Summer Garden

It's always nice, when one moves into a new home, to see the garden develop over the year. Two of the main features in this garden are the magnolia tree and the Albizia (silk) tree. I hadn't realised that magnolias flowers come into bloom over a long period or that they smell so beautiful. The flowers on the Albizia are so small and delicate and the tree appears to be covered in them. it seemed that they would never come into flower, and then last weekend many flowers appeared as soon as we had some heat.
Some of the fruit trees are not having a good year due to a wet and chilly spring. There are hardly any pears or plums to be seen and only one of the apple trees seem to have a reasonable crop. The cherries though have had a good year and the few that we were able to pick before the birds did were most acceptable. The big fig tree has plenty of fruit on so we shall once again be inundated with figs if the wasps allow us to pick them!
The veg. garden has just started to produce which is a real treat as we missed out on home grown veggies last year due to the move. At the moment we are harvesting courgettes, tomatoes, cucumbers, french beans, lettuce, beetroot and aubergines. Hopefully we shall have some hot weather to ripen the melons and peppers.The basil has done amazingly well despite the weather and the herb garden is beginning to take shape.

Luna

Many of you will have met my little dog Luna. She is now 12 1/2 and has been our faithful friend for 11 of those years. A couple of weeks ago she was very ill and we thought that we would lose her. I know that this will happen sooner or later but somehow it was such a shock that it could be now. We think that she ate something when she was out walking in the fields, she is rather prone to picking up things and calling her back makes no difference as she is quite deaf now. I took her to the vet on the Wednesday and he said that she had a gastric upset as she was obviously in a lot of pain in that area and not eating. He gave her an injection and said if she was worse the next day to go back again. Well she was worse, much worse and appeared to be in such pain so off we went again. This time the vet was obviously very concerned, he took a blood test and suggested that we leave her with him so that he could keep and eye on her and put her on a drip. It was awful leaving her there she looked so ill and pathetic but it was of course the only thing that we could do. I rang in the afternoon for the results of the blood test and was told that it was very serious that it looked as if she had a severe kidney problem as well as a very painful tummy. We were asked to go in at 6pm to have a chat with him, we really thought that this was the end. When we got there the vet was not 100% sure what the problem was although he said that he could operate but that it would not guarantee anything. We decided against that and he suggested that we give her 24 hours and see how she went. He assured us that she wasn't in pain as she was having pain killers in the drip. We went in to see her and she looked so poorly and pathetic lying in a cage with a splint on her leg to hold the drip in. She did realise that we were there though and we were rewarded with a little tail wag. I rang up next morning and was told that she had improved slightly and had had a little walk outside. It was suggested that we collect her in the afternoon and bring her home for the weekend and see how she progressed. It was quite a different dog I saw when I went to get her, certainly not recovered but so much better than the previous day. Now, 2 weeks later, after a lot of medication she is back to normal and we can hope that she has at least a few more months if not years with us. A blood test on Friday revealed that her kidney function is OK. Now when we walk through the fields she will have to stay on the lead as I don't want to risk her picking up anything else.