s e v e n i s a j o u r n e y

Persil’s new boy:

And the first cria from Hyouki, too !

In Maori lore, the Pipiwharauroa, or Shining Cuckoo, is a harbinger of Spring. Technically, it’s almost summer, but the weather has been dodgy enough that it’s hard to tell for sure without looking at the calendar. Just to reinforce the point, here is the cuckoo that concussed itself against our sunroom window the other night:

It’s kinda hard to tell from the photo, but the gray-brownish parts have a coppery sheen in the right light, and the back is iridescent green. We shut the sliding doors so the cats wouldn’t go mess with it, and after about a half an hour it got itself collected enough to fly away.

First, we’ve started shearing. No matter how long we’ve been doing this, it always seems to be a surprise how skinny they are under all that fluff. Especially the little ones, who are now all ears and necks and legs:

Before:

After:

One of these things is not like the others…

Plus there’s the “They grow up so fast” factor. Who’d have thought our ugly ducking:

…would turn out so pretty ?

Second, Joy has finally given us a girl ! Meet Tahoma:

It cracks us up, but the little girls like to play dollies with the new baby. This is Gandiva, as far as we can tell, pretending to be Tahoma’s mommy. She came up to Tahoma, sniffed her, sat down next to her, then carefully defended her from the other little girls if they got too close, just like Joy does.