Lovely garden things...

Nature is my best lift when I am down.
Here are some highlights from my last week....

This is Tiger.
He lives about 6 doors down from my Mum, but is trying to move in with her. A typical story: a family that gets pet after pet- as soon as the novelty wears off one they get another. Now they have several dogs. Tiger is voting with his paws.
Here he is, asleep in Mum's back garden. Unfortunately she can't adopt him fully, can't encourage him indoors: Fluffy and Scooter are disturbed by him. Scooter has FiV so we can't risk him passing that on. We encourage a diplomatic distance between them. Like here, it was warm and sunny, and all three cats lay belly up in the sun, too comfy to be bothered.

Here is our hawthorn tree, in full blossom. Also called a May tree, so this May Flower, of the ship fame, I suppose :)
It has been windy these last few days and the blossom is blowing like confetti across the garden:

We have a song thrush!They are so rare now, so I am delighted to have one regularly popping in to our garden. Here s/he is, eating sultanas (raisins or currants would serve just as well...)

Here's a pair of love birds. Well, wood pigeon, to be precise :)
I think we are going to have some baby pigeons :)

I also took pic's of all the flowers in the garden, but these are on the other computer. I'll post them another time.

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Other snips of news:

Re the washing machine:

The engineer came to fix the machine yesterday. Despite my reading that the most probable cause of smoke billowing out of it is a problem with the bearings, he said it was the rubber seal round the door. Isn't it amazing how a man with a white van can tell what's wrong with a machine just by looking at it, not examining or touching it in any way? Wow! Magic! So anyway he changed the seal.

He said, "Yeah, you've had bits of rubber in your washing, aint yer?"
"Er, no." I replied.
"Yeah well you would av."

Fair enough. I gave up! I'll do some washing and see what happens. If I need to call again I'll ask them not to send the guy with the rubber seal obsession.

Re the cats:

Please keep things crossed for Scooter, as he has a dose of cat flu at the moment. With his FiV it is difficult to fight it but he is on anti-biotics. I hope he is ok again soon....

More sand...

There is smoke coming out of my washing machine.
You know, that washing machine that was new last summer?

I heard the cycle end so I went to empty the machine and hang out my sheets before going to the shops. It smelt funny even before I opened the door, then when I did, smoke came out and started wafting upwards! It definitely wasn't steam- the sheets weren't hot. And then there was that odd smell. The smoke was wispy, but slightly blue.

Luckily it's not raining (quite!) so I've put the sheets outside- hope that blows the smokey smell off them!

Meanwhile, if you google 'smoke coming out of my washing machine', as I have just been doing, you'll be horrified at how many hits there are!! The general concensus seems to be the belt and/or the 'tub bearings'. I daren't take the back off and investigate though, just in case we have a warranty that that would cancel.

AAARGH!

Now the hunt for the receipt is on........