Start by doing what's necessary, then what's possible, and suddenly you are doing the impossible (Francis of Assisi)

The F of A quote is my March 2004 quote. If that makes no sense to you you'll need to read this blog more regularly!

I don't like the quote much - it doesn't make a whole lotta sense to me. As if you can 'suddenly' go from the possible to the impossible! What's that about Frank?

It's accompanied by a caveman cartoon showing the evolution of a wheel from a bolder to a car 'tyre'. Huh? That's only possible in the Flintstones fer crying out loud.  

Living on Red Phoenix Farm has its moments and many of them revolve around animals. Last week we sold off last season's lambs, continued to learn about our new cat - Rocky, and moved the horses apart after Max kicked a couple of fences to bits. Oh what joy!

Rocky? But I thought the cat's name was Seven! Sadly Seven couldn't deal with being among dogs - in particular Dookie. The SPCA staff had assured us that she was dog friendly. Ar - no! The weird thing was Seven decided that attack was far preferable to defence (poor Dookie just wanted to make friends) - no backward steps! As SWMBO observed - Seven rolled up her sleeves and went for it.

So we took Seven back to the SPCA and picked up Rocky (having tested out his dog friendliness carefully). So far so okay. He's no Waffles but then again - no cat is. The good is that he is friendly, the bad is that he's learnt from somewhere that it's okay to use a sink (or bath) as a toilet, and the ugly? Well he's not named after Rocky Balboa for nothing!

As for the fencing...well that was something of a mission too but SWMBO and I pulled the broken rails off on Saturday and rebuilt them on Sunday.

Sounds easy huh? How to play the flute - blow in one end and move your fingers up and down on the outside bit. Easy peasy.

Love and peace - Wozza

Ketchup, pretty name for a girl (Jerry Seinfeld)

Sadly Waffles has not returned home. It's been over two weeks since we last saw him. We have no clue what has happened to him but clearly something bad has. 

We're searched Red Phoenix farm and all the roads around us, contacted all the neighbours to check if they've had any locked buildings, reported his disappearance to the SPCA and nothing.

Being somewhat resigned to the inevitable, SWMBO and I decided to rescue another cat with the open plan idea that if the Waf returns we'll have two cats from the Waipukurau SPCA to look after and so... please welcome Seven to the whanau.

Seven is very like the cat we had before Wafi - a smokey grey and white female - which we called Soda.

Why Seven? Simple - watch the following clip from Seinfeld.



In the same episode Soda emerges as George's second favourite name so given the similarity in the cats' colours - Seven seemed like a perfect choice. 

Watch out for Ketchup (or Mug) next time!

You find yourself just standing there (Neal Morse)

It was a busy old week just past. 

It had it all really: joy/sadness, lack of excitement/excitement, new/old, hot/cold, craziness/normality, visits/visiting, and all sorts of other yin/yangishness.

See if you can match the above to the following:

• Ross and Lynda and the troops arrived for a look around Red Phoenix Farm.
• Adam sent us a picture of snow at Ashleigh's place.
• We shot over to New Plymouth to move Brain (sic), a.k.a. the minister of defence, into his new house.
• I snatched a few precious minutes to zap into Vinyl Countdown on the way out of NP to buy Blackfield IV and a Beatles poster for my classroom.
• SWMBO and I had to administer to a fly blown sheep and I had to bury a lamb that died of some mysterious bug.
• The first day of the new school year happened on Friday.
• SWMBO and I had to wrap up warm in New Plymouth during Brain's move.
• We quickly stopped in to see Jacky/MaBelle's mum on the way out of NP.
• We quickly met Jade in Palmerston North on our way home - she's got a new job in the Mall which takes her closer to JB HiFi to pick up my orders (last one was Big Big Train - great proggy rock stuff).
• Otane was sweltering on our return on Thursday.
• Samantha and Jesse sent us a fantastic thank you letter. Yes - letter. Awesome guys!

