A Scary Visitor...

When I got up to feed the cats early morning I found Miss Minnie playing with this humongously large beetle.  It was still alive and I encouraged it into a jam-jar so that I could photograph it and then release it over into the field next door.  I had to ask on a Biodiversity site what it was and apparently this is Prionus Coriarius or more commonly the Tanner or Sawyer beetle which is the most massive of European beetles with the female being larger than the male.  Apparently the males are hairier than females.  The larvae develop in rotten wood of a deciduous or coniferous tree and look just like the witchetty grubs that 'celebrities' are forced to eat in the Jungle.  The beetles are mainly nocturnal so I am guessing that this one (which I think was female but didn't inspect too closely) probably flew into the kitchen door and was stunned thus allowing Miss Minnie to have a play with it.

I was having a day in the garden today as I am trying to get the borders into a manageable state for John.

I started in the front garden and worked my way round.  Interestingly the pink hollyhock which John rescued from the field next door several years ago has become a white hollyhock.  Last year it was both pink and white!  Still pretty but not quite so distinctive as it was originally.

The trouble with gardening is that I start out with a plan to tidy an area and then that plan shifts, whilst in the front garden (the bit outside our bedroom window) I decided that I wanted to move things around as well as have a tidy.  

We inherited a lovely plant from Wendy and Bill, in fact we inherited several which we said we would plant-sit initially in case they bought another property here after selling in Pissouri.  We still have the 'tree', the two crowns of thorn didn't like the wet weather over winter and rotted sadly.  The tree however is doing great and is a weeping fig - it was just inside the front gate, a position which did not do it justice, so I wanted to move it to the 'oriental' garden which is outside the kitchen window as it would be more obvious and would go with the lovely bonsai clipped tree which Hazel gave us.

It was a very hot start to the day so I could only do a few hours, in fact it turned into more like 5 hours before I had to call it a day and John and I had to shower and change as we were going to visit Klaus and Sheila and have a spot of lunch with them.  When we arrived catastrophe had struck as they are currently on a temporary electric supply because of work being done around them to separate out plots of land and the supply kept cutting out and Klaus was midway through cooking.  Klaus was quite circumspect about it - he was right that there was nothing he could do about it, not least because he doesn't really know how the temporary supply has been rigged up!!!  John and he did some fiddling about in the kitchen sufficient enough that Klaus was able to complete cooking the meal although maybe not as he had hoped from the outset.  Whatever the difficulties the food was, as always, super lovely and we had a really nice few hours with them catching up.  Sheila is my reference point for my upcoming operation at the Evangelismos as she had one done by the same Dr a few months back.

We had a quiet afternoon once back home.  John wanted to watch the Ashes cricket - it must be a pleasure pain thing!!!!  It was a very warm and sticky evening so we decided to spend the final hour or so before going to bed sat outside under the Glastonbury speaker light.  I also decided to light the candles in the lovely ceramic holders which I bought with money that Hazel had left us.  They are beautiful so thanks Haze xxxx