21st Garden - May

Yes I'm here again, crowing about my garden and the delights it will soon provide (fingers crossed.) The weather between April and today has generally been pretty poor, we even had snow last weekend. It does seem to be improving, well the forecast for the next few days seems to look good.

I think all the wet weather has provided me with a problem I've not really had before:

Can you spot the difference? The top photo should be aubergine like the one below.


Some of the peas have been nibbled too.

It appears we have a snail problem, but given that on occasion Toni has been known to eat them, I think it might be a good idea not to use snail pellets.

So in no particular order I give you:

Butternut squash

Beetroot

Carrots

Chillies

Courgette / zucchini

Mange tout

Onions

Potatoes

The fruit side is doing quite well too.

Strawberry in flower

Rasberry flower buds

 I know it's not strictly my produce, but I thought I'd also share a photo of my fish pond as it looks now.

July 2011

May 2012

Before you go.

We've all "lost" someone. I've never really understood why we say lost, it's not as if we wandered off and left them in a shop or dropped them down the side of the sofa. But I digress. As we all know the only sure thing in life is that we're all going to die.

Now we all hate the morbid subject of D.E.A.T.H. but as Terry Pratchett has told us, he's only doing his job. The tricky thing is telling those you love that you do love them, without constantly saying "just in case I don't see you alive again....." So most of the time we don't tell people how we feel. Oh it's easy to make sure we tell our family that we see every day, but what about family and friends we see less frequently? Trickier. I could fill facebook every day with posts on all my friends' walls, but they'd soon unfriend me for spamming them. The problem is that most of the time we just don't know when that bus will coming crashing into us. Even when like Mike, you've been told there's a bus just around the corner, there is still no accurate timetable that we can refer to.

Now most of you read Paula's blog and her bus seems to be revving it's engine! It's certainly not fair that such a wonderful, caring, funny, talented and loving person should even have cancer so it's a downright disgrace to think we might "lose" her. So before she goes I just want to say, "We love you Paula."

Latest, well late any way.

Well despite several changes in lifestyle and various medical interventions that I would rather not discuss on a blog that can be read by miners minors, I am still not seeing any improvement in my memory. I could bore you all with the lists of things I meant to do, didn't do or forgot to say, but I can't remember half of them and I've forgotten where I put the lists!


What I did realise this morning was I didn't tell you all about what happened after my last blog entry. Actually I had realised, but Mike was always on the lap top and trying to blog on my phone is impossible.


So, by the evening of Sunday Mike seemed to be getting over the sinus thing but started to complain of a terrible pain in the region of his ribs. I thought at first that may be he had pulled a muscle or something similar whilst coughing. He took a load of painkillers and went to bed. By Monday morning however he had decided that the central heating was not doing a good enough job and proceeded to try and heat himself, the bed, me and Toni by spiking a temperature of 39 C (102 F). By half past eight we were on the phone to the GP's surgery and managed to get an appointment the same day. By noon we were on our way to the hospital to visit the Emergency Admisions Unit with suspected pneumonia.


By half past two Mike had been seen by a junior doctor, had a trip to x-ray to have snaps taken of his chest and been given a dose of antibiotics. At that point everything seemed to be going quite well. We were still waiting for news at six when we were called in to see the consultant. Now where as the junior doctor had been pleasant the consultant had decided some time ago, that she knew it all so did not want to hear anything that conflicted with her version of events. What she did say was there was no sign of a pneumonia, but that Mike's kidneys were no good (that's why we see a renal doctor?) and that obviously Mike wasn't drinking enough (3 litres in less than 24 hours?) so she wanted to admit him for IV antibiotics, fluid and investigations into his kidneys (did we mention Mike is already under a renal doctor?) Mike agreed to the IV antibiotics, but made it quite clear he did not consent to the rest. We were then dispatched back to the waiting room so they could find a bed.


At ten o'clock we were still waiting. By this time the waiting room was full of people waiting, several of them elderly with oxygen masks and I heard a paramedic explaining to one elderly couple that they may be waiting a while as there were no beds at all in the hospital. Mike spoke to the nurse in charge and she confirmed the fact. Mike asked what he was supposed to do and she apologetically said, sit and wait. Mike asked the nurse if he could go home and return in the morning as he had slept very little the previous night and needed some rest. The nurse said she would ask the consultant, which she did, but iron drawers refused to sanction it and said Mike would have to discharge himself against medical advice. A few minutes later a young doctor was n front of him, sheepishly explaining the risks and getting him to sign the piece of paper that would allow him to escape.
I'd like to say things were better the following day at the GP's, but unfortunately the doctor we saw (not one of the normal practice ones) knew the consultant we had seen and decided that she couldn't do anything for us initially and suggested we go back to EAU. Eventually we got some antibiotics and painkillers out of her, but it was more like getting blood out of a stone!

Ten days on and Mike is now once more full of the joys of Spring, I just wish the garden was as sunny!