Sunday Summary

I finally got round to putting the photo I took some time ago up on the wall.  It is hard to get a picture of it without reflections. Perhaps I should have got non-reflective glass.  However, it is good to have it up. I am especially pleased with this photo which includes my husband's childhood teddy, my grandmother's teddy and my son's very first violin.

A change of sheets always freshens up the bed.  Blues this week.

At the end of August I got some new books.  A couple of Ted Allbeury books were among the pile.  I have finished the first 'The Alpha List' and quite enjoyed the read.  These books aren't for those that like happy endings though!  Enjoyable espionage fiction though.  I will read the other one soon.

I picked up two more books to read the other day - they were 50p each if I remember rightly. 

This one I started last night - the title appealed to me as I would love to have a 'Gap Year'!  

I like to read books based on Cornwall, although had to abandon the last I attempted as it was just too syrupy for me.  I am hoping this one will be better. 

The weather seems to have been so wet - I really am not ready for Autumn, although it has been warm most of the time, I don't feel like we have had a proper summer at all. June was good and hot, with some lovely blue sky, sunny days, but since then, bah!  I am very much a blue sky kind of person, give me a blue sky and I feel so much better...but we have had mostly grey and often damp.  I know this as I keep a daily diary in which I also record the weather each day! My roses have suffered through the dampness although some are still bravely flowering.  I must get in the garden this week though and start dead heading some and pruning others back and generally tidying them up.

I have some beans growing, but I fear I probably planted this lot too late.  

Back to the flowers.  

The last of the dahlias.

Some surprise late flowering honeysuckle flowers!

I noticed this out of my bedroom window this morning.

A sunflower!  I didn't plant this so must have been a stray seed that perhaps a bird dropped.

Guinea Pig update...

The new scruffs have started to settle down...I can now put food into their cage and sometimes right in front of their noses without them jumping out of their skin (or the cage!).  Catching them to pick them up is still an art, but once in my hands, they are not too wiggly.  My son and his fiancee have finally settled on some names and sent a message the other day to tell me that one is going to be called Biscuit, (the smaller darker one) and the other one is Rocko.

Poor Sylvester is losing weight at a great rate.  I weigh them all once a fortnight, and his is steadily dropping despite increased food allowance going into his cage.  Sadly I think he has kidney disease. Once upon a time in my 'other life' as I call it, I wrote a paper on Kidney Infarction in Cavies as part of my thesis when studying Animal Husbandry and Veterinary Nurse training.  I realised that a lot of purebred cavies, especially Self Blacks, or those with Self Black in their pedigree suffered this 'wasting disease' so I investigated this, various tests and surveys were completed, several autopsies were done, organs sent for testing etc...  At the time because I lived in New Zealand and so the general population of Cavies wasn't huge, I put it down to inbreeding because of lack of stock to out-breed to , but seems it is also a problem with pure-bred cavies here in the England as well.  Sad fact that to breed good showable animals, sometimes a lot of close bred bloodlines are used, and this is where you end up with problems.  I never bred Selfs here, having had Abyssinians, who on a whole seemed to be a lot more robust - in my opinion, and Sylvester was given to me by a friend who did. It would be interesting to know if she had a problem with this with her pigs, but she gave up breeding a few years ago now, so it is too late to find out.  Certainly I don't think it is uncommon and sadly there is not a lot you can do about it, apart from make sure they have plenty of water, food and are not suffering in any way.  He doesn't appear to be at this stage, but I will keep a close eye on him.