Cut not its earth-bound ties

Last spring our poor bay tree was looking very much the worse for wear, but struggled manfully and pulled through. A second hard winter of substantially sub-zero temperatures delivered the coup de grâce and there's no hope, despite the saying that a tree's only dead when it's been dead for a year. When the main branches have split as badly as this



there's only one thing to do.



It had to come down. It had got some mighty roots (which we were fascinated to discover smell like sandalwood, not bay), but it eventually gave up the struggle. I've planted our pot-bound plum tree in its place; it looks rather puny but with luck it'll feel happier there and might even have proper-sized fruit.

I'm like a bird, I'll only fly away

Last year, despite the apricot tree having several flowers, it only set one fruit (which turned out to be the most delicious apricot in the history of the world); we'd hoped for better things this year - one fruit each, perhaps, instead of having to share. It duly developed several flower buds which swelled promisingly, and in the last few days of mild weather and sunshine they started to open.

They are no more. Today they were all systematically removed by this little so-and-so:





Having stripped the tree he then spent the next seven hours of daylight battering at the window, fluttering from the top of the frame to the window-ledge at the bottom and up again, and getting into most undignified positions.





I wonder what roast bluetit tastes like.

Can you dig it

Almost as soon as the weather becomes tolerable - and this weekend has been lovely - everyone acknowledges their guilty consciences and starts tidying the garden ready for the summer. In our case this year it's rebuilding the deep beds for the third (and final!) time. Growing vegetables in deep beds is so much easier than on a traditional open plot; because the beds are narrow enough to never be trodden on the soil doesn't become so compacted and digging it over is a much quicker task. But it's worth taking the time (and spending the money) to construct them properly from the outset.

The first bed walls we made were of plywood from machinery packing Ned had at work; it cost nothing, but despite being timber-treated they fell apart after only four or five years. So the next lot were made of proper timber boards, 1" thick. They lasted a lot longer but were too narrow to support the growing weight of soil against them and despite various quick-fix supports collapsed sideways, making it almost impossible to get between them. To be honest, it all looks a bit tatty.





So this year we've invested in boards similar to scaffolding boards to run the full length of the beds, and hopefully these will see us out.



Spare paving slabs, with weed-suppressing membrane beneath them, laid between the beds will not only help to support the sides but also mean I won't have to try to squeeze the mower up the pathways and then strim the edges; it's going to look very much tidier. I'll let the dug-over soil in the currant bed settle for a day or two, then get the gooseberry bush out of its pot and planted out properly. There's a few weekends more hard graft to go (and I need space to put my potatoes!), but at least we've made a start.



*Wonders if it's time to start the guerilla-gardening in the village.

With rings on his fingers

Although I seem to remember it was listed as someone's Favourite Thing, I don't agree that DIY surgery should be recommended, if Ned's attempt at the artform is anything to go by.

For years he's been complaining that I must have secretly swopped his wedding ring for one a size or two smaller because he couldn't take it off (why was he trying?) but I just blamed overweight fingers. On Wednesday he finally succeeded, via the judicious use of a forklift truck. Resting your hand in a particular way whilst raising part of the vehicle causes the jewellery item to bite into the flesh of your finger before finally snapping (if you've been traditional and gone for gold, and not modern steel, which won't break before the finger's come off too), necessitating a morning spent in A&E being stitched up.

All credit to the NHS; the accident happened at about 9.30am; he was driven 10 miles to the Small Injuries Unit at Stratford hospital, where it was examined and dressed, but because they weren't sure if there was any tendon damage they sent him to the larger A&E unit at Warwick Hospital where it was examined more fully, declared sound, stitched and redressed and he was sent on his way after being issued with a course of antibiotics. He was back at work by 12.30 and all for the sum of £7.20 for the medication. Excellent service.

Broken ring


Repaired finger



If I could get hold of some gold tattoo ink and rub it onto the wound he'd be permanently branded. What a silly chap; he doesn't get away that easily.

Let's take off in the blue

We've booked a holiday! For years and years we've both wanted to visit British Columbia and thought if we procrastinated any more we'd never get around to doing it, so we bit the bullet. We got brochures and decided what seemed most like what we wanted to do; booked it and paid the deposit. It should be great: sight-seeing in Vancouver for a couple of days then touring Vancouver Island, walking and cycling and bear watching and whale watching (which is why today we bought new hardware - being indecisive can prove very expensive - to take pictures of things that are actually there, not pictures of where they were two seconds ago) and geocaching and paddling in the Pacific and visiting the actual border which my great-great-great grandfather determined and all stuff like that.

Then BA cabin crew voted for strike action.

If they cock up our first forrin holiday for over 15 years I'll be very, very, VERY cross.

