Sparrows, horse-chestnuts, and Sudocrem!

June was very cool and rather damp after our strange hot April/May, but it seems to be bowing out with a rage of sunshine and heat... 30C here!

I found a baby sparrow on the paving slabs yesterday.  I know it is best to leave them and their mums will find them, but I was worried about my cats and dog, and also, even if the mother found it on the ground, there is not much she could do with it there.

I held it up to let her see it, then placed it into some shrubbery and hope something comes of it.   She can at least feed it with flies etc and hopefully it may fly one day, although I can't see how it can take off if it is on the ground! :(

Hoping our huge horse chestnut tree in the front garden doesn't get the dreaded canker again this year.  It  had it last year, was ok the year before that, but had it the year before.

I have noticed hundreds of others are suffering the same, but they don't die but start from scratch again the following year.
The leaves go brown in July and fall off. It looks very strange along the hedgerows to see all these brown trees in the midst of the summer green.   Mainly in the S.E. of England I think.

Lewis has been scratching and biting at his stomach and underneath his rear haunches for the past few days, making big pink lumps everywhere.   He doesn't have any signs of fleas at all, so I didn't know what it was.

Roger had a brainwave that it could be where Lewis lies on the grass with his back legs stretched out the back like a frog!  We have ants on our lawn and if he was bitten quite a few times, he then scratched and nibbled and made them all worse.
A quick smooth on of some Sudocrem and it had all gone the next day......magic stuff, I keep a tub in the house since the babies were born some 23 years ago!  (Not the same tub!)