These are a few of my favourite things

Life's not all bad at the moment. I've added a health update at the end to keep it separate so if you are interested to read it, you will see that I've had a rough time lately, but I'm still getting out in the garden as much as possible because the weather is just so lovely. I've been really enjoying listening to the bird song and seeing butterflies, bees and hoverflies, more and more flowers opening up and just generally everything coming to life. I've seen my first Holly Blue butterfly but no photos of it yet. 

Blossom is going crazy here with the warm weather and now my eating plums are covered in flowers, the wild cherries and now also the eating cherries are covered in blossom too, as well as the ornamental cherry trees by the pond. Leaves are appearing on some of the trees and every day that I look out of the window something has changed. This is the month with the most change in the year so I don't want to miss any of it! P.S. Are you old enough to notice the title of my post is a lyric from the Sound of Music? My favourite film of all time. :-)

Enjoying sitting by the pond on my special cushions,
although it didn't take long for Bertie to jump up on my lap!

I'll start with some bird photos but also wanted to mention that my OH heard the first Cuckoo a few days ago - I haven't heard it yet myself, but they normally arrive around the first or second week of April.

Male Chaffinch (Fringilla coelebs).

 

The Chiffchaffs (Phylloscopus collybita) are very vocal and loud at the moment and
the Blackcaps (Sylvia atricapilla) are back. The photo bottom right is a poor one of Mrs Blackcap,
but as both these birds are Warblers which means they are very flitty,
I was pleased that I even managed these pics! Best clicked on to view large.

Dunnock (Prunella modularis).

This one is my favourite - a very fluffy looking Blue Tit (Cyanistes caeruleus) in my Greengage tree!

Mustn't forget the two remaining ducks! Dirk the Saxony is on the left in
the top photo with Rachel the Rouen on the right. I dread another one dying
as I don't want to be left with a lonely duck or drake.

Male Orange Tip (Anthocharis cardamines).

Male Orange Tip (Anthocharis cardamines) butterfly.
I was pleased with these shots as they don't often settle and they show
that when they close up their wings they are quite hard to spot,
although leaving a bit of orange showing is still a tell tale sign!

Comma (Polygonia c-album) butterfly - one with tatty wings, and another
with fresh looking wings. This is the best I can do zooming in.

Moo! Cows are back in the fields around the garden.

Remember the sand filter bed where the grass looked yellow and sickly? My OH applied some
fertiliser specially for newly sown lawns and suddenly it's greened up and the grass is growing!

Chickens having fun digging where the Dahlias have been left in situ for the first time ever,
covered in a protective layer of leaves.... which are now chucked all over the lawn!

First leaves opening from the 'sticky buds' of the Horse Chestnut.

My OH has taken over the veggie patch chores as I can't do anything in there!

Here he is planting my seed potatoes and he's also sown parsnip and carrot seeds.

I managed to get an insect photo! A fly of some sort on a plum blossom.

My front bed again, Daffs and species Tulips.

Rosemary on left, Pulmonaria top right and a Rhodo bottom right.

Tulips and Greengage blossom.

Health update
I'm keeping these updates separate from the rest of the blog posts so those who don't want to read this kind of thing can just ignore them. There's possibly TMI (Too Much Information) for some (particularly guys!) in the following..... I  really had no idea it would be so up and down after my surgery, with one thing leading to another, but I'm finding it quite cathartic to write about it, and if it helps anyone who reads this who may be suffering from something similar, then that's a good thing.

I had my 6 week post surgery appointment with my surgeon and wasn't happy with the way it went. I get the impression I won't be seeing him again, as as far as he's concerned his job is done. Never mind that I am left with residual problems directly relating to it! He even seemed surprised that I had not yet seen a urologist, so I had to remind him that he'd said he would arrange this back when I was in the hospital, and again two weeks ago when I also mentioned a gynaecogical problem I'd had for some while too. This time at least he said when we saw his secretary after the appt she'd arrange appts with the two specialists for me.

He then picked up my file, stood up and started walking to the door as if that was it. I piped up and told him that we were not finished as I had questions to ask to which he seemed surprised. Well given he had not brought up the important point of when I may be allowed to start doing things around the house and garden, I had to ask, as up to now the only thing I had been doing was walking to get exercise! His reply was basically yes, I could start getting my life back to normal by doing housework and cooking etc. I then asked about doing light gardening jobs to which he replied, of course! Huh? This is the man who told me pre surgery that I couldn't do any gardening for three months!!!

I know my limitations so I will only be doing little jobs so there is no risk of me overdoing anything, but at least I've got the go ahead. But I shouldn't have had to ask. He should have told me this sort of thing as standard, don't you think? Bloody ridiculous.

In other news, I was lucky that the next day I got a call from the gynae in the morning saying she could see me that afternoon. Seems like I have thrush, which is not surprising given I've taken antibiotics twice within the last five weeks. The physical exam was painful, but the lady doc I saw was gentle and kind, although she only looked about 20, which makes me feel so old! :-) I've never had thrush before, so didn't recognise the symptoms, but anyway, everything 'down there' has been jiggled about with during surgery as it's all so close to the anus and rectum, so it's hard to know what's just normal discomfort after this kind of surgery. Thank goodness really for the itching which alerted me to the fact that there may be a separate issue here. My bladder problems (it still just doesn't feel right) might even be due to the thrush - well I've taken the one off treatment so I'll find out soon enough, but if not, I've an appt for early May with a urologist.

And then. Yes it goes on. Sigh. Whilst the abscess is healing up nicely, the other little hole in my butt wound suddenly started hurting worse and bleeding on Saturday morning. The nurses who come round daily to change my dressing say this one has turned into an abscess too. It seems that just as I start feeling better, start walking normally and bending easier and becoming more supple, along comes another thing to knock me back. After talking to the Stoma Nurse who I have been dealing with mostly regarding the other abscess, she said she'd come and see me on Thursday when I'm back at the hospital having round 2 of my chemo. But it's been getting worse and the home nurse who came around this morning told me to go and see my regular doctor, which I did this afternoon. He also thinks I should lay off the ABs but other than say to also flush out the abscess hole with hydrogen peroxide as well as the serum physiologique (a sterile saline solution) which the nurses have been doing, and keep putting the wadding with silver in it (meches in France, no idea what it's called in English), I don't know what else they can do to aid healing. Of course this is horribly painful trying to stuff something into a hole that is barely 1mm diameter, but I just grin and bear it.

It could be easy to start getting really depressed by it all, so I thank goodness for the sunshine and spring which cheers me up immensely. The other good thing is that it takes my mind off dwelling over the chemo, or even the cancer! In fact I didn't suffer much from this first round of chemo. The tingling in my hands when they were cold (peripheral neuropathy) only lasted about five days. I had a couple of days of on and off nausea and a couple more with little appetite. Now I'm eating reasonably OK and whilst not 100%, it went better than I'd imagined. The last few days I've felt quite tired but that may have been due to infection from the new abscess, or the thrush, as both are infections of different kinds. My next round of chemo is Thursday and Friday this week. Just wish these other problems could just *insert expletive* off and go away!!!