Robin on my Teacup, Country Calendar - July Part 2 - The ugly caterpillar

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Look out for this caterpillar in you garden this July

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Home from hospital (again)

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Bang, crash flash. It was not a thunderstorm but noises in my head as I gradually came back to consciousness. My operation was over and I slowly checked my senses I could hear the theatre nurse on my right, I could smell the disinfectant air, I could feel my fingers and I could see. But could I read? I remember when my mother had a brain operation (mine was not this) they asked her as she came round from anaesthetic, ‘Who is the Prime minister?’.  She knew it was Harold Wilson – not too difficult as he had quite a long stint in the job. But if they asked me the same question, I think that I could have been forgiven for not knowing because we have had so many different ones recently. In any case, my brain seemed to be working as I squinted to read a notice on the wall it said, ‘Quiet Please’, and of course all I wanted to do was to shout out in joy that it was all over. When I was waiting the long weeks before my operation, I read a poster telling me how to prepare. Lose weight (I a
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The dangers of living in the country

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I know that you might think that living in the country we do not get to see people very much. And it is true that I cannot walk out of my door and have a natter with a next door neighbour and I can’t just pop in to a cafe and catch up with friends who happen to be there. But you would be surprised how often I do meet up with friends – it’s just that you have to make more of an effort and it all has to be arranged and planned and when we do meet – we never stop taking – you see there is so much to say after only having our pets for company. Well, anyway, I am trying to tell you about what happened last night. Now the nights are drawing in we all agreed to meet up for an evening meal in our nearest town to cheer ourselves up. I offered to pick up a friend in a nearby village and drive to the nearest town miles away. What a good time we had catching up on news and ... well, just talking to a person and not a cat or bees or the like. But at the end of the evening I was dismayed to find tha
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Baby sparrows fall

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We have ‘July drop’. This is not a disease, thank goodness, but something perfectly harmless that happens to apples each year. Little apples, which have not developed fully, fall to the ground. It is nature’s way of thinning the fruit naturally. Ours have been dropping for some weeks now, but this year we had frosts late in the spring and so the fruit is not too plentiful. I am hoping the drop stops soon. We are relying on our apples especially at this time when we are trying to be self-sufficient in vegetables and fruit. Two baby sparrows had July drop here too. They fell from their nest, somehow, I don’t know why. Perhaps it was a bird of prey that they were trying to escape from or the wind that broke up their flimsy nest structure. In any case, I heard their parents chirping from the trees and the nestlings soon toddled off into the nearby long grass. The ‘common’ house sparrow is not now so common, in fact it is on the RSPB red list which means that there is cause for concer
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