Windy and bright

Had a fun weekend with picnics and left-behind can openers plus mislaid pewter forks, walks by rivers, bird watching, marvellous meandering conversations at twilight. This morning I woke up to a lost Egyptian goose honking on the roof. Went out and gave him directions to the dam about half a mile away. Off he flew in the direction suggested, a beauty and like me a believer in Dr Doolittle talking to animals as interspecies communication. I’ve spoken to animals all my life, to chameleons and frogs and ostriches and tortoiseshell cats. And to herbs and gnarly wise trees. Sometimes they talk back.

My sink is filled with just-picked snappy green beans. I am making a lunch of stirfried green beans, chopped shallots, slivered garlic and silken tofu seasoned with sesame oil, light soy, a scrap of red chilli  and lemon juice, and I’m hoping a friend will join me and not mind tofu. She can make herself toast and baked beans from a can if she is not a tofu person. Somewhere at the back of the fridge, the big thwumping-growling-groaning fridge due for retirement, I have a sealed jar of fermented bean curd (doufu ru) that I adore but which smells like a long-dead goat with halitosis (ammonia with a  kick) for those who have not acquired that taste. The housemate lives under the happy illusion that the smell is a slightly over-ripened blue Roquefort cheese and thinks no more about it.

The bright north-easterly wind is blowing  yellow leaves like old patches of velvet off the catalpa trees. This morning I read a post from a long-sober friend who said she has a contented life with the usual unresolved problems. I like that. Fly south, my lovely wild goose.

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