Home again

Its good to be home! First thing the warm holiday clothes were thrown into the washing machine while we enjoyed our Sunday cooked breakfast - we had missed out on having it on Sunday as that was the morning of our flight. As usual, as soon as the egg was lifted from the pan and onto the plate the phone rang! Life has got back to normal!

The dogs are delighted to have us home, they have been well looked after by a friend who lived in the house while we were away. Each time we have left our dogs in kennels we have come home to expensive vet bills - they seem to pick up eye problems and Kennel Cough from these kennels. Even though we have had the dogs injected against Kennel Cough there seem to be different strains of it that our poor dogs seem to get. So with Joy looking after our big woolly dogs we have no worries at all when we go away.

My son Paul and family came around at lunch time to welcome us back and the children imediately went to the cupboard and dug out the beads and nylon thread to do their favourite threading task at Granny's place. A sudden squeal had us all rushing in to the sunroom and horror of horrors young Chantelle had done it again. She had pushed a bead into her nose. Oh no. Paul tried in vain to retrieve it but it had been pushed right back - too far for him to fish it out. So that was the end of their visit. They are now at the hospital and waiting for someone to help - on a public holiday they will be waiting for quite a while I think. You hear of children pushing things into their noses - but wouldn't you think that when it had been done once and there are memories of all the proding and probing by strangers that the child would never do it again? Its only a few weeks since the last time. Kids! The beads have been packed away and hidden from sight and so high up that a ladder would be needed to retrieve them. Granny needs a lie down now!

To calm myself down I grabbed a pair of snips and went into the garden and quietly pruned some of the buds off the Chrysanthemums. Colin grabbed the pole, brush and suction hose and he cleaned the swimming pool.

A few years ago a friend gave me three mauve Chrysanthemums and gave me lots of instructions on how to make them have only one flower so that they would be large flowers. I now have hundreds of mauve Chrysanths and I often leave it too late to clean off the side shoots. I had worked on them before I left for New Zealand and they are almost open so today I tidied them up even more. It does make a difference to the size of the flowers but if I did it sooner and more often I would have even larger blooms! Its a pity they smell so awful, they are attractive flowers.

I shall ring the family and find out if the bead has been removed - they were boasting that nothing dramatic had happened while we were away - they should have said nothing! I feel dreadful for providing the weapon!

AJ