The talk around these parts is of rabbits. At this time of year they are wrecking havoc in the gardens, the young ones especially. As one monk put it, they are eating the flowers before they have a chance to grow, let alone blossom. One solution is to flush them out by a whole team of us trawling through the larger garden in a row, sending them towards the garden gate. The gardens are fortified but there are always the adventurous few who find their way in. It only takes one or two baby rabbits to get inside the fences to make for sad and frustrated gardeners.

The garden across the yard from where I work has been the site of much cunning, both on the part of rabbits and the garden caretaker. This morning the second of the three inside the garden was caught, by hand! Two down and one to go. We do use live traps as well as basic stealth by the way. The fencing within the garden is only temporary it being used to flush out the bunnies into open lawn and when there the determined caretaker hurdles the back wall and chases the culprit(s) out of the open gate.

Last evening, just at the crucial moment, one of the cats just happened to wandered through the open gate subverting the current operation. No amount of sweet talking would turn that cat around.

I’ve made it back to the monastery earlier than I’d anticipated and I’m in the mood for Revolting Rhymes.

Roald Dahl ‘s version of Little Red Riding Hood and The Three Little Pigs are decidedly different, as was the author.

Welcome to the newly introduced DharmaFlix video wiki. DharmaFlix.com is a collaborative effort to list and review films with Dharma content for the benefit of all.

Have a go why not? Write a review. I’m gearing myself up to mention the series, My Name is Earl.

I’ll be traveling to Edinburgh tomorrow and then on to Dundee on Saturday for a day retreat and will not post here while away. Back on Sunday.

Here’s why I applaud, feel at home with and generally enjoy the company of nurses. And why I link to medical blogs from time to time. I’m declaring my interest.

At a young and impressionable age, before reaching ten, I’d go with my parents to visit Aunt V. in Surrey who owned and ran a nursing home for the elderly. Conversation over supper in the staff room invariably included discussions about bowel movements, the prevention of bedsores and other such intimate matters. So I grew up quite familiar with subjects lavatorial and nursing matters in general. This was my introduction to the world of nursing and care for the elderly and infirm.

My parents eventually bought the ‘home’ and I learnt, first hand, some of the nursing arts: how to utilize a failing memory to help a chronic smoker to stop smoking, how to navigate ‘doctors orders’- which sometimes were clearly bonkers. If I remember correctly, in one particular case, ‘orders’ involved pulling out Mrs’ B’s eyelashes! And then one day, after her visitors had left, I found Mrs. H spitting out gobs of pink, orange, blue and yellow fragments mixed with glutinous drool. ‘Oh my dear, the sweets they brought me are HORRIBLE’! ‘Gosh Mrs. H’ they look like bath salts to me! ‘Cup of tea’?

The home continued until the residents were substantially younger than my parents, at which time they closed up shop. Around that time I offered to take on the home and run it for them. They wouldn’t hear of it, pointing out they didn’t want me to automatically just fall into the family nursing/medical tradition. As it has turned out I’ve followed in the footsteps of my great grandfather, who was a clergyman.

Retaining a sense of humour in grief and adversity, is the saving grace of both nursing and the religious life too.