A Saw Whet and a Syncronicity

If a staff goddess ships on Monday, I try to organize it so she invoices on Tuesday and does email on yet another day. From day to day, even hour to hour, we take turns with these jobs and others like bottle labeling, red shiso tincture making, mail runs, and door service for dogs and cats.

Jim’s brother, Stephen, calls this cross training. As a manager of a large company, he has given me many good reasons for doing this. For example, if someone is on vacation or out for some reason, the rest of us know how to fill in.

It takes awhile to cross train someone in all the things we do here. When a new goddess arrives to work here, she usually spends a couple of months primarily at the shipping desk before she is plunged into the arcane and mysterious world of Green Hope Farm invoicing.

As a mother in “Love Actually” remarks about sewing an octopus costume, “Eight is a lot of Legs, Davey.” So too I say, “Six zillion Flower Essences is a lot of Essences to keep track of, especially when it was my right brain that organized our systems.”

Right now, Masaki is at the computer seeking the codes for all the Flower Essences on our line up. May she finish her quest before dawn tomorrow.

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Here she is at the keyboard. Jane is on her right available for moral support and strong doses of green tea with pink Flower Essences in it.

Masaki also began to learn the ropes on email this morning. In one of those wonderful Angel synchronicities, when I went on email with Masaki, after we had cleared out the 437 viagra ads, the second email Masaki opened was from an animal practitioner in Japan. How thrilled we were to have Masaki answer the email in Japanese!
The reason for all this flurry of cross training is that a few weeks ago long time staff goddess Patricia departed from the farm as part of the sea changes of her retirement. Sophie and Masaki wanted to take Patricia’s hours which was terrific good news for the farm. Losing someone who has worked with the Flower Essences as long as Patricia leaves a gap in our collective skill set. It was great to have Sophie and Masaki expand their hours because they are already well into the process of learning their way around our Flower Essence collection.

This week saw me sipping big tall glasses of Showcats water so that I could somewhat coherently begin to explain email and invoicing to Sophie and Masaki. We have so many systems born to prevent routine goofs and again there are all those quirks like Wild Physic Nut was made on St John but is listed in the Bermuda collection. It is a lot to explain, let alone absorb. Fortunately, office supervisor May May was there to help.

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We had a particular and unusual treat on this day of training, when a saw whet owl landed on a peach tree branch right outside the office. This tiny owl of about six inches is described in Peterson’s Guide to the Birds as an absurdly tame little owl.

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A short eared owl, saw whets hunt during day and night and migrate from here to Louisiana, leading us to wonder why this fluff ball was back here so early. Saw Whets are considered courageous, playful, curious, and extremely strong and fast when in flight. They can best hawks and crows in aerobatics and have an uncanny knack of being in the right field at the right time to find the juiciest mice.

We hope he finds a good dinner soon. We wish him well and thank him for giving us such a delightful day of owl medicine.

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