Today I was using a fork to loosen the soil in a vegetable garden above our small “house orchard” preparing it for the coming spring. The wind was blowing a gale as it usually does in August here in Sydney, Australia. And that wind thoroughly delighted young Liquorice. I try to do a bit of digging each day to limit the severity of the aches and pains that I later feel. Had the wind not been so bad I would have used the spade to turn over the ground I had loosened yesterday. Once Liquorice was satisfied that I was doing an acceptable job she left me and wandered around the orchard. Passing her “test” is no easy feat, as she has to inspect every movement of the fork, of my shoes and the loosened soil at extremely close range and from every angle so that one cannot see the business end of the fork for her massive head and neck. Liquorice returned after a minute or two with a mandarin that the white Cockatoos had stripped from a tree the previous morning. They are a real pest when they come en masse and remove virtually all the fruit in one sitting, especially as they only open the fruit and eat only the pips, dropping the “empty” on the ground. But Liquorice likes her mandarins so she collected one of the birds’ discards, returned, and slowly ate the flesh with her front teeth leaving the skin before collecting another. Liquorice is not one to waste good food! She must have eaten seven or eight just in front of me while I worked. Clearly she has management potential.
Liquorice then sat a little way behind me, apparently looking into the wind, but knowing that soon I would give her a cuddle as a bribe for her moving on when I wanted to dig where she chose to sit. Liquorice loves her “bribes” and in due course the time came for me to willingly pay up! So I squatted down beside her as the cold wind blew her coat flat, even her ears did not hang naturally as she stared into that wind. Her pink tongue just protruded from between her canine teeth as she smiled contentedly. Being a bit tired from my efforts I was in no hurry for Liquorice to move so I put my left arm over her back and slowly massaged both of her powerful shoulders simultaneously with my hands. I pressed the side of my face against the side of her head and simply watched her nose for several minutes while continuing with her massage. At least one side of my face was warm! Liquorice was not interested in my attentions. She gazed out past the leafless Raspberry canes at the edge of the garden and apparently into the distance between a Grapefruit and an Orange tree. In time I too looked into the wind and noticed that there were still a couple of reddish-green leaves at the end of one Raspberry cane just in front of Liquorice. And in among those leaves, as they moved erratically in the wind, was a single pink raspberry! Liquorice loves raspberries so I picked it for her, which must have been her desire as she stood up and then found a pleasant place to lay out of the wind, but where she could still supervise my work!
Arthur Witten
Liquorice – I don’t like dirt under my fingernails!