The story of Choggie the hedgehog

A few years ago I found Choggie our resident hedgehog wandering by the house in a terrible state. He had lost almost all of his prickles, was covered in maggots and was running in circles trying to keep the flies off him.

I put him in a box and ran inside to phone Hedgehog Rescue to see if they could help him. But Hedgehog Rescue had no more room for another hedgehog! They gave me instructions on what needed to be done to help Choggie and how to feed him. I was told it would be a 3 month struggle.

I found a friendly local vet that doesn't charge for treating wild animals. All the visits were free and so were the medications. The vet even refused to accept any donations!

The vet and a vet nurse cleaned Choggy up and gave him antibiotic injections, plus an injection to kill the mange mites which had caused his prickles to fall out.

I then had to learn how to give Choggie antibiotic injections every day for 5 days and then repeat them after 2 weeks. I was told that hedgehogs in this condition don't usually survive and not to get attached to him and if he managed to survive 2 more weeks he would be fine.

When the vet first weighed Choggie he was 300 grams, then after 3 weeks he weighed 600 grams. This is the perfect weight for hedgehogs to go into hibernation. Such a relief since Autumn was approaching.

We kept Choggie in a cat cage in the laundry with lots of newspaper and old rags to snuggle up in. I had to clean his cage and feed him twice and sometimes three times a night. It is amazing how much a little hedgehog can eat.....we should have called him Piglet!

Then one morning he had disappeared from his cage. We searched the house but there was no sign of him. We thought my father had put him outside, but he was adamant that he hadn't. I had a look on YouTube and found videos of hedgehogs actually climbing cage walls! So that is what he had done, plus got through the cat door! I was quite upset because he was half way through his second course of antibiotic injections and he still had no prickles.

Then a couple of months later he showed up again with lots of soft new prickles all over and he was still tame. We left tinned catfood out for him and drank water from the bird bath on the ground. I was told to never give hedgehogs cat food containing fish or it will make them ill....and never to give them bread or milk.

Mum took the photo at the beginning of this post when Choggie re-appeared. He has such a cheeky face and is really quite sweet. We made sure he had enough food to build himself up again for hibernation time which wasn't far off. Hedgehogs go into hibernation when there have been a few days in a row of temperatures below 10 degrees C.

And here is another of our little garden helpers finishing his meal of cat food. We don't know if it is Choggie or not. I would like to think it is.

See you soon.

Hugs,

Rose x

The beginnings of a wildflower garden

It all started with a patch of muddy paddock where the cows had churned up the clay soil. A place where they were fed hay and in the process they had "enriched" the earth.

The cows had since been moved off the land and I saw the opportunity for establishing a wildflower bed.

I was sure it would work. Again I wasn't able to dig the soil because my shoulder was still recovering, so I improvised. I dragged a rake across the drying soil so that it was broken up 5 cm deep, per some instructions I had found somewhere on the internet.

Then I decided to cover the whole area with a 10 cm deep layer of composted pine tree sawdust that we had. I mixed that into the soil with the rake. After that I covered it with straw to compost more and to keep it moist.

I kept my fingers crossed that earthworms would move into my wildflower area and do their work, helping to make the soil deeper.

I checked after a month and it had worked, there was wonderful soil under the hay and hundreds of earthworms of all sizes!

In the meantime I was busy buying wilflower seeds:

- shirley poppies of many colours

- blue cornflowers

- yellow, orange and red cosmos

- red coreopsis

- linaria in jewel colours

- orange Californian poppies

- and lots more.

I was in heaven!

I finally lifted the hay off the prepared area and raked the soil to 5 cm deep again. Then mixed together all the seeds that I had bought and sprinkled them over the whole area. It was great fun.

Then I gently watered the seeds in and waited.

I watered every day and finally seedlings popped up. I was so happy. I carried on watering for a few weeks when the weather was hot and dry. The seeds should really have been sown at the beginning of Spring 2 months before, but I was lucky, my plan worked out.

Lots of smiles,

Rose x

Edit: You can see an update of my wildflower garden here.

My first vegetable patch!

What made me decide to create a vegetable patch you may ask? Hmmmm, that is easy to answer with a list:

- I had been inactive for so many months over the Winter.

- We were half way through Spring here in New Zealand.

- I had been stuck in the house for too long.

- I caught Spring fever!

