Sunny Morning, Wet Afternoon.

We had a lovely morning, perfect for hanging out several loads of washing or if you're a cat for watching the world from the window. Later on I had just finished my day's quota of scraping and was shaking out a dust sheet when light rain began to fall. I made a quick run and rescued the washing which was almost dry. My hours of paint scraping had resulted in the whole of the handrail getting done. At least when I make a start on the 18 spindles I'll be able to do quite a lot sitting on the stairs.

I took Patch to the vets' this afternoon. As we suspected he's probably suffering from arthritis so the vet gave me some liquid anti-inflammatory pain killer to give to him every day. The vet was quite concerned about his heart rate/breathing as we already know Patch has a heart murmur. I did as the vet advised and noted Patch's breathing rate after he had been lying calmly at home and it was 22 breaths/min (normal is about 20/min) though when he first came home it was 34/min. He'll go back to the vet in 3 months time though I think the vet was trying to warn me that he might not make it. I worry when taking older pets to the vet thinking it might be a one way trip which thankfully it wasn't. The next sting was the nearly £50 bill but  I was expecting something around that. The vet is almost never cheap.

After a certain amount of cajoling the tomato seedlings have appeared. I wasn't sure if the seeds from the M&S cherry tomatoes would grow but it looks as if they all came up. After I took the photo I thinned them out so that there are 12 left. I felt quite guilty throwing away the extra seedlings. The Alicante seeds which I planted in rows have also begun to appear.