Digging in the Dirt

What is it that's so satisfying about watering tomato plants? Is it the tangy scent that arises with the addition of water? – a mood-lifting 'thank you' from the plants themselves? Or is it the promise of mega-delicious, juicy tomatoes down the track? I have no idea. It's one of those ponderables that I like to, well, ponder, on a summer's evening when I'm too knackered to do anything else.

I spent almost all of today in my garden. It's been sadly neglected during term time.

A few years ago, I realised I'd become middle-aged, when I realised how much pleasure was to be had making a garden. Sure, I'd chucked in the odd tomato or pansy in my life, but actually trying to make a garden from scratch, with limited funds, limited time and shitty soil... A whole new exciting/frustrating/infuriating/rewarding world emerged.

The best (and worst) thing about it is that it's a perpetual Work In Progress. It's NEVER FINISHED! For someone who likes to have closure of a project this is, um, tricky. And yet somehow, it works.

I love how I can pick up my yoke (or spade) and continue the Good Fight, no matter what. Like today. Holy crap, I was out there before 7am. I was digging, mattocking, manuring, mulching, transplanting, planting.... all before lots of people had managed to have their first cuppa. Admittedly, I was making up for lost time.

Then, when I got tired, I went to the Mall. And when I came back, refreshed, I got back into the garden.

I FILLED the TRASH-PAK. Many times over. I squished and compressed and squished again. The Trash-Pak is probably 95% full now. I didn't call it a day until around 5.30 this arv. That's not a bad day's work.

When I started writing this post I thought I had a reasonable amount of residual energy stored somewhere (clearly not in my nose... after clearing all the ivy/dead leaves/leaf-litter from that bit of my yard this arv, I'm still blowing stuff out of my nose that scares me. I'm convinced it's full of earwig turds.) I was wrong. There is no residual energy. I'm all done in. Now that I've sat down and relaxed a bit, I realise 'done in' doesn't even begin to cover it. I'm knackered, stuffed, absolutely buggered - and I suspect I will ache all over tomorrow. Night night!

Life with Miffy - feline dementia

After another 3.30am wake-up, courtesy of Miffy the Geriatric Cat, and yet another toileting disaster - hers, not mine! - I'm running out of humour, bicarb of soda - and incense.

Things are getting difficult - and a bit smelly. I wonder whether Miffy finds it as distressing as I do? As her poor old brain deteriorates, she becomes increasingly stuck in weird behavioural loops, and is often confused.

Like this morning. At 3.30am. Picture this:

Loud yowling wakes me (and probably half the neighbourhood) again. The kitty body-clock is seriously out of whack. I get out of bed and turn on the light. Miffy is sitting in the bathroom, waiting to go through the routine. This is how it's supposed to go:

Human turns on tap in bath. Cat jumps into bath, drinks water from tap. Cat jumps out. Human turns off tap. Life goes on.

Holes are starting to form in even this simple and well-worn routine. I turn on the tap. Miffy hauls herself up and into the bath. She sits in front of the trickle of water and looks at it.

'Um, I know there's something I'm supposed to do now...' Sometimes she remembers, sometimes she doesn't.

We go through this at least ten times a day now. At least. It used to be a once or twice thing, back in the day.

It's starting to be the same with the feeding routine, which is supposed to work like this:

I rattle the bicky jar. Miffy comes running. I put food in the bowl and she eats it. Alternatively, Miffy yowls for food. I put food in the bowl. Miffy eats it. It's a simple process, right?

Not any more. Miffy instinctively initiates or responds to the first part of the process, but can't complete it. She looks at the bickies in the bowl, then wanders off – usually back to the bathroom, where she starts the 'Turn on the tap for me' loop again.

Her brain starts things that it can't remember how to complete. So she starts them again. She does the familiar bits that she can remember. Over and over. And over. Sometimes she just yowls.

I'm not sure what the yowls mean. Frustration? Fear? Simple selfish feline demands? I don't know, and I don't think Miffy does either. Half the time, I think that whatever it was she wanted when she started yowling has flown out of her head by the time I turn on the light. We look at each other.

'Um.'

She follows me around because. Just because. If there ever was a reason, she's forgotten it, but if she follows me around, she might remember it. Confusion radiates from her at these times.

And then there's the toilet thing. The hastily-bought litter tray, which lives behind the armchair, is only a partial success. For Miffy, it's a bit of a hit-and-miss thing. If her feet are in the litter, that's evidently close enough, and she pees with gay abandon. Her bum may well be hanging over the side of the tray, but her paws are in the litter, and as far as Miffy is concerned, that is the important thing. Wee finished, she gets out of the litter tray and poops about a foot away. On the carpet. She's also forgotten that peculiarly, fastidiously feline part of the process – you know, the bit where they bury their business? She just drops a few cat nuggets onto the carpet and wanders off.

I wonder whether she's happy, or content, or whether she's struggling through an unpleasant and impenetrable soup, in which jumbled fragments of a lifetime of routines float and bobble. Her increasingly loud vocalisations are carefully articulated, but in a language I don't understand, and I'm not sure what to do. Her mental deterioration has escalated quite markedly since (a) her stroke, in July of this year, and (b) Oscar's death in October.

I think my dear old cat and I are journeying towards a horrible inevitablility that I don't like thinking about - and if I'm honest, when I bring up the 'quality of life' argument, whose life am I talking about? Mine or Miffy's? Boomerang Boy accuses me of wanting to murder his cat whenever I bring up the possibility that euthanasia might be the kindest thing. Boomerang Boy, it must be said, sleeps through the worst of Miffy's weird behaviour.

