After the most recent spate of bunny captures I was at my wits end. It’s no fun being woken up by your cat bringing you a rabbit – live or dead – at 1am three nights running when you have to get up for work at 5.30am. Granted Mr Newt is primarily responsible for bunny captures, but I have the task of keeping my eye on any bunnies racing around the bedroom while he fetches the bunny bucket to transport them back to their field.

So, after a post on a bulletin board, several excellent ideas for reducing the problem. Some suggestions clearly wouldn’t work. First of all – erect a fence. Unfortunately a six foot fence seems to prove no obstacle to a determined cat. Secondly, build places for bunnies to hide – as far as I can tell, they have plenty of burrows to hide in, they just seem incapable of reaching them in time. Both fine suggestions – but already tried and failed. Thirdly, declaw Mr Boo and make him an indoor cat. Sooooooo not going to happen – illegal in any case, he’d drive me bonkers wailing to go out, and I don’t like the idea of declawing, I think it’s cruel. YMMV, but, this is my blog and my cat, so my opinions count. This high tech solution is my absolute favourite, but sadly not commercially available (and probably a tad expensive).

So, we were left with variations on a theme of ignore him / praise him / play with dead mice to show him you can catch them yourself, or collars, or blocking off the catflap. Logistically with two cat flaps and three cats, blocking off the cat flap was feasible, but a tricky option. So I’m left with collars.

I’m really not sure it will work, but it’s a cheap option unless I go for the electronic beepy one. Decided to go for plain old bells first because I don’t want to spend a fortune on a beepy collar that he may take off within 10 minutes. So Mr Boo is now the proud owner of a shiny blue reflective collar with two shiny blue bells. I almost bought him a sparkly pink one, but decided that was too cruel. I put it on him on Wednesday morning. He went bonkers in the garden for 2 minutes, and since then it doesn’t really seem to bother him in the slightest. He jingles and jangles all over the house – leading to the new song of ‘Jingle Boo, Jingle Boo, rabbits run away’ to the tune of Jingle Bells, and so far (now Saturday afternoon), no more rabbits! Mind you it has been really wet and miserable, so I’m not getting my hopes up just yet. But the fact that he will wear a collar and it doesn’t seem to bother him gives me hope. I’ll keep you posted, and take a photo of the Prince of Darkness in his shiny collar as well.

That’s one thing I’d forgotten about living in Manchester. It really honestly does rain ALL THE TIME!

Seriously, it has now been raining non-stop, and I mean non-stop for the past 6 days. It’s good for the garden, and my apologies to all those facing drought orders, but please, can it just stop for one minute! It’s not as though it’s a torrential downpour all the time, more of a constant perma-drizzle. Even the cats can’t seem to escape it. BBC comes back so wet he has to be dried with a towel – doesn’t really seem to bother him though. But Holly hates the wet and is usually very sensible and finds good places to hide, but today even Holly came back soaking wet, and rather grumpy.

Several people have kindly offered to help me identify some of the plants in my garden, so that I can start to think about what works, what doesn’t, what I need to add and so on. So today, I took 27 pictures of various shrubs in the garden. I know the photography isn’t the best, and I’m sure I’ve probably taken several photos of different plants that are all actually the same.

And now it’s over to you – I can name about 2 of the plants I took photos of, so I’m in great need of help! As an added bonus, if anyone has any idea whether any of these are native British plants – that would be a great help.

If you click on the thumbnails it will take you to a larger picture, and if you then click on that larger picture, you should see a huge picture.

I really want to try to get into this gardening lark, because my grandad loved his garden, and I’d really hate for me and Newt to manage to ruin it because of our sheer ineptitude.

Edited to add numbers to plants to make this a bit easier.

