Scruffy the cat, mangos etc.

We have a cat called Scruffy. He's not a real cat, the owners of this house sit don't want animals here because of the birds and wildlife that live around this house, but we have had scruffy since May 2004, and he is an important part of our family.

He's not that big, although in this photo he looks largish.

He sits on the dashboard of our car. We take him everywhere, and he went with us to China when we lived there, sitting next to the television so he could keep an eye on what was happening. He is faded now, he was almost black, but sitting on the dashboard is going to fade anything, especially in this strong Queensland sun.

His whiskers are getting a bit tatty too. He is special because Amanda, one of our granddaughters gave this to Peter the day he had his open heart surgery. He had a quadruple bypass at the Prince Charles Hospital in Brisbane, a hospital that specialises in heart treatment, in May 2004 after having a couple of heart attacks. Peter was brought up on a farm in New Zealand, where in those days, butter, cream, full milk, and fatty lamb or hogget was the food of the day. He was a long distance runner, but even so, after all these years his veins and arteries concreted up inside and he needed some medical help. Since then, he has been good, it's amazing what medicine is able to do these days.

Every country has it's quirks with pronunciation. But a doozie in Brisbane is the road that the Prince Charles Hospital is on. The name of the road is Rode. Normally we would pronounce 'rode' like road, that is, I rode my bike. But not here. Here it is pronounced rowdee road, as in row a boat. I haven't been able to find out why. It's just one of those Aussie things I think.

I have written before about the lovely cacti here at this house sit, and also the mangos. I will add another photo of the same branch of mangos that I showed you before. Where we firstly had a branch full of flowers, and then lots of tiny mangoes, that same branch now has one fruit on it, about the size of a marble. It may or may not survive. We will wait and see.

The dry weather is affecting the trees around here I think. This house sit has a lovely front lawn with some well established trees, but the jacarandas this year are not blooming very well.

There are two on the driveway up to the house, but they are looking a bit spindly at the moment.