July begins

July begins with roses:

The 'Den' Rose – an old trailing rose that I'm training over the terrace wall by the lean-to den
(the one Toad calls the armoury as we keep our archery gear in there)

The Woodshed Rose – its roots are by the woodshed and it is now trained up the side of the house

And the wild Dog Rose at the bottom of the brae

And July began with one of Toadlet's six-weekly trips to the orthodontist in Glasgow. The appointment was for eleven o'clock. With hindsight, I should obviously have been asleep already when my thinking went like this last night: if we leave the house at half past ten (half an hour to drive round the loch to the railway station), then we can catch the ten past eleven train to Glasgow. That takes three-quarters of an hour and there's a five-minute walk at the other end, so we'll get there just in time.

At about twenty to twelve I happened to look at my phone for the time.

Uh-oh!

I rang through and the orthodontist kindly fitted us in after twelve. Phew!

Toadlet wants to experiment with some make-up as her friends are doing. She has the wrong mother for this sort of stuff as I'm completely clueless about make-up! At least, I thought I was, but I do know a thing or two about skin tones, so we managed to choose some basic stuff for her to try out. I bought it all as a holiday present since we're not going away on holiday this summer.

Then came the next crazy episode of July's beginnings – Toadlet said she would vacuum out the Rattletrap (our trusty car). Everything is on a slope at the boggy brae, so even though we park it on the flattest bit, the doors on the up side swing in rather than staying open when you want them to. So Toadlet asked Toad to shift the car to make it easier. Between his impatience to be done and her lack of urgency in communicating the salient point, they managed to run over the vacuum cleaner tube and squash it out of shape so it couldn't be fitted back into the stretchy tube.

OK, it's a old vacuum cleaner that needs 'help' to jog it to full power, but with a kick or two it works very well. I recently fixed the power cable where it was pulling loose with some yellow and some red magic putty. Ah well, it's a Dyson so we might be able to replace the tube.

July is going to be 'interesting' if it carries on in this manner. ;)