the flowers. Although she did love flowers.... This fairy spent her time in a wonderful place called a library. This library was full of magic. It offered so much. Music. Games. Information. Romance. Horror. It offered aliens (and not merely green gloppy ones)  and vampires, cowboys riding the range in Montana and socialites in New York, it offered detectives and policemen, crooks and criminals, it offered love and sorrow, pain and glory. It offered spies and angels, the past, the present and the future. But most importantly it offered the chance to escape. Choose a book, any book she dared....and you will forget yourself. Most took up this challenge. They chose book after book, becoming addicted to this sense of adventure...this ability to become anyone. This thing called reading. And the more the people read, the m...

Over the past few years, we've had quite a few major celebrations at the old homestead. Two fiftieths, a couple of Christmases, one eightieth and just last weekend the biggest affair so far, an engagement party. Touch wood, all events have gone amazingly well. This, of course, has meant lots and lots, and lots and lots, of preparation beforehand. Nobody wakes up one morning and says,' oh 80 or so folks coming tonight, wonder what's in the fridge?' It requires thought, planning, preparation...and lots of damned hard work! Nothing just happens.... You plan, hope the weather is perfect (and have a Plan B if not - or if the power goes off like the 80th party). Usually there is a theme, the engagement was a picnic casual affair. We had rugs on the front lawn (begged, borrowed and stolen), we had a trestle table laid out with yummies, baskets held aeroguard as well as torches...and fairy lights helped create an atmosphere. The chef at the pizza stat...

But I'm a list and therefore goal kind of girl. So goals work for me---not goals set in concrete but so I know basically where I'm headed for the year. And of course January starts and the year spreads before us so young and we are so eager for all that could happen. Then before we know it it's half way through the month, not a thing has been achieved (apart from being too hot here at the moment to think let alone do anything)....and so I begin to think of goals. Some are so much easier to plan. The garden for instance.... I look at this bed and know that the slate I placed on the sides are okay, but I want to dig them down a bit and set them in, not just lay them as the divider between bed and lawn.  I want to put my bird house on a pole and actually set it up in a bed, not have it on the ground where it has lain for too many years (yes years). I want to revamp a few beds, to cut back, prune, remove...this is easy. Gardening goals are never diffi...

We saw Tilly horse last night---and as I was feeling a complete failure (sometimes she does what we say, sometimes she does what she wants...sigh) we talked to Bec and Tony who have Turner - an ex racehorse that they adore (what a sad life so many racehorses live!). Talking to others who have been where we are, who kept telling us to keep on, that you learn through your mistakes and some times something will just click and she'll get it. Or we'll learn the way she wants to get it....I thought back to how much we have learnt through the past year. Coming from a non-horse background, I tend to look at what we 'haven't' done, not what we have achieved. And I realise as it is that time of the year when I try and set goals, that as humans we tend to do this with everything. This is part of the backyard we have yet to tame...it's a place the kids love to play and hide in. At first all I could see was what HAD YET to be done. There is ivy and blackberrie...