Tails’ Blography

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Both 5 weeks only this coming Tuesday, meet Nimh who is carrying on my Camera Theme and is an Agouti Berkshire (as far as I can tell):

And Thyme who is starting my new gardening theme and is a PEW with a head weave as most PEWs have lol poor thing

This morning I was woken up by M who told me Iso was making a funny noise. I got to the cage and her breathing was very laboured. Her nose was snotty so its almost like her nose was too blocked for her to breathe so I steamed some Prep in a mug (I didnt have any Vicks) and it seemed to help but I phoned the vet and he said to bring her in so we can put her on oxygen.

I got to the vet, mom drove, and in the car Iso was cuddled on my lap, Macro (came along cos she was clearly stressing over her Iso, and we made the decision to say goodbye after an analysis by the vet.

Iso was very listless, her eyes were dull (which was my main indication) and she just gave me an energy of saying its was ok. I spoke to her, told her I loved her, cuddled her, explained that she mustnt feel bad about leaving me and if she sees a light. That she must go and join her Wormy and her sister, Figgy.

She went peacefully and I felt we all did the right thing. But I’m going to miss that Hamsterrat. My Isovice, Iso1000 (cos she was noisy when she chewed the bars), my tube earred rat. Esp since we’d grown so close over the past month what with me feeding her every day on my lap and her cuddling with me on the couch.

I got an extra month with her I never thought I’d have. She handled her PT better than most of the rats I’ve had in the past who’ve succumbed to that in their lives. I was, and still am, so proud of the rat she was.

RIP my Iso

Which is exactly what I intend to do!

Our garden, as I think I’ve mentioned before, is almost as arrid as a desert! The sun beats down on it almost full time and thus even our flower bed struggles to keep plants alive within its soil. A while back M and I bought a half wine barrel for R150 (bargin!) and we sanded it, varnished it and thats pretty much where its ended.

I’ve been desperately looking out for a Dwarf Citrus tree of sorts (the dwarf variety is propegated off a full grown tree vs a sapling thats stunted as a bonsai) but there is nowhere that I can find that sells this elusive tree. Thus our barrel has sat empty, void of all soil and roots (ok my mom borrowed it for her avo tree for a bit) and I recently (read: earlier today) found an article in The Gardener magazine which spoke of “Designer Trees: Local winners for small gardens” which turned out to be a pretty cool article. It basically outlined 5 or 6 trees to consider for a small garden.

Two of which caught my eye and are available fairly easily:

Heteropyxis natalensis – Lavender Tree (pictured above)
Searsia pendulina (formerly Rhus pendulina) – Wild Pear

Both are sized 4-10m tall (obv pruned to stay at 4m) and are great with full sun, and dry conditions. So I found a place that sells em, and I was verbally quoted R1500 for a tree of 4m in height (the largest which can be handled by hand without machinery assistance) which is too big anyway, so I’m hoping the price will come down for a smaller (2m) tree.

Yay! I cant wait! I’d like any thoughts you have on which tree you prefer, and why!

And some more good news, possibly even better, Iso’s biopsy results came back. She has (had?) a benign tumour which my vet removed in its entirety vs just a small biopsy and all looks good for it not to bother her again! They suspect it was a saliva gland gone awry but they said it looked like the vet had removed it all so happy days all around!

So after showing you pics of my making flapjacks, its only fair I show you the results