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

Making flapjacks for the rats’ photoshoot this morning! Yum yum! Added bonus is living close to the ‘rents so when you realise you only have 1 egg and no baking powder, its a quick trip over to borrow some!

Of course, I had to make for me too

Myself and my best friend are going to be interviewed at around 6am-6:15am in a five minute segment on pet rats and their care. It’s a health related segment and it’s only 5 min, but its 5 min more than a lot of people get!

It’s filmed live, which makes it even more nerve-wracking, but I’ll have my bff there and my three girls, Iso, Macro and Fig. We have to be there at 5:30am so here’s hoping I look “fresh” haha! And I wonder if they have breakfast available??

So wish me luck, and I hope you guys in SA will tune in to watch. I’ll try YouTube it afterwards, but cant promise anything. Weeeee!

She recently showed signs of illness (hunched up, fur all puffy), so on Monday I gave her some medication and plannned to take her to the vet on Tues.

Tues arrived and saw us both at the vet (ok ok, all five of us went to the vet – Wormy needed her cage buddies for support) and the vet checked her out. He suspected an enlarged spleen or a tumour so asked me to come in on Wed for an x-ray.

On Wednesday, I arrived, again with all four girls, and the vet mentioned he’d rather do a biopsy. He said we knew it was a lump, so the xray wouldnt help much. I agreed and left them with him and went to do some reports/work at a local coffee shop while I waited. 20 minutes later I got a call to come collect. I would get news on Thursday.

Thursday came and I got a call in the morning confirming cancerous lymphnodes in the spleen. The vet recommended either an op or medication to make her comfortable until The End. I chose op, no question about it. She had just recently turned two and was still otherwise healthy. I was also confident with the vet as they have performed successful ops on rats many times before. I was asked to bring her in as soon as possible so I did, this time sans my other three girls.

They scheduled her for 11am and at 11:30am I got a call to say the op was successful and she is in recovery. At 3:30pm I got another call to say she was awake and ready to go home. I collected her at 5pm and brought her home. The vet said her spleen was 60% tumour and would have ruptured (which is fatal) within the next few days. I’m so glad I took her in and everything was so prompt!!

This is when the trouble started. See, this Friday was a public holiday and most vets are closed, including mine. Wormy relentlessly tugged and pulled at her stitches and successfully pulled out two by the next morning. When I noticed at midnight on Thursday evening that she had removed one, exposing the secondary stitches beneath, I made the decision to stay awake the whole night until I could try find an open vet to fix the stitches. I literally stayed on the couch, focused on lifting her head whenever she started towards her stitches. This was the longest night of my life. I was so tired and frustrated, I hope never to have to go through that again. Poor Wormy got some very harsh words throughout the night. Finally, at 2.30am I phoned the After Hours clicic (read: vet that charges a fortune!) and asked their advice. They were honest in saying they dont have the medication required for rats but they agreed I could send them an image from my cellphone so they could see how bad the damage was. In the end, they couldnt help, so back I went to keeping Wormy from tearing out the rest of her stitches.

By 3am (or just before) I ended up calling my vet on his cellphone (which I got from his answering machine message), and he sleepily agreed to see her at 7am on the public holiday (I’m bringing him some chocolates or biltong or something next time!). So at 6:45am I was waiting outside his practise. Lo and behold, Wormy fell asleep in the car. Typical! I guess I should have just driven around all night. Sigh!

He opened up and I brought her in. In all of ten minutes he had her glued back up again and added three small skin staples and I was on my way. I tucked her into a clean cage and left her with Iso for the day. When I returned at 17:30, she had only removed one staple (but she had started on that on already before I left).

This morning, she is perked up a little more and all incisions are still closed (a little weep-stained though) and all staples still in tact (touch wood). She’s still eating only small amounts, but I’m keeping an eye on her and I think her apetite will grow soon. She’s loving the chocolate she’s been getting haha!

I also emailed my breeder to let her know about the op, and while I was doing so, I looked up some old photos of Wormy when she was still a baby. I thought I had to post them here

The vet bill thus far is about R1000, but my girls are worth every penny!

Wormy (in front) and the late Ramoth before I got them

Wormy in the cage after she was delivered

A typical Wormy face <3

Wormy sleeping behind my thighs