As I write this, Miffy is curled up next to me, fast asleep. After the early start this morning, I think I'll put questions of life, death and feline dementia into the too-hard basket, and join her for a little nap.

Beanz - now with meatballs

The title of this post is a quote from Dave at Bruce's Motorcycle Repairs. He calls me Miss Beanz (coz Beanz Meanz Heinz, remember?) And those meatballs he's talking about? They're not just meatballs - they're red hot Cajun meatballs.

The boys at Bruce's gave the Crow his 1000km service today - and installed a Yoshimura muffler. Here's a before & after shot:

Before, with stock muffler

After, with carbon-fibre oval Yoshi slip-on

How hot does this look? (Hint: the correct answer is 'red hot Cajun hot').

And if you think it looks hot, you ought to hear it! It's not that it's loud, as such, because it isn't - it has its baffle securely bolted in. But the note of the exhaust has changed completely. The Yoshi grabs that lovely natural V-twin double-throb by the goolies and gives it a giant hit of testosterone. The Crow's voice dropped an octave today and turned into a deep, throaty growl. My new bike is now the two-wheeled equivalent of a full-on hairy-chested alpha male.

I'm in love.

A Journey of a Thousand kilometres...

The Old Hume Cafe, Gunning

Well, it took a while - four weeks, in fact! It was a struggle, but I managed to clock up that 1000kms – just. 1007, actually.

It finally stopped raining and snowing[1] long enough for me to get out on some of the local roads yesterday – Canberra to Sutton-Gundaroo-Gunning, for a start. I stopped at the Old Hume Cafe for a Gunning Lamb Burger, which was yummo. Your lamb patty is served on a bun with lettuce, tomato, Spanish onion, AND a big whack of mint jelly and Greek yoghurt! Seriously delicious!

I headed back towards Canberra via Murrumbateman and the Nanima Road. Nothing to report, apart from a cranky bird of prey whose roadkill bunny-feast I interrupted. It rose in the air with much cranky flapping, and hovered above its lunch at a respectable distance until I had passed.

Recent rain has made a bit of a mess of the roads – potholes everywhere - some of them big enough to lose your bike in - and plenty of gravel and assorted debris washed onto the roads. I'm seeing water where I've never seen water before – I had no idea there were so many ponds and dams on local properties – and now they're all full!

So anyway, after this very pleasant ride, I'd still only managed to crank up a bit over 900kms. I strapped a box of beer to the Ventura rack and ventured out to Dahlitz Motorcycles with it. They've always looked after me out there – and it is Christmas. Oh gawd – Christmas!

[1] Yes, snowing (not exactly in Canberra, but not far off.) In December. This has been the weirdest wettest coldest summer ever, and there was snow on the Brindabellas on Monday! Imagine that - a taste of winter, with soup and flannie jammies and everything!

Meet the Crow

Last time I bought a new bike, back in April 2008, I picked it up from Dahlitz Motorcycles on the Friday and booked it in for its 1000km service – for the following Monday.

It hasn't been so easy this time. Getting the all-important 1000km service next week is essential, before Bruce's Motorcycle Repairs closes down for a well-earned Christmas holiday.

I've been wanting to write about my NEW new bike, but it's been shut in the shed for the last three weeks, and has hardly come out. Record-breaking rain in the wettest December I've ever seen in Canberra, and the presence of the Yak (my car), have turned me into (I can hardly bring myself to say it) a fairweather rider! Nooooooooooo!

In more than three weeks I've only managed to put 700kms on it (and 200 of those were today). Last week I went from home (Marked A on the map) to the Kippax shops (marked E) via Gungahlin and Watson, turning an 8km round trip into a desperate 40km one, just to warm up the tyres and blow some cobwebs out of my head!


View Larger Map

It's no wonder my mood's been somewhere between “a bit down” and “subterranean”.

But – today – the Crow got a proper airing. Here he is.

He's a 2010 SV650S (the Bomber was the 2008 model). He's called the Crow, or Crowie, because of his glossy blackness. Also because when he goes fast, I will make one of the famous crow-calls that got Graham Kennedy taken off TV back in the 70s (remember those?)

F a a a a a a a a a a r k !

Handsome beastie, isn't he?

Today we (the Crow and I) went to Yass to get fuel, and continued to Boorowa before coming home – a little over 200kms altogether. I was very tempted to keep going to Wyangala Dam, to see what it looks like at 89% of capacity (wow! In the drought it got down to about 6%!) Note to self: that might be a nice ride between Christmas and New Year...

The Crow handles better than the poor old Bomber did. Maybe the Bomber had had too many mishaps. Maybe, after 68,000kms, his steering head bearings were tired. Who knows? The Crow, though, tips neatly and effortlessly into turns, and the front end seems to hug the road better. From the very beginning with the Bomber I thought he felt a bit strange, and put it down to the change in bikes from the trusty, solid GS500F to the nimbler, more waspish SV. After the Unaugural splat back in May of this year, though, I never felt particularly safe when cornering – but I put that down to me being a chickenshit, and having lost confidence... I'm starting to think it was the bike, because there's none of that feeling on the Crow. It's a nice bike!

I see adventures ahead! And now that the school holidays are here, what am I waiting for? Wheeeeeeeeeeeeee!