Prince Philip, the tortoise formerly known as Lenin, is under the stone bench next to the church wall. Covered in mud and blinking slowly, he turned his head to take a look at me and took a bite out of the dandelion flowers dipped in rainwater I had rushed off to get for him.
He has grown.
No sign of Queen Elizabeth (formerly Rosa) yet, but she is fairly small and could be under the acanthus leaves in the wilderness bit. Actually, most of the garden is looking a bit wildernessy, blackened cactuses, lots of nipped branches on the shrubs, a fallen arch of honeysuckle. It's been a long, cold winter. All the citruses are still indoors.
4 comments:
Great news,hope Queenie will surface soon. Looking forward to seeing photo, will send the one we have, Do you think they know who you are? Hope to visit again some day. Can still remember every day in Italy. x Anna and Claudia. P.S Can your tortoise swim? I bought a fish on Sunday I called it patch, its gold black and white. x Anna
No, I don't think swimming would be easy. They have much shorter legs than terrapins and there are warnings on the tortoise care sites against ponds and deep water. They do like wading through their drinking pool but it's only a few centimetres deep.
There's something about fish that produces plain names isn't there Anna? When my girls won a gold fish there was long thinking over a name. Mary lived for a number of years in the pond but was eventually taken by a passing bird.
Glad to hear Prince Philip has emerged :-) Our neighbour's tortoise got stuck under our fence a few years ago. Wedged in by his shell, but kept paddling with his legs and not getting anywhere. A sadly cute sight. He is too big now.
No sign of Q. Elizabeth. And today they are severely trimming back all the large trees (it was getting positively dark in the garden rather than shady), so she won't venture out to all those chain saws and falling branches.
Getting a bit worried, particularly about the stuck under a fence/bit of foundation thingy. She's quite volatile of temperament (aka sulky) and much smaller than Phil., so there is still hope.
What has happened to B,B?
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