	Plant 1 – This is one of the ones I think I know – well, I know it’s generic class, and I know its English name. The bees seem to quite like the flowers on this.
	Plant 2 – Two smaller plants
	Plant 3 – Ooops. Quite a bit of glare on this photo (it’s an unusually sunny day for Manchester) but this has creamy flowers at the moment.
	Plant 4 – There are at least two of these in the garden, and they look like they still have the dead flowers from last year on them (although they may be supposed to look like that, I really don’t know). They also seem quite large – about 3′ high.
	Plant 5 – Another quite large plant.
	Plant 6 – Absolutely no idea what this is – but again, I think we’ve got 2 or 3 of them.
	Plant 7 – This is quite large, and looks a little bit similar to Plant6.
	Plant 8 – Now this one I’m REALLY curious about. It’s started growing quite vigorously in the last 2 weeks. I think I might have to take daily photos of it, because I’m really interested in what it will turn out to be.
	Plant 9 – A HUGE version of Plant1 and another very large tree-type plant.
	Plant 10 – Another variegated (is that right?) plant. Again, I’m not totally convinced this is different from the earlier ones.
	Plant 11 – This one is quite pretty – looks very autumny, even though it’s spring.
	Plant 12 – This has bright pink flowers that are starting to fall off now. The bees and butterflies seem to like it.
	Plant 13 – I think the orange flowers on this are quite new – I’d guess they’ve been there less than a week, I don’t remember seeing them before.
	Plant 14 – Well, I thought this was a rose – but my mum assures me that it isn’t. She says it’s the same as Plant12, but it has double flowers rather than single ones.
	Plant 15 – This seems to have some plum coloured berries on it.
	Plant 16 – ???
	Plant 17 – Doesn’t seem to have any flowers yet.
	Plant 18 – I quite like this one – is it an azaelea?
	Plant 19 – Another one – probably the same as one of the previous ones.
	Plant 20 – Is this the same as plant 18?
	Plant 21 – Yay! Here’s the other one I know, and I’m also pretty certain this is native as well.
	Plant 22 – And now I’m back to having no idea at all.
	Plant 23 – I like this one.
	Plant 24 – Again, the bees like this one. It sort of looks native to me – or it could even be a weed.
	Plant 25 – That’s quite nice.
	Plant 26 – These are in a small bed at the front.
	Plant 27 – Some more small plants in the front bed.

I’ve been looking at other people’s blogs recently, and been amazed at all the gorgeous photos. So, I’m determined to take more photos (not sure how long that resolution will last, or how soon I’ll run out of webspace, but here we go).

So to start with, socks. About a week ago I finished my first sock. I loved the yarn – Tiger from Opal’s rainforest collection, but I wasn’t all that keen on the heel, and it worked out a bit big.

So, I ordered some Sirdar Country Style 4ply to practice on – because Opal is just too lovely for practising and experiments. I also got some 2.0mm dpns rather than 2.5mm, to help the size problem, and give a tighter fabric at the end of it. I also wanted to try short row heels. So I spent most of yesterday looking up instructions for different types of short row, getting really confused, and making MASSIVE holes where they shouldn’t have been. On Knitwerk’s site, I found a list of short row heel resources. I couldn’t get to grips with the ‘wrapped stitches’ technique at all, but with a combination of the tutorials on NonaKnits and Alison’s Blue Blog, I’m almost getting there. So I’m currently trying to make the ankle sock from Alison’s pattern.

I’ve managed to do the heel – but I don’t think it’s the neatest thing ever created. I think I’ve got the hang of doing the decreases when knitting – but I’m not 100% I’m doing it right when purling. Still, I don’t think it looks too bad. I’ve got 2 major-ish holes from when I finished the short rows – but I think I know how to close those next time. I have found the short rows much more tricky than the ‘heel flap’ technique, but I like the look sooooo much better, so I’m determined to persevere with it. So today, I can sit in the garden, and do the easy-peasy bit, before I have to start thinking about the next lot of short rows for the toes!

This is what I’ve been doing today. Putting up the bench that we bought at the weekend. Started yesterday when Newt got home. Foolishly allowed Newt to tighten one of the bolts. Newt broke bolt. I swore at Newt. My dad came this morning. We went to B&Q. They don’t sell that size of bolt. We go home and attack broken bolt with a hacksaw to turn it into a screw. Hey presto – a new garden bench!

