Awake!!

Awake, for morning in the bowl of night
Has thrown the stone that sets the stars to flight
Rubaiyat of Omar Khayam

The last two mornings I have been walking when the sun came up. I see a lot of sunrises, generally from inside the house, but at present we are in the transitional time of year, just before daylight savings ends, when sunrise doesn’t happen till around 7am and in less than a month it will suddenly jump back to being 6am, and this little brown duck is likely to still be tucked up in her bed then! I hope!

Currently, it is quite light just before sunrise, and then the sun hurls itself over the horizon and taa daa! Daybreak! I am generally walking along the road and look across the paddock where Lucerne has just been cut (mm, the smell of new mown hay), across the river and the trees beside it and over to the hills and here comes the sun!

Yesterday was bird day. Ducks in the creek I cross over; native hens; free range chooks and a number of roosters in one of the paddocks I pass; a hawk hovering low, looking at some poor small creature in the grass; a blue crane (heaps around here); a small colony of what I still call plovers, but are really masked lapwings; and some water bird, hidden in the willows, who goes ‘boink!’. Of course, the usual suspects were out as well, crows (actually forest ravens, native to Tasmania), starlings, blackbirds and sparrows. I didn’t see any sulphur crested cockatoos, black cockatoos, our local kookaburras or lorikeets – nor did I see the resident blue wren (willie wagtail!).

I love living in the country. I happily put up with the lack of pavements and even the fact our roads have no shoulder, just to be able to smell the hay (and occasional roadkill!), and to watch the sun rise.

I am also enjoying possessing an iPod. I walk faster while listening to music and although my walk is taking the same time each day, I actually go further (hell, yesterday I even RAN – for about 200 metres – but it didn’t kill me and I didn’t stop, just kept on walking after undertaking this dangerous activity). I’m looking forward to walking in new places while we’re away.

In knitting news, the neck inserts on Bella are occurring much faster than I imagined (it also helps that I am actually knitting them, instead of hoping that it would happen by osmosis or something!). I am likely (touches wood) all things being well (crosses fingers) to finish her before we leave (pats rabbits foot, invokes saints and knitting goddess and throws self to ground realising she has just put the kiss of death on ever finishing Bella).

I am narrowing down the knitting which must accompany us on holiday and trying to decide whether I should sneak in a pattern book, given that we are calling into Bendi and I may be ultra inspired to cast on something during the trip (Yes, I am bringing my Knitpicks with me so I will have needles – why do you ask?)

Off to referee the fight of the century, tidy up, put out the washing, wash up, clean out the car and put stuff away. Decluttering often happens as a side effect of this haphazard housekeeping. Cheers!