aldwarke

haiku, tanka and short story blog
I've just started this blog and I would love to receive comments and postings.

https:aldwarkesanthology.wordpress.com

Hog blog
Eight of the hedgehogs got through the winter hibernation. Elizabeth has released seven into some woodland thought to be free of badgers (hedgehog main predator). The one not released has ringworm which my daughter is treating.

A fifth baby hedgehog has now been rescued. Named Hermione from Harry Potter. All are putting on weight on a diet of mealworms and odds and ends. Hermione as the name suggests is female. She has had to be housed separately because she attacks the males.
I learn more about hedgehog behaviour every day.

Friday 24 October
The fifth and smallest baby hedgehog is not doing too well. She was fending for herself for too long outside. Elizabeth is feeding her with a dropper and hoping to pull her round. The others are steadily putting on weight.

Sunday 26 October
Hermione, the latest baby hedgehog died last night. Others still doing well. Hermione had been out in the wild too long and must have suffered the effects of cold and malnutrition.
 Sunday 2 November.
we are now down to the original three hedgehogs that were rescued in good time. Weight is the critical factor. Like most animals they are subject to worms. Our vet doesn't know the right dosage for hedgehogs or even the right medicine. However the survivors are doing well and putting on weight.
Heathcliffe  and one other have now reached sufficient weight to hibernate. They are now in suitable boxes in Elizabeth's garage.
The man at the Hedgehog Rescue Service has had an old boy for some years. It's blind and has three legs only but still lively. Never say die, eh?

Elizabeth, my daughter, has now found the fourth baby hedgehog. See my gallery and look for the submission Hogblog. They have too little fat to survive the winter without help. All four have now been de-ticked and de-flead by Elizabeth and all are doing well. The names are on a literary theme:
Heathcliffe - the orphan from Wuthering Heights
Scout from To Kill a Mockingbird.
Edmund from The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
Gabriel from Far from the Madding Crowd.
   
22October 2014

The hoglets live in cardboard boxes filled with hay within a large wire dog cage. In the evening, no TV on and a low light and after a while you hear a rustling and a whispered grunt or two and then they come trooping out one after the other. First on the agenda is food followed by a bit of playfighting with lots of loud snuffles. Later what seems to be the eternal quest of investigating all the nooks and crannies in their little environment. They do spend a bit of time running round the room when allowed out.
Hedgehogs have sparse whiskers, very black and straight. They are totally non-aggressive with humans.

If you haven't done a collaboration already I can highly recommend it. It's a very productive medium. Speaking as a singer in a folk  band (until recently when I retired from it), I find it's like singing harmony duets. There is this similar intuitive potential for knowing what your partner is going to do and to incorporate this with your own proposed intentions, the end result being greater than the sum of its parts.
:devsnazzie-designs: made the whole process easier for me by using her superior computer abilities like a ball of string to guide me through deviantart's labyrinthine corridors. She also did the superb design of my Viking birth signs and transliterated the text into runes.

From

Devsanazzie-designz

This has been my first craft collaboration and an international one at that. Many packages have passed back and forth across the Irish Sea in this wonderful journey of co-creation. The collaboration was not something either of us had initially planned on; it came about through a natural process.

I was inspired by some of the beautiful pieces by aldwarke and commented on them. In his reply the topic of runes came up. He had seen some in my gallery and it went from there. Generally, I don't make runes for people unless they are genuinely interested in them.

We share a common interest in Celtic/Norse culture; working with a like-minded person is a very refreshing and enlightening. We both intuited each other’s next steps. Aldwarke sent me the perfect wood to burn for the lid. This close grained Scandinavian wood (a dream to burn) tied in nicely with the texture of the runes.  Aldwarke matched the copper on the inside lid’s scallops to the copper I had had added to the lid’s outer surface.  The runes themselves are a deeply personal thing for me as the maker of them.  They all come from the same branch of a tree and are specifically made for one person.

It has been a delight from start to finish collaborating on this project with aldwarke. We have brought out the best in each other and I have learned a great deal from aldwarke’s knowledge of wood which he is most generous in sharing. Maybe I taught him a thing or two about copy and paste along the way though.  But the very best things for me are the fun and stories that we shared along the journey and that I have found a new friendship that I think will be as strong and as meaningful as the rune box which started it all.