After that I sat outside and played with cats – apparently the middle shelf was just made for Mr Boo. I knitted – tricky when it’s as windy as it was today. I listened to my Sky Gnome. It was lovely.

And as promised some more photos of the garden. There would have been a few more, but the batteries on the camera gave up at this point.

The view towards the house from the back of the garden.

The view from where I sit on my new garden bench! (Sorry – this photo isn’t great, seems very dark, and I’m really not sure why…)

I really wanted to put the garden bench up today. It’s lovely weather, I managed to avoid the temptation of putting it up yesterday when it was rainy and horrid. So I try to lug the box out of the garage and through the house to the back. Seriously not happening. It’s not budging, not even a little bit. Yes, I can drag it painfully along the ground, but lift and carry up several steps. No. Not happening. So I open the box and take it piece by piece to the garden. I settle down with a cup of coffee, my Sky Gnome tuned to Jeremy Vine an allen key and a BIG screwdriver and………

I CAN’T DO IT!!!!!!!

Cue lots of stamping of little feet and general grumpiness. It’s not that I don’t know how – I didn’t even get that far! It’s just that I have to hold too many pieces together, and then have a free hand to screw them together. So, Mr Newt will have to help me when he gets home. So annoying because it’s really nice outside and I wanted to sit in the garden. Poo.

On a happier note, our mushroom kit has arrived. Haven’t unpacked it yet because I think Mr Newt will probably be quite excited about it. We also have beer and wine bubbling away in the spare bedroom.

Yay!! I’ve got a week (well, almost 10 days) off work, for no real reason other than that I have to use up my holiday. I don’t really have anything specific planned, a night out with work, hopefully meeting some friends, tidying up the dining room (which is frankly quite scary at the moment), and putting together a garden bench. Unfortunately the weather today is rubbish – it’s quite cold and quite wet, so the bench will have to wait until tomorrow.

Tonight I’m off to the cinema with Newt, mum and dad to see Ice Age 2, and then maybe off somewhere afterwards for food. I’ve been knitting socks – and have managed to finish one, although it’s rather big, and I’ve started the second of the pair. I’ve also ordered some smaller needles so that hopefully my next pair won’t be too big, and some cheaper yarn to practice with.

At work I’ve been going on various courses, and I can now cannulate (well, in theory I can – in practice it’s a wee bit tricky, but I’m getting there). I’ve also been suturing and generally quite enjoying work – still scary though, and still very glad to have some time off.

At home, I’ve taken the car to the garage twice which I’m not impressed about – once for a service and then for a new radiator which I’m not convinced was totally necessary. I wasn’t aware that it was leaking, but anyhow…. I’ve also had to pay a carpenter to rescue a rabbit from in the kitchen and reapply skirting board under my kitchen units, and a gas man to mend my stupid boiler. I did speak to him about combi boilers, but he seems to think it will be best to wait until I do the kitchen. I’ve been ebaying stuff, and freecycling stuff that won’t ebay. So slowly but surely the amount of junk we own is reducing. I still need to buy a water butt for our garden, but that will have to wait until next months credit card bill, and I’ve also ordered some grow-your-own mushrooms. I remembered doing this when I was younger (probably about 22 years ago), and checked with my mum and she confirmed that it was successful, and we only stopped doing it because we got sick of mushrooms! Well, Newt and I eat a LOT of mushrooms, so I’ve ordered a kit, and I’ll let you know how we get on. We’re also composting now – the bin is in place at the back of the garden, and is beautifully hidden by some big tree thing. So on the whole we’re managing to reduce our landfill contribution quite substantially.

We had quite a nice bank holiday weekend, a good combination of doing nothing, and getting out and about. On sunday we took a walk to a local pub over the lane, lots of beer was drunk, and then we managed to stagger back over the lane and home. We also bought the bench for the garden and managed to do a bit of shopping, before some friends called in for tea – our first Leeds-based vistors, which was lovely.