- SECOND EGG LAID TODAY! (Both nicely visible at back of roof space now...)
- 14 mason bee holes in my bee post have now been plastered up by the female bees and left for next spring.
- Moth trap last night catches a "shuttle-shaped dart", a "muslin moth" (see photo below) and a "setaceous hebrew character". Catching a S.H.C. formally means it's summer don't you know - an explanation of that rather bold claim can be found on my flickr site.
- Yet more bad news on the cat front - Malu (our male kitten) seems to have responded well to his uveitus drugs (he's now off them and touch wood his left eye seems normal again) but now Yala (the female) has what looks like a terrible infestation of ear mites (I think). Her fur from below her ears has been scratched away and is so raw we've had to put her in one of those conical collars (which has made her the most miserable confused cat in the world). I will take her to the vets tomorrow to see what they say...
- On a lighter note - first elderflower bloom bloomed today. This year we will make elderflower champagne with the crop.
- Potatoes doing well. 15 plants up (I think the chickens and foxes have done for a few plants though).
Male Muslin moth.
- Bad news regarding our male 9 month-old kitten, "Malu". I noticed a haze to his left eye on friday gone and Anna and I took him to the vets on saturday. He has an internal inflammation of the eye -not caused by an external source (bee sting, stick in eye etc...). This probably is anterior uveitis and in extreme cases can lead to blindness in the eye or even loss of the eye. Very often this ocular inflammation is caused by a more serious internal problem in the cat - feline leukaemia, feline immuno-deficiency problems, cancer or something more mundane like toxoplasmosis. The real trouble is that in about 75% of cases of anterior uveitis, the underlying cause is never diagnosed. Not good news then I'm afraid to say. His eye does seem to be responding well to three sets of drugs though, but I am well aware that we could be just treating the symptoms with these drugs, rather than the cause. Fingers, toes and everything else well and truly crossed.
- First (two) strawberry flowers out this weekend (so I planted four more strawberry plants and re-furrowed all 21 potato plants (even though only 11 are showing at present) to errr... celebrate).
- Both swifts seem to be spending longer and longer in the roof, at least in the morning.
