I’ve not had a good week after my visit to the dentist.  The swelling has gone down considerably but I am still unable to chew on that side of my mouth.  I’ve felt quite rotten from the effects of the abscess and the side effects of the antibiotics.  But today I felt much better and actually did some gardening and tidied the garage.  The weather has been fine during the daytime with heavy rain early evening.  That’s good as it means I do not have to water my allotment which I planted with veg last week.  I have covered the whole patch up with some “voile” to stop the grasshoppers eating everything.  Due to the plague we had last year, there are millions of them everywhere but they are much smaller this year and all this heavy rain should kill some off, I hope. 

Most of our [tag-tec]garden birds[/tag-tec] seem to have deserted us.  Food is plentiful and they are probably up the mountain nesting.  We have a couple of sparrows (the rest of the group must be up in the village having families), 3 jays one of whom is very tame now, chaffy of cos, and the two baby crows.  We have to shut the shutters in the computer room and the downstairs back bedroom as they were waking us up really early pecking on the glass.  They still visit in the mornings but are not quite so noisy, and it seems they are venturing further afield each day.  Although one is grey and other black, we believe they are both males, according to their behaviour.  It seems strange that the parents seem to have just deserted them, especially as this is usually their patch, although I did see a third one in the garden the other day.  Had mum come back to check up on them?

We also have deer in our field, seen early one morning after having been woken up early with tooth ache and Chris saw one at dusk last night too.  This evening we saw her again rifling through our compost heap but she soon spotted us and was off.  Also we have finally seen our two lerots.  We were not sure if they were still living in the black bin liner on the top shelf but Chris caught them out the other night leaving on their nightly foray.  I was surprised last year’s baby is still with the mother.  Perhaps she will throw him out if she has another youngster this summer.