Just a regular old week upon reflection!

Sadly (that gives it away) I have to report that we also lost Waffles, our perfect little cat, during the week. 

He dropped off a present on Tuesday morning (a perfectly formed tiny little mouse at the back door) and then vanished. He's not returned for food or cuddles since, which is unheard of from Waffles.

We've searched everywhere, rung all the neighbours, looked around the roadsides, made sure he's not locked into any outbuildings, contacted the authorities - all to no avail so far. We haven't given up but it's a case of expect the worst/hope for the best at this stage.

Love and peace - Wozza

You better watch out there may be dogs about (Pink Floyd)

I wrote in the previous post that we recently welcomed Coronation Street back into our lives and that theme has continued with the return of Dookie from Fanfa's care in Wellington. She's off to the city by the bay in a few weeks time and Jade did the mission of mercy trip to bring the Dookster back to the farm.

The menagerie is back to full strength. Time for a round up of the whole crew.

Bazie and Dookie

Waffles

Zen

 Max

 Meg

and the sheep 

x11

( plus the 2 rams who are cooling their heals in a different paddock as we await the lambs)

Speaking of expectant mothers...I think she's carrying a few.

Rest assured I will post pictures of the newbie lambs when they arrive (and survive - unfortunately I've had to bury a couple already).

Love and peace - Wozza

Take only what you need and be on your way (Pendragon)

A return to Wafi tales for this post.

You will remember that we left our young hero exploring the inner workings of the clothes dryer just a few short posts ago.

Wafi has since learnt all about the soft furry little field mice that have been unearthed in the paddocks thanks to the short grass (no growth and the munchings of sheep and horses have finally got on top of things) and the cold weather.

Some of the mice have opted for warmer climes. They have tried holiday locations like the three bay shed or Habibi Stables. This is a foolish choice as SWMBO has set lethal bait stations in Habibi so that her saddlery remains untouched by rodents and I've set mousetraps in the three bay.

So they've reluctantly returned to the paddocks where Wafi does the nightly rounds. The daytime shift? Don't be silly - that's the time for sleeping inside the back door hallway where he can keep an eye on comings and goings from the house. A 'going' means that he then tags along.

I'm not kidding. Do we need to move the sheep? Wafi tags along. How about set fire to big bonfires of tree branches and old hay? Wafi's there too. Vet is here to operate on the horse's teeth? Wafi supervises from close quarters. He is more like a puppy dog than a cat.

Wafi doesn't dismember the mouse - more like he plays with it until the little thing gets tired of living. There are never any puncture marks on the little presents Wafi leaves on the back step for us to find in the mornings. 

The reason I'm dribbling on about Wafi and small furry objects is because of this morning's incident.

After breakfast my routine is to get rugged up to go and let Bazil off his leash and then feed him.

I watched this morning's final of Euro 2012 (congratulations Spain - justified winners) and after Iker Casillas lifted the trophy I went outside to do the above chore.

It was raining slightly so I donned a rain jacket and then I went to put my gumboots on. 

I was thinking about a miraculous ball that Iniesta had threaded through the Italian defence with my brain only semi clued into what I was doing vis-a-vis the gumboots. I put the left gumboot on and glanced at my right gumboot, still thinking about Iniesta's talented through ball. A fleeting thought that a large leaf was in the gumboot was abruptly interrupted as my foot nestled onto something round and furry.

My foot shot out as my brain cleared and I gazed at Wafi's present sitting in the bottom of my gumboot - a very dead soft furry field mouse.
Love and peace - Wozza

I've said it once and I'll say it again, we've got some pretty soily company (Macca)

I mentioned in a whanau email that one of our number has made the cover of the Australian Woman's Weekly. It's a message worth repeating right!

