Fertilising Pumpkins, Haunted House webcams and an AWOL Cat

As you can probably tell its been a busy day here today. I found out why my pumpkins may be kicking the bucket - lack of fertilisation. Yes it appears its not all pink hearts and bows out in the vege garden. So have taken it upon myself to improve their love life and hopefully get some pumpkins out of it.

To this end I've been flitting from boy flower to girl flower, cotton bud in hand, like an overgrown cupid. There's all sorts of advice about this on the net (we gardeners don't just chat about manure you know), apparently I should fertilise in the early morning and tape the flower shut afterwards (to stop the pollen from escaping perhaps?) Hmm. Taping the flowers shut is a bit kinky I reckon, I'll just let them take their chances.

Yes, that was how I spent my kidless morning.

I was going to take more photos, but after this one I walked into a spider web and nearly fell in the very green pool. Then the camera battery's went flat and I decided to take a hint.

After all this twoo wuv amongst the veges it was time to settle down and do some actual writing type work. Hmm. So, my current MS is set near Dover in Kent (southeast England). So in the interest of research I was surfing the web for webcams in the area. Well, first I found the Dover weather webcam. V. exciting especially as it was night. But then what caught my attention was the Haunted House webcam. All over the UK the BBC have set up webcams in haunted houses. How cool is that? The Kent one wasn't working, but I did find one in Lincolnshire, and have spent most of the day ghost hunting. When I got bored with that (it only refreshes every 10 minutes) I found a Loch Ness Monster cam (another one that works best in daylight).

Needless to say I've only written 503 words, seen no ghosts, or the Loch Ness monster, but DID see a ferry arrive in Dover just now. So it wasn't all a waste.

Our wedding cammelia has just got its first blooms of the year. I know its a dangerous thing to put sentimental value in a plant, it invariably leads to sudden and inexplicable death. However, I always feel a bit awww when it gets flowers. Its really early this year, we were married in May after all, but I think it must be the incredibly cool summer we are having - they're predicting a top of 19 on Thursday. 19! That's practically winter.

And Eddie, one of my cats has gone walk-about. He does this from time to time, but didn't turn up for dinner either yesterday or today. Can't help but worry. My two cats, Eddie and Pepper, have been around for forever, moved house numerous times, coped beautifully with divorce, but still haven't forgiven me for having noisy, messy children that chase them. Hubby has been prowling around the cul-de-sac shaking packets of cat food and calling "Eddie, Eddie" in a very high voice. Which, no doubt makes a change from the horrible-teenagers doing circle work in their boofed up cars, for the neighbours.