Oh, baby, you'll freeze out there

It's up to a positively balmy -5C today.

Three wheels on my wagon

About three weeks ago Piggy started favouring his back left leg when we were out - not limping exactly, but being slightly careful with it, so after checking for thorns in his pads, and all that sort of thing (nothing) we reduced his exercise a bit. This didn't seem to help, and after another couple of days there was a definite limp, so I gave him the standby painkillers for a few days as well as more rest. After 5 days of no improvement at all - in fact he started to go on three legs completely - we went to the vet, and he was gently manipulated to try to find out where it hurt. There was slight stiffness, but when something hurts you tend to tense and 'guard' it, so that was only to be expected. As the usual painkillers weren't affecting it we started him on something else, and dramatically cut his exercise - on-lead toilet breaks only.

A week later he was no better - in fact he'd started crying when he first got up, and wouldn't put any weight on the leg at all. We had to make sure that when he needed a wee that the chosen recipient was on his left side so that he could put his weight on his right leg and not try to cock that one and so collapse in a heap. So yet another type of painkiller was added to his cocktail of drugs, and we decided to sedate him and x-ray to check for severe arthritis or a bone tumour, and also manipulate a relaxed dog to check for damaged tendons.

Nothing wrong with these hips. In fact for an 11 year old dog they're very Mary Poppins (practically perfect).



Then we took a lateral x-ray to look at the knee-joint. That also showed absolutely no sign of any damage (but did show that he was very hungry - his gut was completely empty!).



However there is some spondylosis at the lumbo-sacral joint (where the spine enters the pelvis; if you look carefully you can see a semi-circle of bone beneath the vertebrae. It's possible that this is overgrowth is pinching a nerve, but spondylosis is (apparently) very common in older animals and usually causes no problems at all, and is only discovered on x-rays for something entirely different, like a fractured leg. So that could be completely coincidental.

Manipulation showed the tendons to be intact as well. So although it's good news that there's nothing obviously seriously wrong, we're really no further forward. He's still going on three legs, although when he's been walking slowly for a few minutes he's starting to use the leg again which helps stop muscle wastage, and he can use the leg to scratch himself without trouble. And he'll wriggle about on his back and stretch his legs quite happily with no sign of discomfort. It's just the weight-bearing that's the problem.

Baby, you can drive my car

Things are done differently in the country. When Boy's pick-up needed some work done he was lent a courtesy vehicle, as you'd hope. I don't think it would have been the same in town ...

Took some time to celebrate

We went on holiday to the Lake District. I was determined that October was too late in the year to go camping, so we threw caution to the winds and rented a holiday flat in Hawkshead for a few days. It was ideal; not too much luggage to take, and all mod cons. What was especially good, however, was the dog-friendliness of the whole area. It's an unusual pub that doesn't allow them in, even when people are having meals. It made a refreshing change not to be treated like a leper simply for bringing our family with us.


The weather was variable: okay for most of the time which was good for walking and climbing


(Piglet was a brilliant pathfinder through the bracken!),



sometimes not so great


One day it couldn't make up its mind



and one day it was utterly perfect.


(I finally remembered how to work the timer on the camera.)



We found a very big tree!



Some of the walks involved caching (we found 8), but others didn't - we also had pubs to cross out of our Country Pubs book. Luckily some expeditions could be combined ventures.

After we left the Lake District we crossed over the top from one coast to the other, calling in at the Tan Hill Inn (which was both in our pub book and has a cache, where we placed a new Travel Bug - I hope he doesn't languish there for too long) on the way eastwards. My, that's a remote spot and an 'exciting' road to it - but great beer and a wonderful welcome. Highly recommended.

And we went to the seaside as well.

Put your head down to the ground and listen to your mind

Lemongrass, week 8 update, and it's still flourishing.



And lookit! I planted a piece of root ginger a few weeks ago, and it lives!

I see rainbows in the evening

Lemongrass update: after 6 weeks it needed potting on again.

That one is only poor Only if they choose to be

I've been researching the source of the 'Persian costume' as we've always called it. The watercolour was described as "A Gabr woman"; googling tells me that Gabr has come to mean Zoroastrian having gone through various degrees of rudeness about non-Muslims, and Wiki has this photograph of a 20th Century Zoroastrian family:



Another site has this picture of a costume:



And here's mine:



Despite googling I can find absolutely no mention of the Persia edition of the 'Peeps at Many Lands' series of books; it apparently never existed; and I yet I know it did!

Any dream will do

Back around the time of the First World War a branch of my family lived out in Persia, as it was known then. My great-aunt was a talented watercolourist and produced many very pleasing pictures of various scenes, and when the family returned to England in the early 1920s she wrote a book about the country and used her own pictures to illustrate it.


