You Can't Keep a Good Gardener Down

Our temperatures are mounting; we think it must have been nearly 40 degrees today (Sunday) and it's forecast to be higher tomorrow! So ..... newly planted flowers need watering. Sue has become resigned to living with her back problems and won't let it rule her life. Once the temperature began to cool a little she was out in the garden watering.



She's pleased that her recent plantings of carefully selected drought tolerant flowers are performing well. At least it means that she isn't having to water everything.

Meanwhile, I'm still getting over the final injection of the chemo, although I felt well enough yesterday to start wall-tiling in the en-suite of the first bedroom on the first floor. (Although it meant that I needed today to recover!) I'm trying to make the most of my time as, to our surprise, I received a phone call from the hospital last Thursday and I'm going in for extensive tests next Thursday so that they can get an accurate picture of the state of my heart. We're expecting that I'll be in for about 10 days but I'm hoping that, at the end of it, we'll know exactly where we're heading!

Normal Service Has Been Resumed - ish

John had his final chemo injection yesterday followed by an MRI scan. It was an extremely long day leaving here at 6am and not arriving home until 7pm. Sandwiched between the chemo and the MRI scan he had the long awaited "conference" involving the cardiac department and the doctor supervising the chemo. It was a rather impromtu affair but the cardiac doctor was the one who had done his heart biopsy ( and bopped to pop songs throughout the procedure). Despite his somewhat unorthordox approach John has great faith in him. He decided to carry out an investigation into the exact state of John's heart now that the chemo has halted the cause of it's problem. Initially he has to go into hospital for about 10 days to have exhaustive tests to establish how bad the heart is and if any thing can be done to improve it's functioning: but we have no idea when that will be. However, the final option still seems to be a transplant, depending on the results of the tests!

Meanwhile he was delighted to be able to do relatively normal things this morning. I am also much improved and have returned to normal duties. However John has decided that I need help in the garden and therefore plans to help me in the mornings and work in the house in the afternoon - subject of course to the state of the body!! So relatively normal this morning was :- start to edge and weed the serpentine bed, build new compost bins in the ruin and move the large stones on which he displays his bonsai to down the allee.



As we have some roses this year because they have not been eaten by the deer I thought I would show you a picture. You will note from the photo that the display has been acheived with the help of strings which we put around the beds to deter the deer. Not aesthetically perfect but better than having no roses.




For the last four days we have had a resident family of hares (Mum, Dad and three youngsters) in the wild flower bed at dawn and dusk. So far they have limited their munching to wild flowers thank goodness. The adults are enormous so much so that Jean-Jacque told us that we had small deer lying in the grass. Sorry our cameras are not powerful enough to show you just how large they are.

Making the Most of the Day

As has become 'normal', I'm feel really good the day after my chemo injection and so I try to make the most of it. As we've decided to enlist a builder to finish off the 'salon' I wanted to prepare the wood for the stairs, with all of the accompanying dust, before work in the salon starts. (Not that we've found ourselves a builder yet!)




It's going to be interesting to say the least when I actually begin to build the stairs, especially as the design team haven't fully finalised the finish yet; stained wood, painted wood, left natural?

Sue continues to make slow progress with her back. She's now visiting the physiotherapist and she now understands her back problems and what to expect when she gets another attack (which she will). So, whilst I was playing with my wood, she was happily planting out.



Sue's relying on a period of unsettled weather which is forecast for next week, so that she won't have to do too much watering, but the rain always seems to have disappeared by the time we get to it. It was supposed to be raining this morning but we've actually got blue sky and sunshine!!!