Roads to Joy

What else is there, when you’re fed and warm, but to be enjoying the moment? Kali often curls up on our laps in the evening hours, happy with the company of our warm and comfortable bodies, as she snuggles in for a long snooze. In cat years, she’s probably about our age; her hunting exploits seem to be limited to smaller and smaller creatures, and she spends more and more of her time on the various sofas about the place. Hmmm.

To be loved with a kind of adoring devotion is very odd, really, and she doesn’t always grace us with that sense. It all depends on how her tummy is feeling, I reckon. But when she does settle, stretched and relaxed, the reciprocal feeling is lovely.

I don’t think the garden birds are capable of expressing their delight in the same way, but they’ll be delighted, in a hungry bird sort of way, that I’ve filled the feeders with fat balls and seeds this morning, so that they can wait their turn, the sparrows, dunnocks, blackbirds and starlings, along with the garden robin and the visiting woodpecker. I’m not sure if the blue and coal tits are still with us — I’ll look out for them today.

A cock pheasant has got himself trapped inside the netting I’ve set up to protect our chickens from avian flu; again! So that’s not been such a successful strategy. At least he can eat the food, and drink the water, and stay protected himself if I leave him be. If I approach, he flings himself against the security fencing panels, so I don’t want him to come to any harm.

Basically, all is well up in the high and windy fells, here in Sparty Lea, and while the rain blusters about the place we’re warm and cosy inside. It almost feels churlish to wish for more.

Maybe umm, maybe more time, we could do with a lot more of that, please!