It's not just me is it?

I'm detecting more than a hint of busy-ness around the blogosphere at the moment.  Those last couple of weeks of the school year, with the assemblies, productions, outings, collections and odd last minute requests for parental input are frantic as ever.  Gardens and allotments are romping away, with weeds and harvests and lawns and a need for water.  There are holidays, with the organising, the packing, the unpacking.  It's not just me, I'm sure of it.  The post-holiday week has bumped along in a slightly panicky way.  Just one more until they are home from school and it becomes a bit impossible to get anything done.

I went to the allotment just once last week, and not for very long.  It needed weeding and watering, but there wasn't much time so I did the most important thing, I collected the food.  A handful of broad beans, a trugful of onions, two gherkins and some surprisingly blemish-free potatoes.  At home the runner beans have reached the tops of their canes and there have been enough for a meal.

I haven't eaten any yet, (a very short and very tedious diet), but everyone else enjoyed them.  The raspberries are dripping with ripe fruit, it's most unusual for me not to pick them the second they're ripe, but this year I am behind with everything.  It might be a job for the children.

I tried very hard yesterday to get useful things done.  In the end I tidied a kitchen drawer.  It wasn't on The List, but strangely it made me feel calmer.  Something constructive had been done.  And now every time I need to get a charger out (it was that drawer) I feel much chirpier.  

The garden is full of flowers; lots of sweet peas and some cornflowers and marigolds.  I had some sweet peas in the house until yesterday, now I just seem to have lots of greenfly in the places where they were.  Is it just my imagination or are there lots of flies around this year?  Not just greenfly, but blackfly, midges, bluebottles, fruit flies and horse flies.  I have a HUGE bite on the back of my leg.  Oh and mentioning fruit flies reminds me, I think all of my worms have died.  One day they were fine, three or four days later it looked as if they'd all disappeared from the wormery.  I need to investigate more fully.  But the bin is definitely breeding fruit flies, it's quite horrid when you lift the lid.  

Could you bear some flower photos?  Despite the neglect, it's been nice to see some prettiness in the garden.  Any day now I'll get round to cutting all of the sweet pea blooms off.  In the meantime, I'm enjoying the tangle.

The guinea pig is trundling along quite well, after her abscess problem.  She's still on antibiotics, which requires a syringe of medicine once a day.  I thought I'd show you how it works.  In fact I was going to call this post "How to give a guinea pig antibiotics: A Tutorial", but I was worried that people trawling the internet might come here expecting some sensible advice.  I know that you regular readers know perfectly well there won't be anything useful here.

First catch your pig.  You'll need a small towel handy and it helps to get the medicine in the syringe first before you grab the piggie (ask me how I know).  

Then turn her upside down.  They don't like this much.

Then all you have to do is pop the syringe in her mouth and squeeze in half the medicine, let her swallow it and repeat with the other half.  Simples.

Well, actually, as you can imagine there's a fair bit of wriggling and cussing.  Any time she feels anything near her mouth she struggles away.  It's almost impossible to put the syringe in so I've taken to squirting it into her mouth from directly above.  If I score a direct hit she does this cute thing where she smacks her lips and makes munching noises.  If I miss it runs down her chin and I swear a bit.  You'd think they'd make it in some delicious impossible-to-resist guinea pig flavour like they do with Calpol and small children.  Anyway, once the torture is complete she gets to go on the grass.  She seems really well and the wound is healing nicely so the bit I do get down her neck is doing the trick.  

Last night I went with the Beavers (small-sized Cubs, mostly 6 and 7 year olds) on a canal boat.  It does sound like madness, but it was actually most enjoyable.  We strapped them very securely into life jackets and chugged up and down a little stretch of the Gloucester to Sharpness canal.  It was so nice to get away from dry land and all of the madness.  

We're off to a wedding later on today, then tomorrow there's the final football tournament of the season.  Training starts again on 2 August, but I'm not thinking about that right now.

I've been on a diet this week to fit into the dress I have.  In truth it was too little, too late.  Of course.  That could be my motto I think.  I didn't start until Tuesday.  The dress goes on fine, but I'll need to hold my stomach in all day.  Or maybe just for the photos.  The boys are under strict instructions to be calm and quiet and sensible.  They are all tired, irritable and very silly, so it's not looking promising.  The feathery thing I have for my hair is larger and more, well, striking, than I imagined it would be.  I'm wearing it anyway.  At least you'll be able to spot me in a crowd.  Do people wear feathery things in their hair to weddings any more?  I have no idea.  I'm never in step with everyone else anyway, so I'm quite used to it.  Will we be able to play football on the lawn?  What we will do all day if we can't?  Oh it could be a long day.

Next week I shall be focussing on getting things slightly in control but also taking a little time to enjoy the summer.  It should involve quite so much rushing about should it?  Once the children have broken up from school things should be more relaxed, albeit in a noisy, shouty, fighty, chaotic sort of a way, if that makes sense.  I really can't wait, we need a break.  Or maybe it's just me.