Tots and tottering

 Completely unintentionally, I'm becoming fond of the tortoises.  I read, the other day, that they can eat lilac - by good fortune, the lilac was just coming into flower at the time.  They like scents and flowers - I've got some lovely, scented roses and occasionally pick a handful of petals that are just about to drop, to scatter in their run.  I was going to cut a few pieces of lilac for the house, so took off a couple of sprigs and took to the Tots.  Fyodor was just munching on a globe artichoke leaf,  Of course, he has to chop through it at the bottom, beaver-style, so the whole leaf is destroyed, but I can't begrudge it.  So he was not especially impressed by the lilac.  His smaller brother was thrilled, though and I took a little video of him chomping happily.  Today, I picked them sensible greens - deadnettle mostly - and left it for them and later went to find dandelions.  Tortoises love dandelions.  I also picked some plantain, lilac and ground elder, plus a few leaves of sedum and houseleek.  Leo was just inside the door of the run, so I went to him first.  He's not very bold and drew his head in with a hiss each time I put food in front of him, though he immediately poked it in again.  They don't actually hiss, it's the sound of air being squeezed, rather like a foot-fart (I trust everyone knows the expression?).  I looked round.  Fyodor was positively scampering towards me, eyes fixed on the dandelions.  He covered a couple of metres in seconds.  Such an expression of bliss as he tucked in.

I have no wish to become emotionally attached to tortoises.  But at least they're likely to outlive me, which my other pets may well not.  I mean, they won't unless I die in the relatively near future.  Do I feel lucky, punk?  I don't even know what that means, in this context.  

In a moment of good cheer, a couple of months ago, I bought a small lemon tree - actually, a bush - in a pot.  It was covered in flowers and I love the scent of lemon flowers.  Apparently, it's self-pollinating.  I kept in on the kitchen windowsill to start with and then moved it to the study window.  To my surprise, quite a number of lemons have set and are now about half an inch long (I mix imperial and metric measures and hardly notice doing so).  It seems I need to look up how to care for them.  It's now reached the stage where I'll feel mean if they shrivel and drop off.  I don't like to think of myself as sentimental about a lemon plant.  I have a cactus that the Sage rescued from a house which his firm had for sale, some 60 years ago and he gave it to his (probably dismayed) mother.  She dutifully kept it and I inherited it.  I've done my best to kill the wretched thing.  I left it outdoors all last winter.  It seems to be fine.  I have to respect it.  I did repot it last year, because its pot had been broken for the last decade or two - I'd avoided doing so because its spines are vicious and barbed.  But finally, armed with thick towels and leather gloves, I did the deed and, unfortunately, it seems to have a new lease of life.  I'm not even going to consider any kind of a metaphor.