Locusts and Fires

Today was a day earmarked for garden tidying even though it is still very hot.  We were up early and I concentrated on the back outside the kitchen because all sorts of plants have just gone mad!!!  The shrub which forms a column up the side of the wood store was twice as wide as we wanted it, the bougainvillea and clockvine were making a bid for freedom and Hadge's memorial rose was in need of shaping even though it is still in flower (even after John tried to kill it!!).  This is hot and sticky work and I have to admit I fail miserably to come anywhere close to the cleanliness of shingle standard that the Bobster has but if you don't look too closely it looks fine.

The hollyhock which John rescued from the field next door became a maternity ward for the local green grasshopper and the other day I posted a photograph of the emergence of tiny green babies which looked oh so cute.

They may have looked cute but they are lean green eating machines who are systematically stripping the leaves.  Fortunately the plant is setting seed and so I will rescue some for next year as hollyhocks do really well here.

As the temperatures were beginning to rise I decided to limit my efforts to the back garden only before throwing in the towel and escaping to the cool of the swimming pool.

John was busy doing a number of small DIY jobs including putting up some panel pins for a string of solar lights which I wanted to go down Brammall Lane so that when someone comes in the dark they get a nice twinkly welcome.  The panel pins are small and John has pig's tits fingers so there was quite a bit of grumbling and swearing emanating from the front garden - I kept a low profile because, bless him, he does go along with quite a lot of my hairbrained ideas.

Although we have had an extended period of exceptionally hot weather there is still colour in the garden and the climbing plants give very welcome shade and a feeling of lushness (if there is such a word!!).  We got round to potting up the beautiful hibiscus that Lakis and Argy bought me when I was feeling so rough last week - it is a beautiful scarlet red and has loads of buds on it so looks like it will flower for a while.

We decided to go round and visit Les again - his sisters have come from the UK and we have spoken to Pat previously so thought it would be nice to put a face to a voice.  Les was much the same sadly but I sat on the bed and tried to make conversation with him - he still knows who John and I are and I have promised to make him a curry again next week - it seems the least I can do.  It is very sad to see him in this way.

I could smell fire outside today and this was accompanied by the unmistakable sound of the water bearing helicopters and water planes.  This one was in Droushia somewhere near the cement works and must have made the news in various parts of the world because Argy and Lakis had all sorts of family members checking if they were ok.  Fortunately it seems that they got it under control fairly quickly.

We had not been certain, after putting the lights up (which was a bugger of a job and which made John's arms ache) that they were in fact working.  Even having pressed all the buttons and held our hands over the solar panel nothing seemed to happen so we didn't expect to have this pretty display after the sun had gone down.  

We have adopted a different approach to the air-con tonight and have set the timer for it to go off during the night so hopefully we won't wake up freezing!!!  We are also looking at reconfiguring the furniture in that room to get our bed in there because the guest bed is only a double and it feels a little bit too close for comfort at times!

Tomorrow is Friday, we are going shopping and getting what we need for the weekend when Mum will be up on Sunday for lunch and then we are having a quiet day which will culminate in our regular 'date night' and some fillet steak which we picked up in Shuks earlier this week.  We have plans to watch a film and I just cannot see either of us getting beyond the first half hour!!