gardening and cats and children's books (theeeese are a few of...)
Happy Labour Day! I hope you are all enjoying yourselves, whatever you may be doing (as far as I know, my family doesn't have any fancy plans (or plans at all)). But I'm kinda taking the day off from work, anyway. Kinda, because I spent the morning working in the garden and have in mind to do some other around-the-house work this afternoon. I'm just giving myself a day off from my normal work.
And now for some garden chatter. Last year, you may recall, I had mutant crossbred zucchini-nut squashes growing all over the place and producing faster than I could eat. Also tons of tomatoes and some beans. This year's garden is still heavy on the tomatoes (though almost all of them are cherry tomatoes, growing from seeds dropped last year) and doing well with beans, but my squash plants are sad, very sad. I got two small zucchinis earlier in the season (like a month or two ago) but not a thing! since. Yesterday, at last, I noticed a (female) bloom on my butternut squash plant and decided to take no chances on bugs but to hand pollinate the thing myself. So long as the plant itself survives, then, I may get one good squash out of the plant this year. As for new things I'm trying with this year's garden, I've got a row of beets and a row of carrots, and I think they're doing alright but it's hard to say for sure, the edible part being underground and all. Some of the beets' tops show through the soil and they look rather small, so I need to read up and find out if people like, overwinter beets or what, because how can they get so big in one season otherwise?? Do they need to be watered like, a ton or what? Okra was my other new addition and those are coming along nicely-I've finally got all three surviving plants flowering and producing pods. Mostly what I picked has just been used to supplement what I buy at the market, or else mixed in stir-fry style with other vegetables. It's hard to make a meal of two pods of okra. So my lesson for next year is start several plants (and if they don't all come up, start again)!! I also have cucumber plants, which are doing barely better than last year's, but that's not saying much.
As for flowers, an ignorant yard worker came the other week and chopped down a few miniature rosebushes (the landlady was contacted, and has made vague promises of having them replace the plants; on the bright side, the stubs are sending out some new leaves so at least they weren't completely killed); but otherwise things are growing and making me happy. I collected seeds from love-in-a-mist pods today, no thanks to Josie who dashed in and knocked over my plastic container, sending seeds flying all over the steps outside. I have all kinds of seeds and I'm already imagining where I might scatter them next spring. And my morning glories are growing too!! And they'll drop seeds of their own and cover more and more of the fence each year with beautiful blue-violet blooms! Cosmos are falling over themselves, and a field of feverfew is spreading through the vegetable garden with anise hyssop creeping in from another corner. My sedum are starting to flower-I love sedum dearly, but when they're in bloom it means the season is winding down... Sweet Annie smelling sweet (and looking ridiculous-one sprouted up next to my (remaining, unchopped) miniature rosebush this spring and I let it stay, but it's since grown taller than me and looks quite silly leaning into the yard from the front edge of the garden. still, considering the yard workers actually didn't touch this weed or the rosebush next to it, maybe it's a good thing I let it grow so tall), delphinium finally growing at the right height (it kept trying to grow taaaaall and then ended up tipping over; now it's growing and blooming more compact and looks quite charming), and indoors I've relegated most of my houseplants to high places the kitten can't reach, making it quite cheery and green in the back room where I keep the litter box and recycling. Too bad I never go in there except to toss a recyclable or clean the litter box.
Speaking of that kitten!! She's way too smart. First she was jumping up to the counter top where I was keeping Finny's food for him (it was supposed to be high enough that an adult cat could jump but a kitten couldn't reach-ha.), then she figured out how to open the screen door I'd attached a rubber band to for added tension, two weeks before Finny could manage to do the same. Today she was outside while I was weeding the garden, and when I finished and went to bring her in, she dashed away and scrambled a few feet up a tree. Aaaaaaagh!
But she and Finny are getting along (mostly). They fight, but I think it's mostly in fun... or tolerance on his part. And sometimes when he's sprawled out asleep somewhere she'll come and sleep nearby. (other times she'll come and start biting his tail or his neck and the peaceful scene will be quite destroyed.) The only matter I'm really concerned about right now is how much I should let her outside. Her preference seems to be Outside All the Time but there are the neighbourhood cats to consider, and while I figure Finny knows how to keep himself safe and not wander off too far, I'm not sure Josie knows her limits yet. But I don't want Josie to get bored either!! Bored kitten leads to chewing on my feet or sending my remaining african violets to the floor or cryyyying pathetically at the door. She's gotten real good at hunting flies that find their way inside, but even this doesn't provide more than a minute or two of diversion before the fly is caught and eaten. (I think this has been the fate of at least three flies so far today.)
