If you haven’t heard the sound of a kookaburra. You are in for a treat. Watch the You Tube video below. The handler really has the ability to get not just the kookaburra laughing but the crowd as well.

The video is called Distraction:Laughing Kookaburra and can be found on You Tube, just in case the video does not reset correctly.

Kookaburras flourish in our bushland. On the Quiet Side we have our own  kookaburra family.

What appears to be joyous laughter has also been described by experts as a territorial call. Aussie’s also believe kookaburras laugh when it’s going to rain. But regardless of the reason, their laughter is uplifting. You cannot but feel a sense of happiness when a kookaburra laughs. When a whole family of kookaburras laugh together, it is pure magic.

I found an old bush poem called – what else? “The Kookaburras” by J. O’Brien. These are beautiful lines and sound as though God wrote them Himself:

“Comes a buoyant peal of laughter from the tall, white, slender timber,
Rugged mirth that floods the bushland with the joy of brotherhood,
With the rustic notes sonorous of a happy laughing chorus,
When the kookaburras bless the world because the world is good.”

http://australianpoems.tripod.com/kookaburras.htm

Joy is a choice even in hard times! The Bible tells us “The joy of the Lord is your strength and stronghold.” (Nehemiah 8:10 AMP) . God will give you His strength to ‘hang in there’, and that joy of the Lord can be found in the Word  as we read our Bible each day. “Your word was unto me the joy and rejoicing of my heart.” (Jeremiah 15:16).

When you find yourself downhearted and struggling on a slippery slope to depression, nine times out of ten you will find you have let your prayer life and Bible study deteriorate. Get back into the Word! Bring your problems to God in prayer.

The writer of Proverbs tells us ” A happy heart is good medicine and a joyful mind causes healing.” (Prov 17:22 AMP)  Another reason we need to stay uplifted, joy has medicinal and healing power. Isn’t God good! He is indeed a “good, good Father” as the popular worship song tells us.

So today take a leaf out of the book of the kookaburra. Keep laughing. Choose joy!

Have a joyous day!

Marilyn

And……..

THE SONG OF THE BUSH!

The carolling of the Australian Magpie is the sound many Aussie’s associate with the Australian bush. These lines from an old Aussie poem by Frank S. Williamson describe it nicely:

“Just to hear the magpies warble in the blue-gums on the hill,
When the frail green flower of twilight in the sky is lingering still,
Calling, calling, calling to the abdicating day:
O, they fill my heart with music as I loiter on my way.”

On the Quiet Side of the Great Lake there are lots of trees and we have many magpie families. This year there have been many babies and it is a delight to watch their diligent parents raise them.

The other morning I was watching some of the magpie parents teaching their new fledglings (i.e. young magpies that are growing up).  Magpie fledglings are still a brown/grey colour, and have not yet taken on the distinctive black and white of the adults. They run about on their long legs exploring and have loads of curiosity.

This particular morning the adults began giving their young a lesson in carolling and so I was treated to a concert of non-stop carolling and warbling magpies as the juniors tested their voices encouraged by the dulcet tones of their parents. Magpies are very musical!

Their tones were so beautiful they brought joy to my soul, as this little guy above carolled to his siblings and his parents in the trees around him. Their birdsong seemed so filled with goodness, it brought to mind a scripture from the Bible.

May your words today be filled with encouragement and love.

Have a blessed day,

Marilyn

Acknowledgements: Backgrounds of banners from Graphic Stock. Photos are all the work of the author.

And…..

Whenever I see an owl, I think of the story of the “wise old owl”. The moral of the story is “You should be observant, talk less but listen more. This will make you a wise person.” You can check out the story in full on:
http://www.english-for-students.com/a-wise-old-owl.html

The Tawny Frogmouth is not actually categorised as an owl, but is closely related. While we don’t see many owls on the Quiet Side, we are visited periodically by these amazing birds. To me they look wise. So I will use him as a substitute.

The Bible urges us to “Get wisdom!”

However, it is not the wisdom of the world that we should seek. So many people wish to appear wise and indulge in eloquent speaking filled with lengthy, but empty words. The wisdom the Bible speaks about is the wisdom that comes from heaven.

This heavenly wisdom is about being kind and helpful.

