Weeds to watch out for ....

Spike woke up the other morning with what looked like an allergy all down his face. Throughout the course of the day it spread and blisters formed and burst. I took him to the doctor and the doctor recommended that we go straight to emergency. He suspected that it was an infection that would need intravenous antibiotic treatment in a hurry.

We waited in emergency for HOURS while the redness kept spreading and getting hotter. Eventually we were taken through to paediatric emergency and assigned to a bed. The first doctor who saw him had no idea what it was so she asked her superior to come and take a look. He didn't know either so he got a specialist epidemiologist to come down and see us and he was unsure what the problem was so he sent his superior down.

The head epidemiologist was puzzled but he ruled out fatal skin eating disorders by virtue of the fact that Spike was still alive after waiting for so long in emergency (I got the impression he was REALLY unimpressed by it actually). 

After going through everything we could think of A remembered that he and Spike had been pulling up a strange weed in the garden the day before. Amazingly enough as we were leaving home, after going over everything, we thought to grab a sample of the weed. (we'd have raised it hours earlier except everyone was thinking it was something completely different so it didn't seem relevant to us). A ran up to the ar and grabbed our sample and the doctor took one look at it and announced that Spike had contact dermatitis burns from the weed.

We were sent home with burns cream and the burns were significantly better by the next day and are almost gone now (about a fortnight after it first happened)

the weed - later identified as a species of spurge

Farewell Winter!

We've started planting and preparing our Spring garden. This year we're redesigning the planting system in the hothouse, and planting far more small variety tomatoes because they're the ones we use most of, they taste delicious, and they're also more expensive.

We've planted pretty flowers out the front for the first time this year. I think some colour will look lovely out there and flowers are always cheerful. The apples in that section of the garden are now getting their leaves and one has quite a few buds on it! Unfortunately the pink lady that Vinnie chewed isn't looking quite as vigourous but it is getting leaves so there's hope for it yet.