The Miracle of It All, Rabbits, and the Small-flowered Woolly Bean (Strophostyles leiosperma)

Small-flowered Woolly Bean (Strophostyles leiosperma)

The flowers on this legume are small--but beautiful.

This photo is courtesy of my dear husband, who indulges my evolving interests by getting me everything that
I could think to ask for . . . usually before I ask.

I love the shape of these compound leaves.  I have come to depend upon leaf shapes
more and more for identification.  Blossoms are usually what catches me eye, but leaf
details are always there.  Dependable.  I like that.

The afternoon is quiet today.  The rabbits aren't even bumping about in their enclosure.  

I was going describe where the buns live as a "cage," but that seems like such a cruel word.  They are dwarf bunnies, and they each started out with their own 32" X 32" enclosures.  There were four of them then.  

(My The Peter Journals blog is named after the first miniature rabbit who acquired me.)  

Now, though, there are only two rabbits left alive.


To the left is a photo of Roo right before I took her to be put to sleep.  She succumbed to a parasite infection in her brain--and lost control of her muscles.

Now Oops and Murphy remain.  Two of the original enclosures have been combined into a single 64" X 32" living space that occupies one wall of the family/TV room.  Oops and Murphy are accustomed to the air conditioning and get baths if I am thoughtless enough to offer treats that cause . . . ah . . . messy potty-going.  

The fact that it is enclosed obviously restricts their movements while they are inside--but in with them are toys that make noise--that they can throw around.  Some toys are attached to the walls or sides and they can be swung or knocked about.  There are things to chew with different textures and tastes--and two large, deep potty boxes layered with pine pellets and then aspen shavings.  Their boxes are changed every day and sometimes topped off with fresh timothy hay. 

So as far as I can tell, they should be happy and comfortable--but of course they leap from their home almost as soon as I open the door for their evening constitutional. 

Tonight I have given them run of the kitchen as well as the TV room . . . and Nathan just pointed out that they have both snuggled down behind me on the bottom floor of the cats' 4 story tower.  

With two huge rooms to explore and in which  to run, they have converged to cluster together, sharing the same 12" square of space.  

I see myself in these two rabbits.  

With the whole world to explore every day, with every possible physical necessity and comfort provided for me, with safety and love granted me at every turn--I do not stretch my mind or my body with the magnitude of time and resources I hold--but spend the afternoon reading or napping or thinking and writing about my thoughts.  

I keep myself inside myself--squirreled away inside my comfortable, "12 inch square" of space.

I would like to see the rabbits running and leaping; expressing joy and finding new places to explore--smelling new smells, seeing new colours, hearing new sounds.  But they do not.

When Brent gets home at night, I would like to have him look around our home--or look into my eyes--and see that something wonderful happened while he was gone.  

Today, though, Brent got home and I was asleep on the porch--on the swing that Nathan helped me assemble so that I could read scriptures in the afternoons this next year.

Brent found me asleep.  He woke me up and noticed that there were extra parts.  He looked at the swing and put the last two screws into the swing supports.  Then we went shopping for food to take with us on our fossil hunting trip tomorrow.

There was nothing that I had finished today.  There were no wild flights of fancy or duties fulfilled.  

But Brent came home anyway--and when he got here he stayed.  

I think, for me, that is the fancy, the duty--the magic and miracle of it all.

The flowers that actually become the bananas.