Yep. I went out to the garden and came back with these.

In January. I mean, this is England, for heaven’s sake – which last time I checked was in the northern hemisphere!

This is one crazy winter.

Yes! A whole £46 plus loose change – that’s what we saved on our internet shopping order today, plus a discount of 15% for a voucher I got by email.

No wonder I’m smiling as I type this!

As you can see by the picture this is Ocado, an internet supermarket which carries the Waitrose brand. I love Waitrose! It’s not the cheapest supermarket in the world, but it stocks some great lines. Some of my favourite things include the nicest ‘sachet’ chicken stock on the market (containing no yeast, which is important to me), their ‘Cornish Quartz’ brand of mature cheddar, a genuine sourdough loaf (ie, not packed with extra yeast and/or made by the Chorley Wood method), Pane di Altamura, and Tarallini, a baked version of the Puglian snack food made of flour, olive oil and fennel seeds. Oh, and a rather interesting toilet roll made of waste sugar cane. How’s that for ecologically sound?

Actually it constantly surprises me that more thought isn’t given to toilet rolls in the ‘green’ campaign, because the amount of paper – much of it virgin – which is tossed down into the sewers is criminal. Why not use waste sugar cane – or even bamboo, which is fast-growing, resistant to disease and pests, and actually produces a very soft fibre? Digressing even further from my original theme:

“How many trees can we save if we switched to recycled toilet paper?*
According to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the United States could save 470,000 trees, 1.2 million feet of cubic landfill space, and 169 million gallons of water if everyone in the US traded one roll of regular toilet paper for a recycled roll. That’s just for one roll. Imagine if we all made the permanent switch to recycled toilet paper!”

And that, dear readers, comes from the history section of the bizarrely intriguing ‘Toilet Paper World‘. You couldn’t make it up, huh? I’m left shaking my head in amazement at the idea that someone has built a site entirely devoted to toilet paper. But there you go … there it is, I found it, and I linked to it, so Ken Fischburg is clearly just fulfilling one of the world’s lesser known needs.

Anyway. Back to Ocado.

I shop now and again with Ocado, not only because I like Waitrose stuff, but also because it’s nice to get the heavy stuff delivered to your door, and because I get vouchers by email which can save a lot of money – £15 in this case – and they do great special offers.

By browsing only the special offer section and picking out things we normally use, I managed to save £46.90. Say it slowly; forty-six pounds and ninety pence. That’s more than a lot of people spend on a whole week’s shopping!

This is store-cupboard stuff, for the most part, and includes multiple purchases of things like toilet rolls, kitchen rolls, cleaning fluids, and the hard-to-find breakfast cereal that OH favours. OK, I admit it, and eight bottles of vino. Which were ALL on special offer.

It gets delivered within an hour time slot (I chose 12-1pm) and if they’re going to be late (or early) they ring. They also take away all the carrier bags, if you want them to.

And the really poetic thing about all this? Having worked out the prices against the savings, we’ve decided that those eight bottles of wine come entirely free with this order, because our savings pretty much cover the cost for them.

That should last us a few days!

* This is a horrible sentence, grammatically, but it is not mine. It’s just a quote, OK?

OH was in the supermarket today, picking up a few things for me while I was visiting the hospital with Sid.

He finished collecting the things we needed, took his basket to the checkout and began loading them onto the belt. Suddenly, the young checkout girl rang her buzzer, and after a couple of minutes along came a supervisor in answer to the call. The girl turned to her superior and said in a low, but still audible voice:

‘I really need to use the loo. Could you get someone to take over?’

The supervisor nodded and walked away, and the shopping continued along the belt. The checkout girl rang it up, and OH bagged it and got out his credit card and popped it into the machine.

While he was waiting for the total to appear on the screen, a second woman appeared.

Woman to Checkout Girl: ‘I hear you need someone to take over for a few minutes?’

Checkout Girl (Quietly): ‘It doesn’t matter now!‘

OH completed the transaction and quietly left. He really, really didn’t want to know the reason for her change of heart!

