I Decided To Do A Little Maintenance,

on the aquarium,

 starting with a clean of the protein skimmer, and then the insides of the glass, I then had some really good news, a few months ago I started getting a pain in my left upper leg, eventually bad enough that it woke me up at night, so a few days ago I went to the doctors, where I was given an examination and with a printed out form told to to go straight away to the local hospital to have my upper leg X-rayed and a number of blood samples taken, results in 10 days, to say I was worried was an understatement, but 3 days later, today, I had a call form the doctor, nothing untoward was found, it seems that a number of nerves have decided for no apparent reason to make themselves felt, the x-rays and blood work showed no abnormalities, thank heavens for that! I have a rub jelly that hopefully will take care of the ache,

 so to celebrate it was off to the local supermarket,

where I stocked up with,

 several boxes of wine,

 in the evening it was time for a read,

 and a glass of sherry,

 for tonight's meal, a turkey salad, 

 'Cheers!',

 I then took a couple of photographs of the box fish, who has settled down really well, looking at me,

and side view,

 and here he is waiting for a feed,

between the regal tang and the flame angel,

 I continued reading Unlikely Stories, Mostly, but I have to admit I got a bit bogged down with Logopandocy, for a thesis of Alasdair Gray's work here is one by Bruce Graham Charlton MBBS, I decided to take a break from Alasdair Gray, and started another short story which I will make a separate post about, just after midnight Diana called to say she was on the bus home, so off to the bus stop, and in no time we were back home, where I gave her the good news about myself from the doctor, we had a quick nightcap and then for us we were off to bed.

Diana Was Already On Her Way To Work,

as I feed the crows,

 and today the magpie,

 the one with the curled foot here again, beak full of peanuts,

 next stopdown to Kingfisheries, to return a water container I used to take water home for the aquarium,

 whilst there I had a look at the invertebrate aquarium thay have there, above a cluster of zoanthid polyps,

 some tubastraea, or sun corals as they are known with their tentacles not extended,

 one of the many species of pulse corals, Xenia,

 a large polyp stony coral, Euphyllia,

 another cluster of zoanthid polyps,

 this piece of rock with more than a few corals attached to it, if only I had a larger aquarium!

 after picking up my 2 months prescription, totally free of charge now that I am a OAP, (old aged pensioner), I made my way home, noticing that the Christmas tree in the garden of the Foxgrove Lodge had been taken down,

 that was my cue,

 as I walked past the cherry trees,

 that will hopefully be in flower in a few months time, I decided that I would disassemble our tree and take it upstairs, easier said than done! it refused to come apart in the three sections it arrived in, but eventually it did, then the really difficult bit, actually getting it upstairs, what a struggle, but eventually it was there for the next time we need it,

 I also decided to attach some of the orchid flower stems to longer flower supports,

 this one was still not a problem,

 but this one was, so I gave it a longer support,

 the same for this one, the flower stem now at 90° to the main stem,

 

 now all is well,

 another candidate for a long support, 

 this particular one just keeps flowering, which is nice,

 before,

 and after,

 perhaps the most successful orchid we have, if you count the number of flowers and flower stems it is throwing out,

 and nice the flowers are too,

 a couple of the smaller orchids,

 also needed a helping support,

 another really successful plant, it just keeps on flowering,

this one I bought in a bargain basement nursery on ebay, the bidding started at .99p, I put in my usually unsuccessful bid and won, the postage at £2.95 was more than my bid! it arrived with no flowers, but in just a few months it started to flower, and has not stopped, I was going to play with some photographs upstairs,

 but I noticed A Man For All Seasons was about to start, so I watched that instead, after Diana arrived home and our evening meal it was feet up for a few game shows, and one from Murdoch Mysteries,

we rounded the evening off with a couple from The Witcher, next for us, we were off to bed.