The Bird House

Hello everyone, and once again Thanks for joining me here.

To blog or not to blog, that is the question and I have only been doing this now for just on one year and still in the learning curve of what it is all about…heck my head is still in the clouds since signing with Vanilla Heart Publishing, but believe me, even though I am reaching for the stars, my feet are still on the ground.

For those of you who do not know where I live it is no secret… I live in South Africa; on the Eastern Cape coast with bush all around us…a couple of log homes scattered through the area and if and when we need supplies…it is a thirty kilometer trip into the nearest town, which brings me to the subject of this blog.

BIRDS…Not the kind we find on the beach on a summers day but the feathered kind that have prompted me to rename our home from The Dog House to The Bird House. It all started with my lovely wife putting out bread crumbs for all the small creatures that come out at night, and then she found that seed was attracting birds to our house and what started out as a once a day feed for them has developed into an almost full time occupation.

Bird feeders’ all over the bush that surrounds our home and it is amazing just how tame these wild birds get. Heck they even come calling and announce themselves when they arrive, and that is since cheese has been introduced to the buffet that is put out for them. The interior of our home has been inspected a couple of times by our feathered visitors…fly in…look around…fly out until the next time.

The main culprit is the Drongo…these guys are so intelligent. They come when we call…”Hey Tweet, where are you?” and within a minute we have three or four of these birds landing near us…Lucie talks to them and they tweet in response…and when they arrive we get a call…almost like…’Hey I’m here, where is the cheese?’ and once they have had their fill, they leave with a Thank you tweet…until next time.

The truth of the matter is that these birds keep my wife on the hop…they love peanut butter, cheese, bread crumbs as well as the wild bird seed we manage to buy in town…in fact life is so good, the minute the sun rises, we have birds gathering, waiting to see what is on the menu for the day, and as a reward, we have birds in the surrounding bush all day long. Their songs just never stop and it is awesome.

In fact I have it on good authority that the local weaver gang are relocating their nests…closer to the house…as long as they stay outside…Pooch will only tolerate so much.

Below are pictures of the invasion of the birds…Enjoy them as much as we do.

The Weaver.

The Drongo        

The Mouse Bird

The Shrike

The Oriel

The Bulbul      

The Bishop        

The Wag-Tail      

The Southern Masked Weaver  

The Fly Catcher

The Hoopoo

Hope you enjoyed the birds, we do and remember stay safe and take care, you never know what is watching from the shadows….Sleep Tight.

If Life Gives You Lemons

Hi Everyone,

You know the saying, “If life gives you lemons, make lemonade.”…Well that is just what happened on Tuesday to yours truly…I got a huge lemon thrown at me in the shape of my courageous 1995 Toyota Corolla deciding that it has had enough and packing up along the side of the road, in the middle of nowhere.

All I had for company on this lonely stretch of road was bush all around and a herd of cows who all gathered at the fence to watch the outburst display, but I guess they must have been disappointed as there was no outburst, just acceptance. I mean throwing my toys out of the cot would have achieved nothing…the car had died.

No noise, no bang…just enough is enough…the engine cut out and that was that. Me and cars, I will admit, I can change a tire…a fan belt at a push but that is as far as it goes…not my calling.

Luckily I live in an area where people are friendly, they help each other and of course no one goes anywhere without their mobile so it was call up a friend, and thirty minutes later I was being towed back towards the sanctuary of home.

On arrival the prophets of doom gathered, like vultures circling a lion’s kill. Each one offering their advice on what has decided to give up the ghost. Battery is flat; starter motor has packed up, and so on until a hero appeared on the horizon in the form of a neighbor who lives behind our home.

Before I could blink another one arrived and suddenly my poor car had her guts ripped from her, hoses hanging here and there, nuts and bolts over in a tin and suddenly the reason was obvious to the trained eye…my timing belt had broken…okay now we have problems…this is going to cost.

I covered my ears…don’t talk about cost to a man who earns a living from writing. Opening my eyes slowly I focused on Willem…a big grin on his face. Not to worry he says, I love taking engines apart and I will have this baby purring before too long.

Well today is Sunday, and he removed the whole engine on Wednesday…took it into civilization on Thursday…paid for the work at an engineer’s workshop, bought the spares needed including new spark plug cables as he noticed mine were rather old and came back home in the dead of the night.

Friday he helped himself to the shell of my Toyota, (I was playing…walk the dog) and started to put the engine back together again, with the help of his wife…the two of them assembled the motor on a table.

Saturday it was into the engine compartment…join the hoses, use the clamps…Where did this bolt go? Etc, etc and before long my faithful companion of many miles seemed to smile…now we needed to start her…cough cough  splutter and then fire…the engine is running better than ever before, but she will not idle on her own so it is back to the drawing board…

Sunday…rest day…no work on the car but we know what the problem is…the new look motor needs to be tuned, do oil change, new oil filter and with a little bit of luck and Willem’s passion for engines I should be back on the road soon.

The point of all of this is that you never know when you are going to need the help of someone along the walk of life so cherish those that you do have. They say kindness is always repaid by kindness so I guess that I have once again been blessed…and prayers are answered…sometimes not as quickly as we would like, but they are answered.

I asked Willem how much it is going to cost me? His answer , with a smile on his face was…”just pay for the parts and the work done at the engineers and give me a signed copy of your next book, at least one day I can say I helped out a well known Author.”

That boggles my mind…if my car had gone into a workshop they would have made a killing, firstly charging me per hour…stretching out the work, charging me for the parts, and I would have been lucky if I was driving again by the end of the month…but thank you to a Good Samaritan, that is not going to happen…Oh by the way, I will keep you posted, but in the mean time you can go off and buy my books…who knows, I just might need those extra sales…lol.

Thank you and take care, you never know when your car is going to decide…enough is enough, and if that is not enough to worry about, You never know what is watching from the shadows…in my case it was cows…this time, after all I live in Africa.