OK, so who got a houseplant for Christmas this year? No? Well, then maybe you are thinking of picking one up in the sales next time you go to the garden centre, DIY store, or even the supermarket?

Think carefully.

The plant up at the top there is a cycad Sago Palm, and apparently is on sale all over the damn place as a houseplant because it’s attractive and easy to care for. Unfortunately, it’s also highly palatable to pets and has pretty, bright orange seeds which might also be attractive to children.

‘Unfortunately’, because the cycad Sago Palm is extremely toxic, and there’s an estimated 50-75% chance of death if you (or your cat, dog, or child) eat any part of the plant, the seeds being the most lethal. Fortunately, because I read the Poodle And Dog Blog link on Facebook this morning, I now know this, and so do you.

I don’t normally use this blog as a vehicle for warnings, and I don’t usually post chunks of someone else’s text, but I’m going to this time because a) I think it’s a good warning, and b) I have what feels like flu, and therefore no energy to be creative. So this is from Wikipedia:

“Cycad Sago Palm is extremely poisonous to animals (this includes humans) if ingested. Pets are at particular risk since they seem to find the plant very palatable.[2] Clinical symptoms of ingestion will develop within 12 hours and may include vomiting, diarrhea, weakness, seizures, liver failure, or hepatotoxicity characterized by icterus, cirrhosis, and ascites. The pet may appear bruised, have nose bleeds (epistaxis), melena (blood in the stool), hematochezia (bloody straining), and hemarthrosis (blood in the joints).[3] The ASPCA Animal Poison Control Center estimates a fatality rate of 50 to 75 percent when ingestion of the Sago Palm is involved. The incidence of Sago Palm ingestion by pets has risen by over 200% in the last five years.[4] If any quantity of the plant is ingested, a poison control center or doctor should be contacted immediately. Effects of ingestion can include permanent internal damage and death.

All parts of the plant are toxic; however, the seeds contain the highest level of the toxin cycasin.”

Admittedly, there are many, many toxic houseplants, and there are many, many toxic garden plants. However, plants which are equally toxic – eg the Yew and the Laburnham – do not seem to be so palatable, and don’t get eaten so often. Also, the aril of the yew (the ‘berry’), is pretty much the only part of the tree which is not poisonous, so although they are bright and attractive and taste sweet they won’t actually kill your dogs or your children*.

Unlike these things.

The cycad Sago Palm appears to be very tasty and is eaten quite often by pets. This is a quote from the Veterinary Information Network (VIN) (it’s American, so they use ‘veterinarian’ not ‘veterinary surgeon’ but it’s the same thing):

“I swear, it seems to me that dogs are attracted to sago palms. In the cases of toxicity I see (several each year), it seems to be the only plant in the yard the dogs chew on. … I think we need to be more proactive in trying to warn owners they should not have these plants at all.”

If you follow the link, you’ll see there’s one particularly sad and cringe-making story there about an unsuspecting owner who unwittingly killed his dog by playing a game of fetch with the seed pods. How bloody awful for them both.

In case those of you here in the UK are thinking that we don’t need to worry because we don’t have them here – yes we do. I quickly found them for sale at a nursery in Norfolk where they state that they were ‘probably the food of dinosaurs’. Being highly concerned that this might give people the false impression that these palms are harmless – or even edible, God help us – I sent them an email with the appropriate information link, and the Managing Director got back to me very quickly and said they would amend the website, alerting customers to the danger, bless his cotton socks.

It’s so nice when people do actually listen and do something. Well done, that man!

I didn’t used to worry too much about house and garden plants, although I took out all the Monk’s Hood and Laburnham when we moved in. But Ranger does chew on plants and I’ve had to chase him off my day lilies more than once.

So you can bet your bottom currency note of your choice that I will not be buying one of these things.

* Or so I’ve read. I haven’t actually tried them, and I wouldn’t advise anyone to do so. Just for the record.