- I needed the exercise.

- I needed an absorbing hobby.

- I love growing things!

- and I had never grown vegetables before apart from a few herbs.

After pondering over these things it was very easy for me to make my mind up about what I needed to do. I thought about it for a few days and started making plans:

1) Where was the best place in the garden to grow my vegetables?

- at the side of the garage was the answer.

- the area is sheltered from wind.

- sunny.

- close to the house.

- close to a water supply.

2) How could I set up a vegetable patch without having to dig solid clay soil that hadn't been cultivated for over 15 years?

- Dad agreed to remove the weeds by spade (my garden is herbicide and pesticide free)

- Dad also agreed to break up the soil a bit by spade for me.

- I was to remove some of the clay soil and add lots of gypsum to what was left.

- To buy 3 cubic meters of loam which was a mix of good soil, sand and compost.

3) Would it be better to have raised vegetable beds or ones without borders?

- I chose raised beds so that it would be easier for me to bend to plant and weed.

4) What could I use for the raised bed borders?

- I saw that our neighbour was replacing the fences, at the joining boundary of our bottom paddock, through my bedroom window one morning. The fencing was being loaded into an industrial sized skip to be taken away to the tip. So I rushed down after quickly changing out of my pyjamas, not even brushing my hair! The workman said to help myself from the skip. I managed to rescue some of the smaller batons then decided I needed help. My brother-in-law and father came to the rescue and I ended up with plenty.

5) Who was going to make the raised borders?

I kindly volunteered dad hehe.

6) Who was going to shovel the purchased loam into the beds?

Me. However after completing only 1/4 of the shovelling, which took me 3 days, my shoulder complained in such a big way I yelped and had to stop. So dad took over and finished the shovelling for me. Thanks dad.

7) How was I going to stop the cats using the new vegetable beds as a cat litter tray?

With a fence made of chicken wire.

A gate at each end to let the ride on lawn mower through.

The gates made from salvaged wood and more chicken wire.

That was my formula for the bones of my vege patch!

There were a couple of glitches. How to keep the slugs out (I found a great solution). And I found that Oscar my Kamikaze cat can climb chicken wire arrrrrrgh. He went crazy meowing because I had shut him out of the vege patch while I was working in it. Then all went quiet and then I heard a thud behind me as Oscar landed on the ground in the newly smoothed out soil. Luckily he is only interested in going into the vege patch while I am in there!

See you again soon,

Hugs

Rose x

A belated Happy New Year to you!

Wishing you a very happy New Year!

I have been rather slack at blogging for such a long time. Quite a few of things happened last year. My health decided to let me down and I ended up having to have 3 different operations:

- One to remove a painful ganglion cyst from my right wrist and at the same time they released a tendon at the base of my thumb. So no writing or working at the computer for a long time.

- Then I had to have shoulder surgery to remove bone and bursa from inside my shoulder as my shoulder became too painful to use due to inflammation. My right arm again and I am right handed! I was out of action for 5 weeks after that and enduring lots of physiotherapy.

- And finally last month I had to have my pacemaker replaced.

I have mostly recovered at last and now just have to be careful how I use my arm until my muscles have strengthened.

I was a little silly after the pain had gone and my arm was out of the sling. I had decided to set up a vegetable patch and was shovelling topsoil for 3 days, then arrrgh, I strained my shoulder badly. So now I have to sleep on my back because I can't sleep on my right shoulder and I can't sleep comfortably on my left until the pacemaker surgery has settled.

So my resolutions this year are:

1) To have a healthy fun year

2) To make the most of my spare time

3) To relax and spoil myself. I think I deserve it!

Looking forward to catching up with you and hearing about your resolutions.

See you soon.

Hugs Rose x

Wishing you a Happy Easter!

It has been a very lazy day today. I slept in late, catching up with some well needed sleep. Then I breakfasted on toasted waffles with apple sauce.

The waffles were made last week and then put into the freezer ready for emergencies. I simply popped them into the toaster without the need for defrosting. Wonderful! And there was a bowl of stewed apples in the fridge, made from apples from our tree, which I just passed through a seive to make puree.

Then I spent a couple of hours reading and had a long luxurious bubble bath...bliss. A perfect holiday!

