Day 271, 273, 277 & 278- Our Wooden Gate and Beyond

29th September, cloudy

Can you hear it, dear Diary,there are new sounds around the house. A sharp eeeeeee, ewwwwww, eeeee and then a soft ling -alinglingling. Like a little out of tune song, I can hear it especially clearly when I am sitting here, in the living room. In fact, I can see where it is coming from. 

That's the creaking of our new wooden gate, dear Diary, built barely a week ago and already sounding old. Papa and OM built it right after the rat incident. They built it high enough to keep the animals out and Baby in but small enough not to crowd the house. 

OM painted the stone steps leading from the gate crimson, to match the carpet  in the room. He wanted our guests to feel really important walking to our house with this red carpet treatment. I thought that was very clever.

When Mama first saw our gate, she had protested and insisted that the rats could still come through. So Papa strung some cowbells and wound them around the gate. Now whenever anyone or anything comes through, the gate will sing and announce their arrival, he said. I think Papa made the gate creaked on purpose.

There it goes again, the ling -alinglingling.

 But it's just the wind. It looks like the rain may come and then what a lovely afternoon this will be. I love sitting here to watch the rain. Now that we have a gate, it's like being inside and outside all at once. Seeing the prettiness just beyond our little wooden gate makes me feel a little giddy with happiness and I too want to sing ling-a linglingling.

With the rain and Papa's tender, loving care, even our cactus have bloomed. OM was just exclaiming this morning: Those blushing red buds swaying shyly with the winds, now that's a sight to behold. 

Today, we also have these giant purple mushrooms that seemed to have come up from nowhere. How amazing that they are in the same purple as the sea lavender? Can colours be contagious, I wonder.

And if you examine the pinkies, you can see how much they resemble the cactus flowers. I am really thinking now that flowers may start to look like each other if they stay close enough.

Then there's Miss Unusual. I call her that because she has strange black flowers. She is a desert plant and is very fussy. Not too much or too little water and only the best, like the water we used to wash our fishes or rice. We must not forget too that she wants egg shells for soil.

Thanks to the rich food, we now have so many Babies Unusual that Papa re-potted some and put them in the artists' workroom for inspiration.

These flowers were planted by Papa since I was a baby. They were planted just around the huge water barrel outside the kitchen so that I could not climb near the barrel and then accidentally fall into it. This still works for Baby, of course.

But it no longer works with me! 

Haha! 

I am now tall enough  to look into the barrel

 and see myself in the water and..

 MAYA! MAYA! WHERE ARE YOU? 

Coming , Mama!