A little whisper in the dark

Gardening blues

The place in Australia which I now call home - well, at least for these couple of years I'm here, has a small front yard and a pretty big backyard. And rather than hire a gardener to come mow the lawn now and then we got our own whipper-snipper. Its similar to the ones the grass cutting workers use back in Singapore strapped to their backs, only ours is a light duty home version, as opposed to their heavy duty come-hell-or-high-water models. And light duty means its bound to fail, sooner rather than later.

And fail it did, when the head carrying the nylon string (which flays grass blades to pieces) broke, fell to pieces, and I chucked it aside.

Called in the professionals, with their lawn mowers and whipper-snippers, 2 hours and $40 later, all is good.

But as tide will come and go, so will grass grow, and a visit to the local K-mart quite by chance yields the exact broken part that I need - money changes hands and I am filled with visions of a tidy lawn - only now I've replaced a broken part, but lost another part, where I do not know, but I am told I would have to order it from Sydney. A measly $5 spring, and it costs $15 to send up to Brisbane. $15? Heck, I'll make my own, just what I will make it out of, I am still figuring out. Stay tuned.

Now usually there's some lesson or some point to be made when I make a blog entry, yet this one is just a mundane note. To draw an analogy (and I love analogies) you spend your time picking up pieces of a jigsaw puzzle off the floor in a room, and start putting it together, only to discover you've got 998 of the 999 required pieces.

But maybe there is something that I'm trying to say, but maybe I'm frustrated because I can't find that missing piece. It is hard to admit I've lost it, I'm giving up the search, I just won't do that.

I would rather make the missing piece with whatever means I have. Maybe then, I'll be happy again.

posted by Chung Leong @ 11:45 PM