31st December 2021
The last day of the year 2021.
Wow.
What an amazing, crazy, disjointed, surprising, beautiful, challenging, joyful,
adventure filled year.
I’ve been back in
Kenya almost a month.
Spent the first 3
weeks in our town home of Maralal settling in and getting to know our new beautiful
kittens, Puzzle and Cloud.
Puzzle is a
beautiful little calico female who is the most amazing mouser, even at around only
4 or 5 months old!!
Cloud, her slightly
older ‘brother’ is a lover boy who wants to cuddle on the closest lap.
He has also proven able to catch mice but in
a more relaxed now and then way…hahaha.
Both
kittens were found really young and lost on separate occasions in parking lots
in Nairobi by my son and his now fiancée (the biggest news of the year!!).
They decided that I really needed cats to control
the rodent explosion in our town home so they brought them up in November and
got them settled in with the dogs before I arrived in December.
Best decision ever.
I’m definitely learning to listen to my kids,
both young adults.
It is their time in
the world now!!!
Anyway, I came to the village on the 22
nd Dec in
time to enjoy Christmas here with family and friends.
It has been a lovely almost 10 days and now I’m
on the edge of a New Year!!
My Christmas
tree is still up.
It is a fun eclectic
creation this year.
Every year is new
and different when it comes to the type and shape of our x-mas trees.
Only the ornaments remain the same, with a
few new ones added every year.
A tree of
memories.
It will come down tomorrow on
the first day of the New Year, 2022.
This last month of 2021 has been a wild month, literally.
I’ve seen some really cool birds and wildlife
in the last few weeks, in my gardens, on my various trips and taking walks
along the river.
Two bird highlights
were brown parrots in my town garden and a beautiful tiny owl in a tree here in
my desert home.
The most fun wildlife
was a beautiful male Greater Kudu with his amazing curled horns standing on the
road as I was driving to Maralal and a huge warthog a bit further along.
I didn’t manage to capture these well on my
camera as they ran into the bush too fast, but they are etched in my
memory.
On that same trip, I stopped and
watched some rock hyraxes sunning happily up on a cliff.
Cute little things.
They sat long enough to do a photo shoot…haha.
There has been some rain in Ngurunit village area finally.
Some.
Not a lot but enough to fill up the river higher up the mountain and
make things a bit green.
I prayed for a
green Christmas and we got one.
Very hot
most days so a dip in the pools yesterday was lovely.
The
monkeys let us know in no uncertain terms that we were invading their place!
Ha.
Today having a lazy day before staying up late tonight to greet in the New
Year under the stars.
We’ll build a campfire
and leap over it into 2022 at midnight.
A fun tradition we started a long time ago.
Making more memories as we head into the
future.
What hopes and dreams will work
themselves out into our lives in the coming months remains to be seen.
Flowing with the river of time.
Grateful for each new day and the experiences
it brings.
Peace and Joy to all of you
in the New Year!
See you in 2022.
