The Little Red Hen Moves To Egypt

 I have about ten people working for me on my farm, helping to care for the animals, working in the gardens and basically providing a lot of support for me. They've all worked for me for some time...like before the revolution.  After the revolution our busy schedules of school visits, equestrian tourism and so on pretty much died. A lot of stables around me unloaded their horse and cut staff right away, but I couldn't do that to families that I was supporting or to the  horses that I'd rescued. So we tightened belts and looked for ways to economise. One way was to turn the land between the horse paddocks and the garden into vegetable gardens for the use of all the staff and their families. The deal is that everyone chips in on the work and everyone benefits. So the other day after lunch I took a look at the beds and announced to the grooms and gardeners that everyone needed to put in some weeding time. Not all of them were thrilled so I told them a story, one I'd heard as a child,  The Little Red Hen.

My Arabic is functional, not perfect by any means, so the story was somewhat simplified for them. For anyone who doesn't know this story, it is a staple for North American children in their pre-school years. Briefly, a red hen is walking around one day when she finds some wheat on the road. She gathers up the grain and decides to use it to grow more wheat so that she can bake some bread. At various points in the process (planting, weeding, watering, harvesting, milling, and baking) she asks various animal friends (cow, donkey, duck, dog, cat, rooster) to assist her, but each one has a sort of excuse as to why they can't help her....until, of course, the bread was baked and everyone wanted some, but the little red hen tells them that since they were too busy to help, they must be too busy to eat.

The guys all listened politely to the end and then at the end, one of them began to laugh and said, "See? She fooled them!" Another slightly more socially adept groom suggested that it was something else. I laughed and said that yes, if they wanted to eat the bread (or in our case, the vegetables) they needed to be there for the work and announced that I was the red hen. All very simple, you'd think, but the young man who took the story as the hen taking advantage of and then laughing at her neighbours then spent hours trying to figure out who among them was the donkey, the cat, the duck and so on.


Sometimes stories don't travel all that well.






copyright 2012 Maryanne Stroud Gabbani

Motoring...Circumnavigation of The Aviary

 Learning to walk is an interesting process. The Kid has figured out how to stand up and move around the house and garden while holding on to something. He's delighted to stagger around holding on someone's hand, but hands are not always free to hold small people. They are sometimes busy cleaning houses, preparing meals, or even writing for the net.  I'm sure that there are all sorts of fancy high tech toys and things available in Toys 'R Us, but here in the villages most of the toys are homemade. While I was in the US, someone brought an odd wooden sort of tricycle thing to the farm. There is a handle over the two wheels and a third wheel that sticks out in front. I wasn't sure how it worked until recently when The Kid's motor abilities had improved to the extent that he could begin to use it properly. He learned to haul himself up to hold the handle and propel his little machine around the patio. On concrete, it can go pretty fast, but in the garden it slows down.

 The grass provides a fair bit of resistance to the wheels which makes using the vehicle (I honestly don't know what to call it) somewhat safer. There are certain problems at this stage, however, steering being the most important one. The Kid hasn't figured out yet how to adjust his direction. Once he's aimed in a direction, he simply continues in a straight line until he comes to a stop and he did when he wedged himself between a palm garden chair and a flower bed. Somehow he had to move the direction to his left and this was a bit too difficult. Right after I took the photo, he asked for help by holding out his hand and guiding my hand to the handle of the push vehicle.

Once we sorted out the steering issue, he continued on his merry way accompanied by one of his faithful companion, Rocky. He ran into a new problem here...sand. Sand provides even more resistance and his tiny legs were really working hard to get the wooden wheels of the vehicle through the fairly deep sand.

 But sand doesn't just cause resistance. It is also unevenly resistant and makes a wooden tricycle tip over...albeit very slowly. Rocky watched as The Kid gradually tipped over on his side.

But a tricycle on its side is still a fascinating piece of equipment. The small wheels under the handle spin wonderfully when stroked by a small hand. The hole where it is attached by a nail is just slightly larger than the nail to provide the right amount of spin

Tipped back on the handle,  the single wheel that is usually in front can be spun as well, providing a few minutes of intriguing play under Mindy's watchful eye.

But spinning one's wheels gets  pretty old pretty fast and it's time again to tip the vehicle over onto the wheels and continue circumnavigating the aviary. The new obstacle was a recently planted area of lawn that is still in clumps as it spreads in front of the aviary. This was a tiring portion of the exploration. The wheels would catch on a clump of grass and then sink into the neighbouring patch of sand.

 Having struggled through the newly planted sod, The Kid found himself on some nice smooth grass and headed for the patio in front of the house. Notice his guardian still standing watch. I had to help keep him from knocking over my flower pots full of seedlings.

The patio was a piece of cake and I could hear his chuckles as he motored for the front door. Our ranking baladi dog, Ganja, oversaw this portion of his trip.

He managed to wake up Groucho, one of the older terriers as he blew through the living room on a clear vector for the door to the summer garden near where we'd started this journey...but this portion of his trip was fraught with danger. Immediately in front of him were three steps and going down them could be quite painful. I  pointed out the advisability of using the ramp just to the right of the stairs that had been installed for some of our creakier elderly dogs and people.

I couldn't take a picture of him going down the ramp because I was too busy holding the vehicle back to a toddler speed as he descended followed by Demon, another terrier.

 Back in the garden it was deep sand again to head back to the front patio and the nice flat patio. This portion of his trip took the longest and it was a very tired little boy who pushed his wooden tricycle up to the front of the house and asked to be picked up. He laid his head on my shoulder and just rested waiting for his mother to finish dressing to take him home. Someone is definitely sleeping well tonight.

copyright 2012 Maryanne Stroud Gabbani