Skip to main content

Frog Invasion!

One of the tiny frogs currently in our garden.

An army of tiny frogs has invaded our garden.  The photo above shows just one of them, sitting on our block-paved drive at the side of our house, which gives a good idea of just how small they truly are.  They're so cute!  We have to really watch where we're putting our feet, there're so many of them.  It's as well that we have no chickens at the moment, as the eggs would be so full of reassembled frog that the eggs would start hopping.

Our roses have been fabulous this year.  Not so our raspberries, which tasted vile and quickly went past their best.  My attempt at growing garlic ended in a shrivelled disaster, and I suspect that the sun has been too fierce for the shoots to thrive.  The rosemary cuttings have taken well to their new spot in the far border, however, and the broom looks ok too.  The big box of wild flower seeds that I sprinkled round the borders has produced various poppies and a smattering of white alyssum and that's the lot.  Oh well, it only cost 50p - and I love poppies anyway, so no loss there.

The apple tree has a heavy crop which isn't ready to harvest yet, for all this being Lughnasadh, but it's looking very promising.  The berries on our rowan tree are starting to turn red already, which seems a bit early.

Other news:  I'm still waiting to receive my NVQ Level 3 certificate in Customer Care, which relates to my day job.  I spoke to the college yesterday and was told it might take another two months before the document arrives, which seems crazy as I passed the course in April.  How hard can it be to print-off a certificate?   Open the computer file, fill in my details (name, date), hit the print button, place it in an envelope and mail it off.  That sounds easy to me.

I was interested to read about Stephen King and his family, which has five writers within in.  My brother Eric and one of my sisters, Hazel, are both writers.  One of Hazel's daughters, Catherine, writes fanfic and I hope she'll turn to something that is of her own creation soon. Hazel's other daughter, Vikkey, is turning into a skilled photographer - which is an interest shared by Richard and me; it's through photography that we first met.   My other sister, Evelyn, is married to Andy who sings around various clubs in the North West.  Uncle George plays a guitar.  If I remember rightly, Uncle Frank is a poet and musician. (If I seem vague, it's because he lives in Australia and if I ever met him, when I was a small child, then I can't recall it).   I've probably missed a few people out here.... 

Comments

Eric said…
Frank is also a carpenter and writer - he's had a few books published, mostly of his poetry, but also an off-beat life story/pub yarn! I very much doubt that you met him, as he went to Oz as a ten pound pom, in about 1960, along with John and Vera, and their partners..
I don't think any of your/our Mum's sisters ever did anything like this, and her only other brother John was taken by cancer a few years ago. I don't think he did anything either.
I can recall meeting Vera when she came over to England for a holiday, many years ago. Otherwise, I only know these people through Mum talking about them.

I've just run a quick Google search for Frank's books but found nothing, unfortunately.

Popular posts from this blog

A Cure for Aging?

"All that we profess to do is but this, - to find out the secrets of the human frame; to know why the parts ossify and the blood stagnates, and to apply continual preventatives to the effort of time.  This is not magic; it is the art of medicine rightly understood.  In our order we hold most noble -, first, that knowledge which elevates the intellect; secondly, that which preserves the body.  But the mere art (extracted from the juices and simples) which recruits the animal vigour and arrests the progress of decay, or that more noble secret which I will only hint to thee at present, by which heat or calorific, as ye call it, being, as Heraclitus wisely taught, the primordial principle of life, can be made its perpectual renovator...." Zanoni, book IV, chapter II, by Edward Bulwer-Lytton, first published in 1842. Oroboros keyring - Spooky Cute Designs The idea of being able to achieve an immortal life is probably as old as human life itself.  Folklore and myt...

Remembering Richie Tattoo Artist's Studio

Richard in the street entrance to his tattoo studio in Liverpool. The vertical sign next to Richard is now in the Liverpool Tattoo Museum. Yesterday, my sister Evelyn, Richard and myself stood outside Richard's old tattoo studio and looked up at the few remaining signs, whose paint has now mostly flacked away to reveal bare wood. On the studio's window are stick-on letters which read, "Art", where once it boldly announced his presence as the city's only "Tattoo Artist".  I can remember him buying that simple plastic lettering from an old-fashioned printer's shop. This was in 1993, not long after he'd opened the studio and before he could afford better signs. After he'd patiently stuck them onto the glass we realised that from the outside the sign read "Artist Tattoo", so we had to carefully peel the letters off the window and have another go, laughing over having made such an obvious error yet worried in case we spoiled the letteri...

Dear Diary...

Do you keep a diary? Why did you start it, and, if you started one then stopped, why was that? What sort of things do (or did) you write about? I ask as, as a long-time diarist myself, there is an interesting piece in The Guardian today which talks about one woman's diary habit, which she began at the age of fourteen. I started a diary around that age too, but destroyed it after my mother accused me of using cocaine.  A stern scene followed, with both parents perched ram-rod straight in their armchairs, while I was subjected to a heated inquisition. Where had I bought it, and who from? Didn't I know such things led to death and doom? I struggled to decipher their bewildering accusations, until Mum blurted out, "I read it in your diary!" To find my diary, Mum would first have had to rummage through my dressing table, obviously when I wasn't around to protest. Her intrusion on my privacy was assumed by both parents to be acceptable, and now, with this handwritten c...