Mum and dad made a lovely Easter dinner tonight. We had a cold meal because the weather is still very hot here in here New Zealand, even though it is Autumn. It still feels very strange for me to have Easter in the Autumn. For me Easter means spring flowers...pots of blue hyacinths, daffodils, crocuses.

We had Kulich and Pashka for dessert. Mum made the Pashka a few days ago and the Kulich was made this morning. They are my favourite Easter desserts and a Polish tradition that we have had since as far back as I can remember.

The icing on the Kulich is a little sparse because dad doesn't like icing on Kulich and he caught mum putting it on....sigh....I love heaps of icing on Kulich, so I had a little separate bowl of icing to put on my slice when I ate it, so we were all happy :)

I hope that you have a wonderful Easter and that the Easter Bunny is very good to you.

Hugs,

Rose xxx

I'm back again!

Hi, I am back again in blog land, feeling more like my usual cheerful self!

Thank you all my blog friends for your support and staying around while I was away. I have missed you all very much and can't wait to catch up with what has been going on.

While I was away I kept myself busy on Google+, setting up 2 Communities there. A Breakfast Community and a Garden Lovers Community, which some of you may have already visited. You need to be signed up to Google+ to be able to access the Communities, which is really simple to do, and free.

I am finding it great fun to share breakfast ideas, photos and recipes with other people in the Breakfast community. And also garden and flower photos and ideas with the Garden Lovers Community. Feel free to pop over and join in if you wish.

In the meantime I will sort through my photos from my trip to Australia, that I had the beginning of February, and share some with you very soon. I have a lot of catching up to do!

See you soon. Lots of hugs xxx

My Cat Guido - Happy Memories (Episode 2)

It didn't take us long to realise what a clever Guido was. That is one of the great things about Siamese cats. He wanted to join in with everything that I was doing and when he thought I wasn't paying enough attention to him, the mischief started!

While I had to spend hours studying, Guido would sit on my desk, in front of me, and walk backwards and forwards over my keyboard. He didn't want to sit quietly on my knee. He wanted to type my assignments for me and do what I was doing. He was very creative with making up new words with a never ending combination of letters. This made studying very interesting indeed!

If this didn't provide enough attention for him, he would hop onto my book case and systematically knock the books off one by one. I thought he had knocked the first couple of books off by accident. But then I watched what he was doing. Guido was poking his paw behind each book and slowly nudging it to the edge of the shelf. He then gave a final nudge and watched over the edge, fascinated, until the book crashed to the floor. Then moved on to the next book. He carried on doing this until I picked him up off the shelf.

That was a mistake...he realised that I would stop whatever I was doing and pick him up if he did this. He soon learnt to climb the book shelves in the sitting room next to my bedroom and did the same thing. So in the middle of studying I would hear...crash...bang...silence...crash...bang, until I got up to investigate.

Then Guido learnt how to open cupboard doors and had a wonderful time exploring. But when he wanted more attention, simple exploration wasn't enough. When I was soaking in the bath he liked to sit on the edge of it. But he soon got bored and found it more fun to open the bathroom cupboards and empty them of all the towels and flannels.

He would also empty the toilet paper out of the toilet cupboard and bat the rolls around the floor. We often found the cupboards empty and the contents in a heap on the floor. Luckily he never discovered the joys of shredding paper!

Guido also developed a fascination with emptying drawers. Even if a drawer was only open enough for him to fit his paw through, he managed to get things out. Socks, underwear, anything he could grab, all ended up on the floor. We had to remember to keep drawers tightly shut.

When ever I played the piano Guido loved it. He would hop up on the stool next to me for a little while and watch and listen. Then, still sitting by my side, he would press the keys down with his paws one at a time. We played some interesting duets. The only thing was that I laughed so much it disturbed his music playing and he would abruptly stop playing looking offended lol.

Sometimes he would then hop onto the piano keys and walk backwards and forwards on them while I was playing. And he also helped me turn the pages of music. At other times he was just happy to sit on top of the piano and watch and listen to me play.

In later years Guido learnt that the quickest way to get attention was to stand on his hind legs and tap me repeatedly on the shoulder. You could almost see him saying "excuse me...but 5 minutes is long enough at the computer...I want you to play with me now...and I mean now...please." He was so cute.

To be continued...

Tomorrow morning I will be hopping on an aeroplane and heading off to Australia's Gold Coast for a week. See you when I get back with a few photos to share.

Big hugs xxx