Be-ing in the garden lead to bee-sting in the garden!

Nearing the end of July and already enough blackberries to stuff a gigantic crumble, total result! One of the bonuses of living in student land is having a super-grown over garden next door – it’s a jungle paradise for Missy and at the moment a fruity paradise for me. The students have all gone home for the summer, leaving us a bumper harvest of juicy fruit which the warm Spring has ripened earlier than the normal late summer expects. My plan was to tend to my summer garden then relax in it at the end of the day. We planted five bay trees taken from one of the rentals, where the aphid poo dropping down on them from a great lime tree height was wrecking their leaves. Then we planted two trees which I’d left in the pots for far too long, plus my pineapple guava (Acca Sellowiana) which has started to flower, though she’ll probably never fruit – it’s too cold as she hails from South America. Hers is a wonderfully exotic minature bloom which flowers all over the small tree:

My tea roses by the name of Scent-imental smell just heavenly….

Newly planted from Bud are two Bright Eyes (Phlox Paniculata), just about ready to flower from now into mid-Autumn:

And then we sat down for a cold glass of white and it all went horribly wrong! Missy had a ball yesterday as Mr M was in the garden all day whilst I was up and down from the office. She’s turned into an absolute softy, rarely straying from the garden except over into next door’s blackberry jungle, plus she gets bullied by the local magpie-raptors who gang up and chase her indoors. My heart has softened after the loss of my Mia at New Year and I’ve finally let her in, I think they sense when you fully accept them. Just as we sat down around #wineoclock, she ran past my legs to play, taking a great leap onto the lawn. As she landed she let out a yelp then bounced about six times into the middle of the grass obviously in pain. I ran to pick her up but couldn’t see anything obvious, before she wriggled free and hobbled into the house to lie under the table yowling. It was awful, she was leaning on the table leg with a rapidly swelling foot held forward, looking at me as if to say ‘Can you fix this?’ 😦 Vet alert!

At that point we found out that Missy doesn’t particularly like her cat basket. I’d always just held Mia in my arms wrapped in a towel and she was happy to stay there, but Missy arrived plus basket which I’d presumed she was ok with. It was touch and go whether I’d need stitches too. I think she might associate it with the very transient life she had before she came to us and panicked that she was going somewhere new as well as having a stung foot, so decided to take parts of me with her 😉

Two visit to the vets now done, Missie’s been manhandled, injected & starved and is a very sorry for herself girl after a sting was diagnosed. A day indoors recovering whilst we head off to ‘The World’s Largest Cheese Show’ in Nantwich is the order of the day. If she’s lucky, I might even bring her back some soft Dolcelatte which she’s quite partial too, you know, as cheese is a well known aid to recovery for any illness….