The Bluestocking: home of the ice-cold Mojito foot-bath

[MarieDeGournay]

Welcome all to the Bluestocking Women's Pub, where food and drink are free as in gluten free, calorie free, alcohol free - but still delicious. And free free too, of course.
Served by highly professional staff who are gerbils.

The Bluestocking Ice-Cold Mojito Foot-bath kept us deliciously cool through the heatwave. Come and join us, in case there's another one🌞

Me too Hedgy.

Clangers for the cup!

I have a book of knitting patterns for making Clangers and the Soup Dragon. One of these days, I will knit one for dh.

I'm definitely Team Clangers.

I found a 1909 edition of A Child's Book of Verses in a second hand bookshop, near enough destroyed with pages stuck in with sellotape and pages scribbled on but I managed to save the title page and I have it framed. This later one is another one I am familiar with.

The pyracantha, as far as I could reach it, wasn’t as bad as the next job. If you think pyracantha is good as natural barbed wire, the next level up is the spiky bastard berberis which DH decided to plant in front of the downstairs window.

Me too, I still, occasionally and in secret, watch them.

<covers ears> Berberis eeeek

Well, I'm glad you came in to eat the coleslaw that was hidden behind the chips Boiled. I loathe the stuff (mainly because I hate mayonnaise) but forgot to ask them to leave it off. The fish was good though.

ETA: I'm still rooting for Tunnel (did you see what I did there?) 😁

As I suspected, it took a while to read through the ET thread. I'm glad there are at least a few down-to-earth no-nonsense types in the Civil Service. He wasn't having any of the suggestion that he should have re-run the whole grievance case and stuck to his guns.

My bête noire of gardening is Mahonia. It looks quite benign until you stick your hand into it to prune out a sucker. 😨

I'll add Grevillea to the list of nasty spiky plants. I tried taking cuttings once, and the only thing I have to say is Owww!

Is Grevillea the gerbil who chases the goats whilst she waves around a pitchfork?

Yes, that's her. Cross her at your peril!

I’d have thought you’d love them, Hedgehog!😂

Fuck that i have scar on my left eyebrow from a power saw i no longer use.

beside which I AM THE ONLY PRICKLY BUGGER IN THE VILLAGE.

I love the way the Middle Earth team have been transed.

I really hate pyracantha. I had to chop an enormous one out of a previous garden and take it to the tip. I ended up with lots of infected scratches that meant I stank of TCP for about a week.

I have a bad habit of letting my garden tools get blunt. My gamekeeper buddy once casually picked up my billhook to check the heft and weight, and tested the blade. He didn't say a word, just took it over to his knackered pick-up, produced a whetstone from somewhere (he has more in that pick-up than most people fit in the average garage*), sharpened it and put it back where he'd found it.

I was suitably chastened.

Cat vet visit report. Skittles is fine - has had her rabies shot and her claws clipped and appears to be in good health. Reese fought like a demon so no shot was given. We have to take her back on Tuesday for rabies shot, claws clipped and bloodwork, and have been given a couple of gabapentin capsules to give her - one the night before and one on the morning of the visit. The vet thinks she may have become hyperthyroid but they need the blood test to diagnose properly. It's quite possible - Skittles had that about six years ago and had radiation treatment for it, though Reese is likely to be amenable to the simpler cream-rubbed-into-the-ear treatment. I've never seen her behave with the vet the way she did today. The bill for this visit today was $283.09.

I think that the gabapentin will do the trick. When my last, late, very reactive dog had to go to the vet for a scan which led to her being immediately pts she walked in completely chilled. Which was actually far worse than being her usual feisty, non- compliant self to be honest. But it should help you I hope.

Oh how awful @Thehorticulturalhussie to walk in with your dog and have to have them pts. I'm so sorry - that must have been hard.

I'm pretty sure the vet is right in thinking this is hyperthyroid, and if so it's fairly easily treated. We know we're not likely to have Reese for more than another year or two, but it would be good if she could be healthier in herself for that time.

Thank you. It was awful but I knew that if the lump in her jaw was cancer, and it was, that the kindest thing was for her not to wake up again, she just wouldn’t tolerate any treatment. Sounds like you have a better situation, I do hope so.
It’s better a week too early than a day too late.

B&B were extremely good on their walk this afternoon. A deer (I think a water deer) got up right by the edge of the track. They got their legs under them as I yelled, 'HeyheyheyNO', and stopped before I got the whistle in my mouth and blew.

