I can't keep up with the latest expert findings on health. Last week I'm sure that owning a cat was good for me, as stroking it would lower my blood pressure and reduce my risks of heart attack and stroke. I even vaguely thought that pet owners lived longer than hygiene obsessed animal haters. This week it seems the cats are going to give me toxoplasma, putting me at increased risk of psychosis and schizophrenia.
The chickens, meanwhile, are discovering the back garden. The Systems Administrator let them out on returning from an abortive trip to Landguard Fort (the ferry from Harwich turned out to only seat twelve people, and to be heavily oversubscribed) and settled down in a deckchair in the front garden, but the chickens, instead of consenting to be minded and sticking to foraging in the turning circle, set out on an expedition to explore half way down the top lawn. As I was weeding in the back I found myself in the position of principal chicken minder, and the chickens didn't stick to my planned timetable of packing up at six in order to have time to do my Pilates exercises and write today's blog. They made it safely home to the hen house, but they won't all last the winter if they insist on wandering off into the back. The fox will have the outliers.
Lemon balm has also wandered off into the back garden. It is supposed to grow in the herb bed in the front, where it spreads energetically, being a member of the mint family. At some point I must have cut the old stalks down after they had ripened seed, and put them in the compost bins, because it now crops up in various places where I've mulched with home made compost in the past. Given the way it spreads, I don't want it all over the garden, so I root the rogue plants out as I find them. Fortunately, the leaves give off a pleasant lemon scent freely if you touch them, so the wafts of citrus alert me to its presence, and I can seek it out and dispose of it. Sometimes it doesn't pay to advertise.
I planted the herb bed because it seemed a nice idea to have fresh herbs to cook with. We don't make us much use of it as we could do. The SA does most of the cooking, and buys jars of dried sage leaves for flavouring pork, despite the fact that we have a large and sprawling bush growing a few steps from the front door. We were chatting as I weeded the bed, when I mentioned that the thing I was pruning the gone-over flower stems out of was sage, and the SA's eyes lit on it with curiosity. 'Oh, is that sage?'. Having just looked up the properties of lemon balm I can see that I ought to do more with it, since it apparently reduces stress, is anti-bacterial, improves mental performance and repels mosquitoes. All I do with it is admire the bees foraging on the flowers, and pull up unwanted plants. I could make it into herbal tea. Or ice cream.
I bought a new gym ball from John Lewis click-and-collect (the old gym ball, which was from Argos, began to go very soggy and neither of us could work out how we had inflated it in the first place, or find any adaptor that fitted). I pumped it up this afternoon, with the tiny plastic pump that came with it. The pump also has a reverse action for deflating the ball, and one of the two (genuine? One doesn't know nowadays) reviews on the website said how the ball packed down very small for storage. Given the time it took to blow the thing up once, and the tackiness of the pump, I thought that mine would be staying inflated, with the pump reserved for occasional top-ups. The gym ball set, along with three pairs of thick cotton tights (winter is nearly here) arrived in a box only very slightly larger than the cats' current favourite Amazon box. We have put the new down next to the old, to see if Our Ginger and the big tabby will use it. The old box is so old, dirty and revolting, it really is a health hazard, never mind toxoplasma.
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