Peace in the Garden.

All is at peace in the world.  At least in my garden.  Just in from evening of watering, weeding and picking fresh stuff to eat.  After my gardening was done, as I headed into the house, I saw the old duck just hanging out by the door.  The chickens are contained in a wire pen, but the old duck has the freedom of the yard.  He is the last one of a batch of ducks I got over 10 years ago.  We decided to just let them be ornamental fowl, along with our turkeys, as we weren’t having much luck with them reproducing.  The ducks have died of old age one by one till just this old guy is left.  The turkeys are also gone now so only the one old duck.  He likes to hang out in back near the kitchen door and old dog Seal.  They seem quite the companions.  Anyway, he looked a little bored and sad, so I decided to liven up his life a bit with some old buggy cereal I had found in the cupboard.  I had to lock up the dogs first because naughty Acacia, the puppy, likes to eat old cereal too and doesn’t give the old duck a chance!  So often a simple idea quickly gets complicated, but if one sticks with it, little joys can appear.  After getting everything situated, including filling up a dish with water to help get the dry cereal down, I threw a bunch of cereal near the duck.  Boy did he enjoy that!  A couple bites of cereal and a few swallows of water.  A couple bites of cereal and a few swallows of water.  Repeat.  Mouse came out to see what the excitement was about as she had managed to not be locked up with the other dogs.  She came to sit on my lap as I sat on the rock wall, watching with me as the duck enjoyed himself with his special meal.  The funniest thing was that I noticed that as he took water in his beak to mix with the cereal, he did this funny little beak shake and vibrated his throat in a way which reminded me exactly of my Dad when he is getting a good taste of something.  My Dad likes to move his mouth and tongue in a certain way to get a good first taste of some new food on all his taste buds which makes his chin and neck vibrate just the way the old duck was doing with the cereal and water mixture.  What an observation.  Two food connoisseurs, one humankind, one birdkind, making sure they get the most out of their dining adventures, being mirror images of one another!  Imagine that!  It was so peaceful sitting in my garden with my fellow creatures around me, the sun setting and birds singing and twittering as they start to settle for the night.  Joy deep in the soul. 

Repeating Cycles...

3 months since my last post and I could almost use the same title of Rain, Garden and Baskets.  Though this time the news about the rain would be that we have had almost no rain since November.   The situation is dire concerning availability of water in many places, especially Ngurunit.  While there over the December holidays, finding clean water was a challenge.  Since then, the situation has not improved.  Women wait hours at the open wells in the dry river bed that are getting deeper and deeper by the day as men dig down looking for enough water to give to their livestock.  Only after they are done do the women get a chance at the muddy dredges.  Reuben and I are heading to Ngurunit tomorrow and plan to take a water truck with us to help alleviate the strain a bit for the community in finding water by trucking it in from further sources.  This will only be a very temporary boost.  We are still working on getting a long-term solution in the form of more borehole water wells.  We are also waiting for the rains in March.  Praying that they come on time.  Here in Maralal, the situation isn’t much better. Our main advantage here is, that if lucky, one can get hold of a water truck every few weeks to come fill the tanks as the piped water comes only once a week for a few hours, and even that doesn’t always happen.  So, water can be available, but quite expensive. 

The garden, despite the fact of almost no rain since planting and using the bare minimum of watering to keep things alive due to expense and scarcity, has done better than I hoped for.  At least the herb and leaf lettuce garden.  It has the advantage of being in a shady place with the perfect soil for water retention.  I have been having beautiful salads here in Maralal for the first time in years, actually.  My past gardening attempts often ended in nothing edible.  But this time, my green thumb seems to be working better!  Sunday, I finished drying and packing several jars of some lovely herbs: mint, sage, marjoram and thyme.  I still have a lot of fresh herbs growing well in the garden too, mixed in with lots of lovely baby leaf lettuce.  Yum.  Though in terms of the garden, not all is success.  The main garden area has suffered greatly from lack of water and infestations of bugs.  I might get some potatoes eventually, as well as onions and garlic.  But not much else of what I planted, including several other types of lettuce, cauliflower and beets.  I’ll be lucky to salvage any of that.  Oh well.  I will take what I can get and enjoy at least a bit of fresh produce from my own efforts. 

Now to the baskets.  The November 2017 order got delivered in good time.  As well as another December 2017 order we received from The Basket Room. Now with a good start to 2018, we already have another order from Swahili-Imports that the weavers are working on.  On my trip to Ngurunit tomorrow, I will be taking more beads for finishing the baskets by mid-March.  I also have 3 other leads on new markets I have gotten since January.  I’m so excited to see if I can secure any of these.  Another big improvement on the basket venture is our new access database that was put together by my brilliant new friend, Esther, who I met in December.  She came to Ngurunit with me over the holiday, attached to PEAR as an intern, to help with the basket inventory system and getting the group computer up and running.  I am amazed at her computer proficiency.  I am continually amazed at the millennial generation’s way of having technology be more of an extension of themselves, rather than something that is simply used, the way I do it.  So many of them have some sort of innate intuition of how to get technology to do the things they want them to do.  Quickly and easily.  Esther would show me the database and start to hit buttons so fast and move things around in ways that I would never have thought of.  My head would spin.  Despite that, I have started to figure things out and have a better handle on basket stock than I have for a long time.  Though I am happy Esther is only a phone call away when I hit any glitches!!      

So, the beginning of 2018 seems much like the end of 2017.  Life goes on.  Struggles and joys.  Successes and failures.  The repeating cycles of day to day, month to month.  I do have some exciting ideas and plans for 2018.  I will see how they unfold.  Maybe my next post will have something amazing and new to report!!  Happy New Year!! (better late than never 😊 !!).