The tempo of rural life is currently verging on the manic. In the past couple of weeks the hay has been cut, dried and baled, and you can now see just how brutal a haircut the grass was given. Great arcs of water are sloshing out over the spuds and the onions, with the irrigation pumps going 24/7. One field after another is being stripped of its barley. A week ago it was all standing. Now about half of it has been cut, and trailers of both grain and straw bales are trundling and rattling along the lanes.

Out this afternoon I heard the rumble of a combine's engine from behind the hedge, coming along to its next place of work. I put B&B on the lead, just in case, but the combine stopped on the corner and Angus the farmer clambered down. He was in classic farmer summer gear: baseball cap, a truly filthy t-shirt, grubby jeans, and work boots.
'How's it going? Was that you the other day, over near Hollylodge?'
'Yeah, cutting for Stuart. And I've just done that field of Wright's, over by the ponies, and I'm about to start on mine.'
'Better than last year?' (Last year was terrible.)
He pulled a face. 'If you're cutting in June, it in't gonna be good. We haven't got the weights yet, so....'
'You had a bit more rain,' I said, hopefully.
He made an equivocating motion with his hand. 'That downpour early June was more'n we'd had the previous two months. And it was...'
'...A bit late in the day?'
'Ye-ah.' Drawn out, East Anglian. They've farmed in this village for a hundred years. 'Anyway...' He indicated his mate on the tractor. I wished him luck and he went over to the tractor while I inspected the combine. The dogs inspected it too. Batshit explored underneath and managed to hit her head (cla-unggg!) on the bottom of the grain bin.

When I got home I could hear a combine roaring in the distance. It was still going at 7.15. It's tough, being a farmer, especially a small farmer. The big boys, the ones with 1,000 acres, they work bloody hard but they do okay. The ones like Angus, with under 500, struggle to pay the bills. Which is why he's out all hours on his combine, cutting other farmers' grain.

One photo is of the barley he was about to start on. It will be in a big pile in a barn by now. The other is the augur.

All the best for Reese, Chickadee. And Hussy, it sounds as if you made the right call.

My sympathy, Errol. The previous owners of our house planted a pyracantha in the corner between the porch and the kitchen window and it's a nightmare trying to keep it under control. They also had a thing about berberis which I hadn't come across before we moved here and now loathe with a deadly passion. DH has finally agreed we can get rid of them and plant things that don't stab you whenever you brush past them.

Morning all - well it feels like that because I crashed out when the workmen left at 5 and when I looked at the time again, it was 9.15😦
I'm not very resilient at all - I can usually get through demanding stuff OK at the time, but there's always a price to pay afterwards, healthwise.
The work will be finished on Monday, and I have the weekend to recover, so relief is in sight.

I've missed lots of good stuff in the Bluey - more translations of the name Smith - Goff is like Gabha which is what Mac Gowan comes from, it's not often that Welsh looks like Irish and v versa, although they are cousin languages.
And Ferrero/Herrero - I was racking my brains for the Spanish for Smith and couldn't remember it!

Lovely children's poetry thank you For some reason RLS's poetry has never really appeared on my radar - not being British, I didn't have a lot of British childhood fare when I was little - Enid Blyton, Beatrix Potter, RLS etc.
I'm enjoying discovering them in adulthood - well not Blyton, but discovering Potter in adulthood is discovering a wonderful writer full stop, not just a children's writer.

And now I'll happily discover RLS's poems.

What else have I missed? I was apprehensive when I read Chickadeeinme's first post about the vet visit, but the outcome seems to be OK if I'm reading it right? Hope the treatment goes well.

Lovely to see FanOfBen here in this oasis of common sense and down-to-earth reality after the ST Tribunal - * *you're very welcome. Yes that's a gerbil serving your drinks. And a capybara fixing a squeaky door. And out of the corner of your eye, you did see a spectral wombat, who does our accounts.
So yes, waaaay more sensible than the ST Tribunal😁

The Gerbil World Cup just gets better and better😂Excellent work keeping us updated, Myrtle!
Harriet is supporting whoever wears red and white, doesn't matter who, she'll be happy as long as they wear the same colours as her Christmas World Cup hat.

I'm sure I'm missing out lots of posts but I've read and enjoyed them all as usual, and send lots of Bluestockingish thoughts to everybody💙

I’m glad the end’s in sight, @MarieDeGournay.

It was lovely to recall RLS’s poems. I’m going to look out for that book now but it has to be with the cover I remember from childhood!

Just back from a night at the pub - that’s 2 Friday nights in a row spent out with different groups of terfs 😀. Kitty’s got tired of playing pawball & gone out to the balcony to contemplate the moon.