Jeanette Thomas (a.k.a Jeanette Harnish, a.k.a Jynette) is first and foremost a whanau member but she is also a media darling and she's a star! Actually she always has been and she certainly deserves all the success and media exposure that comes her way. Nu Zilders know her from the TV consumer watchdog programme Target and now she has taken over a role on TV One's Good Morning show - http://www.stuff.co.nz/entertainment/tv/5978687/New-Good-Morning-hosts-announced

I bought the Aussie Women's Weekly (Jynette's in great company - the only other times I've bought it is if a Beatle has been on the cover) and very proudly read the story of her rise to fame and glory. Of course, it only showed one side of her. It missed the sparkly fun, cheeky wit and personality of the real thing but there you go. Media PR can do that to you. It also glossed over the Macleans College portion of her story - not that I was looking for a mention or anything yunnerstand.

Although, if I was still teaching media studies at that great school I would have a nifty example of how the media feeds upon itself. I could even invite Jynny along to discuss it!

Latest Waffle news:

He continues to act more as a puppy dog following us all over the property and he is very inquisitive as you can see. He especially enjoys helping me in the garden and loves it when I dig a hole to plant Aggys - provides him with endless fun falling into the hole and chasing bits of dirt around (which brings us neatly back to the title).

Bazil, of course, remains totally unimpressed.

The five applicants for alpha male at our place.

Love and peace - Wozza

Oh you are such a pretty one (Leonard Cohen)

A couple of housekeeping matters to take care of in this post as I respond to some of your questions.

1. What does SWMBO mean? And for that matter LOML? I refer to Jacky (the person I celebrated 28 years of marriage with recently) in a variety of ways. She crops up in these posts from time to time as 'She Who Must Be Obeyed' (SWMBO), and/or 'Light Of My Life' (LOML). It's simple when you know right?

2. Where on earth are you both? We now live on a 12 acre lifestyle block of land near a tiny little place called Otane (has a general store, a cafe, a few houses, a primary school,  a pub, a memorial to those who died in the First and Second World Wars and a great garden centre called Tree Guys). This is about 40 mins southwest of Napier on New Zealand's east coast of the North Island. We are also close to a slightly larger town called Waipawa (which somehow appears on the map below for some bizarre reason).

3. So how is it being back then? Well it's definitely different. The trees are all starting to change colour around us and that's a real treat again. The food on the supermarket shelves is now recognisable and the idea of having alcohol available in the foodmarket is just surreal. I'm struggling with watching Arsenal play at 1.45 in the morning and having little spare time to write blogs, read, or practice the guitar is also annoying. But balancing that are all the green hills, autumn weathers, blue skies with clouds, and other familiar things I've grown up with.

4. Samantha read my last posting and said - yeah good but what about Waffles??

Waffles (a.k.a. Wafi, Mr Waffles, and sometimes even Waffle) is our new cat.

Jacky wanted to wait until I got back to Nu Zild before going 'cat shopping' as she called it. I think it was about three days before we (Jade and Samantha tagged along as well) duly went to the SPCA in Waipukarau (a town a little further south from Waipawa - I hope you're keeping up!). They had about 100 cats from tiny kittens to full grown cats.

I'm a firm believer in cats choosing you (rather than the other way around) and a very sweet ginger cat immediately made a bee line for me and Jade. It helped a lot that he was not a young kitten so he was toilet trained and he thinks dogs are great fun.

I've named him Waffles (or Wafi for short after the Wafi Mall in Dubai) and he's turned into a very smoochy cat. He follows me around the farm all day and is pretty fearless, he took a swipe at Jacky's horse when the horse wanted to see what the ball of fluff at his feet was doing.

Waffles joins a growing menagerie. We currently have SWMBO's horses - Zen and two horses that are kindly being lent to her - Meg (for Jade to ride apparently) and Max (from whanau member Margie in Hastings); Samantha's dogs - Bazil and Dookie (although he is currently in Wellington for a few months with Jesse and Sam); and 13 sheep.



Dookie, Jade, Bazil and Fanfa



Jade, Zen, Mabelle and Max



Love and peace - Wozza