Witterings

I had a horrid scare this afternoon with my eyesight. Everything had been fine all day, and I hadn’t even been on the computer as much as usual, so when I realised that I couldn’t actually see what I was looking at I got quite panicky. If I kept my eyes moving I could use the peripheral vision to read things, but when I looked directly at something there was nothing there. Then the view from the outside edge of my left eye went all wibbly-wobbly, just like (I am assured on good authority) in ‘Predator’. After 10 minutes or so it gradually cleared, and as vision returned, so did my reason. It had been caused by a reflection on the monitor of the window behind me, which had left a ‘dazzle-memory’ on my retina. So thankfully it appears I’m not going blind quite yet. The fright gave me palpitations.

I now have a small viburnum in my tub. Although I’m not certain that it is exactly what I really want in it, if I change my mind I can hoick* it out and bung* it elsewhere in the garden, because I already have two and a half viburnums (different varieties) which are thriving in the ground. The soil must be the right Ph for them or something. I also bought a teeny-weeny olive treelet and a teeny-weeny citrus, which when they’ve grown a bit (so that the boys don’t wee on them and kill them) can sit on the patio too, alongside the pomegranate bush which I grew from a seed a few years ago.

My final outdoor task for the day was to set up the rat-trap in the greenhouse. I’ve baited it with a piece of tomato, so we’ll see what (if anything) gets caught. It’s a live-catch trap, so if the wrong thing gets trapped it is unharmed and can be released, or if small enough can escape through the wire. It was a Christmas present a couple of years ago (along with an air rifle for humanely dispatching the victims), and so far the rats have eluded it. I stopped getting the Council ratman to put down poison after he carelessly left it where the dogs could get to it, and we had an emergency trip to the vet for the antidote. I’m not taking that risk again. Now it's one-to-one.

*technical horticultural terms.