Housesitting

Wow! Things are really moving along!  I can’t believe its 2015 already and we are nearly half way through the month!  Well, OK that’s a slight exaggeration, but it certainly feels that way because I feel I have done so much in the past weeks since I last made an entry.

In the last blog, I had just dropped my friends at the airport and was returning to their place to housesit their cat, Darcy.  What a character! Louise had shown me all the things I needed to know to take care of things including Darcy’s lead to take him for a walk.  Yes, this cat loves to go on a walk.  Well I must admit I got a bit lazy to put the lead on and we would just go out without it which I know when Lou read this she will have a fit.  But its ok Lou, I was right behind him and he didn’t go anywhere near the road.  He even started to come when I called him home.  I had a special sound that I made and when he came running I’d give him lots of rubs on his tummy and under his chin.  It’s the same with a child …. Positive reinforcement.  It works every time.

My main objective when I was housesitting was to go through all my old diaries and letters I had kept from as far back as 1972, the first year after leaving school.  I spread them all out over the dining room table then put them in chronological order.  This was a little more difficult because the letters weren’t all dated.  Who keep letters?  My mum kept all the ones I had written to her when I was in Europe and from my time travelling around Asia. (The letters I kept were from old boyfriends.)  Now they were interesting reading!  My very first boyfriend I met when I was working on a station north of Perth.  I was their house girl.  My sister had worked on this station a few years before me so the family had asked it I too would like to work there.  Of course I said yes.  I loved being on farms and farm life.  During my stay they had a shearing team visit.  I hadn’t seen sheep being shorn before so during my time off I’d go and check it out….. and the guys of course!  Well you can guess what came of that. Anyway here were the letters he wrote with an old Perth phone number.  I decided to ring it and see what happened.  I was pleasantly surprised to hear the voice of his old girlfriend who told me she had kept in touch with John and if I sent an email she would forward it to him.  Well long story cut short so as not to bore you with the details, I made contact and we will catch up soon.

One of the other pile of letters I had kept were from a family I met and had stayed with in Zambia in 1990.  There’s a long story around that too, but you will have to read the book if you want to know the details.  I had received letters from Mrs C her husband and the two elder girls.  I wondered if they might be on Facebook?  Sure enough, I found people with their names but not in Zambia.  I clicked on one that I thought might be Mrs C.  The picture sure looked like Margaret and her husband. I was sure it was them, even though these people were in the States. Maybe they had immigrated.  I sent a chat message and waited.  Two days later, there had not been a reply and I was sure it was the family I knew so I sent a friend request.  The next day I receive an acceptance and when I was on line I saw Margaret was on line too.  It was so exciting being reunited after all these years and such a joy to have found them after 24 yrs. We has so much to catch up on.

I have also caught up with more of my Perth friends.  I visited my Bible college dean who was one of the lecturers who had a huge influence in my life and with whom I went to Malaysia on my first missionary adventure.  I visited one of the churches where many of my old church friends still go.  It was lovely to see familiar faces, they were all surprised to see me especially with short hair as I had had long hair for over forty years.

I caught up with a friend from Thailand who had married the son of my good friend Bev.  Bev had been my coordinator, raising my funds and distributing my newsletters which were all in hard copy those days.  Greg, her son had come up to Bangkok while I was there and had taught English in one of the colleges.  He had met his wife to be at our local church and they eventually married. Together with their first born, they then returned to Perth.  I hadn’t visited the family for over nine years which was before Greg’s death.  I was surprised to see how the children had grown.  The youngest was only a baby when I had last seen him.

Update on the unit: One of my native plants died! Oohhh! I returned to the nursery where I had bought them to buy one to replace it and thing this one will do much better anyway.  I also couldn’t resist one more banksia ground cover. I asked her why the other one might have died and she went through what I should be doing. Oops….. I think I am over watering them.  I was told not to give them a short water every day, but to give them a long 45 minute water every second day until they are established, then only once or twice a week.  Because they are natives they don’t like just getting their feet wet.  That is a short water.  They need a good soaking so that they will send down deep roots to get the water below.  hhhmmmm, yes I do remember learning this once before.  It’s good to have a reminder.  So I went back to the unit and re programed the timer to do three times a week instead of everyday.  I’m glad I didn’t kill any more of them.

I also had a call from the nursery where I had ordered a dwarf avocado.  These are grafted onto a dwarf stock (whatever that is).  They are supposed to be shorter than the non-dwarf variety.  He also told me how to prepare the soil, dig a big hole, take out the soil and put in a heap of organic stuff to prepare the soil.   Now here’s the funny part.  Many of you know I’m hopeless with numbers as my accountant will tell you (that’s why I have an accountant).  Well the guy was giving me the measurements for the size of the hole.   He wrote it down on a piece of paper so I knew I didn’t have the numbers wrong but I did have the measurements muddled.  He told me one meter in diameter and 250 deep.  Well I though he was still talking about meters or at least centimetres and I thought, “Wow that is a deep hole!  How am I going to get it that deep?”  I was told to take the soil out of the hole (sand in my case), then to fill the hole with all the extras I was to buy from him.  Soil solver, cow manure and soil conditioner.   Mix all these in with the soil below so in total depth was 500 (was he talking in centimetres….  that’s 5 meters… surely not!).  I had to laugh later when I had figured it all out.  Yes, my brain doesn’t work very well when I have to think about numbers on the spot.

I got sucked in again when I was told on top of all this I needed a fertilising schedule especially for dwarf fruit trees.   There was Kickalong and fruit and flower fertilizer that had to be applied alternatively every month for the first year and then only the Kickalong very second month for the next five years.  As well as this, spray Copper Oxychloride once a month from September to March to avoid fungus, and, use hay mulch every spring.   Wow looks like I’ll have to stay here to nurture my avocado! This is like having a pet to care for!   I did none of this when I planted my avocado seed in Sydney!   First I ate the avocado then I shoved the seed in a pot with soil, maybe it was potting mix….. I can’t remember.  Then amazingly it grew.  So I planted the seedling at the end of my garden.  I did water it in the summer, actually I over watered it on occasions as I forgot to turn the hose off!  Oopsss!  No worries I offered to pay extra for my water usage on top of my rent.  Avocados don’t like too much water and the poor tree struggled to recover and dropped so many leaves but it did recover.  My tree was six to seven meters tall and five meters wide and the fruit were enormous!

With all these things I needed to do for this precious avocado I decided I would not plant it till I returned to mum’s place so I could be close buy.  Not only this, the weather suddenly turned hot and I mean very hot – 40 degrees centigrade!  Too hot for my new baby.  Oh yeah, I was also told my new baby would need a canopy for the first two summers and of course I would have to build it a wind break too, as the winds just whistled through now that I had taken out the cotton bush tree.

So it looks like there are a few more things I needed to do at the unit before I can leave.  And no, I will not be staying in Perth just to look after my new baby.  I will commit all things into the capable hands of my Lord!

Thanks you to all those who have held me up in prayer.  Praise the Lord for the answers to many of my requests including the sale my car and for my relationship with my mother which continues to improve.

Please pray that I will find the right person to move in with mum and also for the sale of my business.