The picture on the cover is particularly colourful, and as a small girl I was thrilled to learn that the actual costume was still in the family's possession. I longed to dress up in it and copy the pose in the picture, but circumstances meant there was never a good opportunity to get it down from the loft. Until we were emptying my mother's old home, whereupon I seized the trunk it was in and bore it, and the original watercolour picture, away to Genie Towers for safe keeping. Today I decided the circumstances were right for dressing up!


I shouldn't have too much difficulty getting into these!



The fiddliest bit was trying to get the headgear right, wondering which of the squillions of pieces of silk in the trunk were the right ones, and trying to drape and knot them correctly It would have helped to have someone who knew how these things worked, but Ned made a very good model's dresser, and eventually we decided we were ready for a shoot.



All in all I'm very pleased with the result, and I had such fun fulfilling this childhood ambition!

Yes you did, ya told 'em once before

This week's update on the progress of the lemongrass:



Still growing!

Don't you tell it to the breeze

As well as trying to grow unusual plants I like Thai food, so my latest gardening experiment is to grow lemongrass. The idea was given to me when watching Gardeners' World (compulsory Friday night viewing for Oldies!) - it hadn't occurred to me before that it could be done. You can get packets of lemongrass seeds in garden centres, but googling showed me a far more interesting way of propogating it; simply buy some from the greengrocery section of the supermarket - yes, the pallid, naked sticklike things that have been trimmed to within an inch of their lives - and stand them in a jar of water on the windowsill. I tried it, and couldn't believe how fast the roots started to appear from what looked like a hopeless stump.

After one week in water



After two weeks in water; time to pot on



Transferred to pots



After one week in the pot; doing okay!



After two weeks in the pot the roots are still developing



Four weeks from when I bought them - starting to sprout out.


They're growing at a tremendous rate - about a centimetre a day at the moment! Soon they'll need potting on into bigger premises and hopefully by next year they'll be quite nice ornamental clumps for the patio.

In spring I'll be having a bash at ginger as well ...

Oh, and by the way, are you laughing now?

Piglet's always been a strange dog; he views Life very seriously. He's never seen the point of toys (unlike Harry who adored toys) unless it was to take Harry's favourite toy to annoy him, or playing games for pleasure. The concept of 'fun' has passed him by, and he totally missed out on the sense of humour gene (which Harry had in spades and was one of the many traits that made him so endearing). Piglet's always been more self-sufficient and anxious; I can see many characteristics in him that, in a human, would suggest a degree of autism. However in the months that he's been an only dog he's started to choose to be around us and seek our attention much more, which is nice.

Because he's never bothered about playing with our other dogs he's also never wanted to interact with dogs that we meet when we're out. He likes to ignore them if he can - he'd rather they didn't come too close unless he's met them amicably several times; if a strange dog pulls towards him he'll lunge and snap to drive it away. There were a couple of tricky moments at Cropredy when he felt pressured by dogs coming close (in a very crowded pub, for example), especially if they reminded him of dogs he knows he doesn't like (collies - they stare - and very hairy dogs mainly). However at Cropredy he also displayed a behaviour we've never witnessed before. As we were walking along past dogs of various shapes and sizes which were glanced at and ignored we saw another dalmatian; the first he's seen since Beattie left us. Piglet's ears pricked up, his tail started wagging and he pulled me towards it, squeaking with excitement. When we got close he knew it wasn't Harry or Beattie, but he was still keen to be sociable. His reaction brought tears of sympathy for his obvious loneliness; perhaps we ought to get another one sooner rather than later.

It was his and Harry's 11th birthday yesterday.

Watching flowers in the rain

Some people like gladioli, some people like dahlias. I like lilies, and they've been quite successful this year. I bought a few cheap bulbs from a DIY shop, not expecting great results, so was pleasantly surprised by the size and quality of the flowers that were produced - and they're sweetly scented to boot. This white one bloomed a few weeks ago and we could enjoy the scent when we sat outdoors.



This pink one is flowering at the moment, so I've brought it indoors where it's scenting the sitting room, and not being rained on.



There's another one (of a totally different variety that has much smaller, unscented flowers) that's been living outdoors for donkey's years, and is still managing to bloom each year despite the onslaught of the horrid lily beetles (which at least have the courtesy of being bright red so you can pick them off and squish them), which has the curious habit of producing little bulbils on the stem, which produce leaves and roots while still attached to the parent plant.



These bulbils can be picked off carefully



and potted on to eventually reach flowering size. Not wanting to count chickens but with luck I'll have a lily-beetle banquet in a few years.