With no new dishwasher on the horizon and frankly few dishes to be washed, Rhino continues his search for a new life purpose. He tries a spiritual approach. He reminds himself he already IS everything and doesn’t need a sink of dirty dishes to be someone in the world. But it’s not easy to be a rhino without a mission.

Sometimes he goes out to the greenhouse and tries to call his old housemates on his cell phone. They are all on his family plan so it’s free, or at least he thinks it’s free. His former housemates are constantly getting him embroiled in new calling plans involving new companies and new numbers all offering fewer dropped calls. Worrying about dropped calls at the farm is a little silly because there is only cell phone coverage when you stand on a greenhouse bench and point your cell phone in certain directions and even then, somedays this doesn’t work.

Here Rhino gets some bars, but it doesn’t help because no one answers. He tries not to think of his former housemates out there making dirty dishes in other sinks. He is determined to be upbeat. To console himself, he stops to smell the Flowers, this time, a lovely Tuberose.

Molly can see Rhino is feeling a bit woebegone. So she tries to get him to help her strategize about where to put all these bulbs she ordered. She has lost her mind master plan that noted where she was planning to put the 47,000 new daffodils, crocus, allium, and lilies bulbs she purchased earlier in the summer.

Placed on one small pile of bulbs while in such close proximity to all that orange, Rhino’s mind drifts from the topic of bulbs to the topic of pumpkins. He stops to consider what kind of faces he’ll carve on this year’s pumpkins.

Molly tries to interest him in another project, making the day’s Red Shiso tincture.

But Rhino is a philosopher and so his attention is drawn away from the brewing of Red Shiso to pondering the big question on the label of the coffee filter’s Molly uses.

Of course he cares. He’s a Rhino for goodness sake! Seeing his ecological soft spot, Molly suggests another project.

Recycling the week’s used cardboard at the town recycling shed. She tries to sell Rhino on the idea. She tells him it would be a chance to drive the truck! Molly’s never met a Rhino that didn’t love using gasoline powered engines while simultaneously saving the planet. But Rhino’s attention wanders yet again as he sees all that wood Willy and Jim stacked this summer.

Rhino can hardly bear the thought of the coming weather that will make it necessary to burn this wood to heat the house. Solar gets you a long way, but not ALL the way on a cloudy thirty degree day. Like this coming Saturday. Snow flurries are predicted

Rhino does the only sensible thing for a self respecting Rhino to do.

He wraps himself in his Bayern Munchen football club scarf, settles himself out on the porch, and thinks next spring.