The thing about heavenly wisdom is, it’s freely available!

The writer of the book of Proverbs urges you, to seek that heavenly wisdom, “..though it cost all you have, get understanding.” (Proverbs 4:7)  And remember, “…the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom.” (1 Corinthians 1:25)

“Blessed are those who find wisdom, those who gain understanding,” Proverbs 3:13 Be blessed!

The wisdom on the Quiet Side of the Great Lake was endowed by the Great Creator on Matthew Magpie (see books on the Gallery page). Magpies are a major part of the bird community on the Quiet Side and are permanent residents. Matthew showed his wisdom in the way magpies raise their families (better than some humans) and keep order in the environment.

Be blessed and enjoy the rest of your week!

Marilyn

MISTY OF THE QUIET SIDE

This was Misty as a pup. I found her in a pet shop where she had been for some time. She was 4½ months old when we took her home. Because she had been in transit through pet shops (she began her journey in Melbourne and ended up on the Central Coast of NSW), she had a great many phobias. So in some ways she was a rescued dog that we paid dearly for, but she was worth every penny.

A bundle of fun she never really grew from the puppy stage to maturity, but it took her little time to take over the household. While she obeyed a few commands, “sit”, “drop” and “stay” (sometimes), she was very good at looking away when she didn’t want to obey, as if to say “I can’t hear you!”

She grew into a beautiful, loving companion. To Misty, “Life was a lap”. She just loved to be near you.

Sadly, we lost our little girl on February 4th after a very short battle with liver cancer.

It came out of the blue and took us by surprise. After just a couple of weeks illness associated with drastic weight loss she underwent an exploratory laparotomy on 4th February only to find a significant tumour in her liver. The alternatives were virtually nil.
To say the least we were devastated – not at all ready to say goodbye. She would have been 8 years old in May.

Our little girl was a bundle of joy and love. Not a day would go by that she didn’t cause my husband and I to laugh at something. A robust little dog she happily worked 5 km each day with her dad (my husband), stopping from time to time to talk to neighbours. He became known as ‘the man with the little white dog’.

She was an attention seeker and a people pleaser and was forever up to mischief. She would look in wardrobes to fish out any tissues left in the pockets of my jeans. Once found she would take them into our living room and proudly shred them. She ignored all the toys we bought her and her favourite game was fetching a pair of socks I threw for her. She walked backward on tiles and backed out of doorways (the tiles terrified her). She loved a good bark and liked to try to out-bark the Chihuahua a couple of houses away. There was also a black dog who walked with his master each morning which was one of her favourites and she knew exactly what time to expect him.

Her favourite ploys to get attention were finding a forbidden something, showing it, then doing donuts around the living room when asked to “give it”, together with chasing her tail in ever decreasing circles .

Misty just loved people. She waited for one of us to sit down so she would have company. Wherever you were she was either on your chair with you, on the floor or on your lap. She became hysterical with joy when people visited. Very needy! Riding in the basket on the back of my bike was loads of fun.

Helping with bed making in the mornings was fun when she could disappear into the bed-clothes.

People walking on the reserve along the lake at the back of our house always received a mouthful. As soon as the plovers gave the alarm she was at our upstairs window waiting, primed and ready to go.

She knew when I was going out. She watched me get dressed up, then when I left she would bark me off as I got into the car. My husband would then walk her down the end of our long driveway and they would wave ‘goodbye’ as I drove out.

We needed to be so careful nothing landed on the floor that she shouldn’t have. Once found she shredded them or chewed them up. It was embarrassing having to ring the oral surgeon and ask for another OPG referral as the dog had eaten it. On a couple of occasions she got her head stuck in the handles of a shopping bag when she became overly curious and began investigating the contents of the bag.

Misty loved her coats and had a collection of nice coats and t-shirts for ever kind of weather.

She loved her groomer,  Jo who would always send her home with a bow and she would leap into her arms front first as a baby does and cuddle up.

She hated wind and barely tolerated storms but was happy cuddled up to my husband sharing his armchair knowing he would protect her.

Our house is strangely quiet now. We will miss her terribly. She was taken too early. But I give thanks to God for the eight years we had her and the joy she brought into our lives.

Give your dog or cat a special cuddle today and thank God for them! Love extravagantly!

Marilyn