Anyway. The other day I was at a used bookstore, browsing used children's books, and I found a Golden Book titled CATS. Of course I had to look it over. It was really familiar, right down to the facts it provided about cats (like how their pupils adjust to different light, or how their whiskers can feel how much space they have to move in, or that Siamese cats are especially loud and talkative). I must have read this book several times as a kid, but I'd completely forgotten it as the source of all my earliest knowledge about cats until I saw it in the store that day. Now it's sitting on my shelf where it belongs, next to Buster the Cat and Charlie :) I think Charlie is still my favourite book about a cat-a story of a skinny, scrappy young cat finding a peaceful home with green trees and grass in the middle of a big city. Maybe that book's influence brought me to my own little woodsy urban abode :)
And now for some garden chatter. Last year, you may recall, I had mutant crossbred zucchini-nut squashes growing all over the place and producing faster than I could eat. Also tons of tomatoes and some beans. This year's garden is still heavy on the tomatoes (though almost all of them are cherry tomatoes, growing from seeds dropped last year) and doing well with beans, but my squash plants are sad, very sad. I got two small zucchinis earlier in the season (like a month or two ago) but not a thing! since. Yesterday, at last, I noticed a (female) bloom on my butternut squash plant and decided to take no chances on bugs but to hand pollinate the thing myself. So long as the plant itself survives, then, I may get one good squash out of the plant this year. As for new things I'm trying with this year's garden, I've got a row of beets and a row of carrots, and I think they're doing alright but it's hard to say for sure, the edible part being underground and all. Some of the beets' tops show through the soil and they look rather small, so I need to read up and find out if people like, overwinter beets or what, because how can they get so big in one season otherwise?? Do they need to be watered like, a ton or what? Okra was my other new addition and those are coming along nicely-I've finally got all three surviving plants flowering and producing pods. Mostly what I picked has just been used to supplement what I buy at the market, or else mixed in stir-fry style with other vegetables. It's hard to make a meal of two pods of okra. So my lesson for next year is start several plants (and if they don't all come up, start again)!! I also have cucumber plants, which are doing barely better than last year's, but that's not saying much.
As for flowers, an ignorant yard worker came the other week and chopped down a few miniature rosebushes (the landlady was contacted, and has made vague promises of having them replace the plants; on the bright side, the stubs are sending out some new leaves so at least they weren't completely killed); but otherwise things are growing and making me happy. I collected seeds from love-in-a-mist pods today, no thanks to Josie who dashed in and knocked over my plastic container, sending seeds flying all over the steps outside. I have all kinds of seeds and I'm already imagining where I might scatter them next spring. And my morning glories are growing too!! And they'll drop seeds of their own and cover more and more of the fence each year with beautiful blue-violet blooms! Cosmos are falling over themselves, and a field of feverfew is spreading through the vegetable garden with anise hyssop creeping in from another corner. My sedum are starting to flower-I love sedum dearly, but when they're in bloom it means the season is winding down... Sweet Annie smelling sweet (and looking ridiculous-one sprouted up next to my (remaining, unchopped) miniature rosebush this spring and I let it stay, but it's since grown taller than me and looks quite silly leaning into the yard from the front edge of the garden. still, considering the yard workers actually didn't touch this weed or the rosebush next to it, maybe it's a good thing I let it grow so tall), delphinium finally growing at the right height (it kept trying to grow taaaaall and then ended up tipping over; now it's growing and blooming more compact and looks quite charming), and indoors I've relegated most of my houseplants to high places the kitten can't reach, making it quite cheery and green in the back room where I keep the litter box and recycling. Too bad I never go in there except to toss a recyclable or clean the litter box.
Speaking of that kitten!! She's way too smart. First she was jumping up to the counter top where I was keeping Finny's food for him (it was supposed to be high enough that an adult cat could jump but a kitten couldn't reach-ha.), then she figured out how to open the screen door I'd attached a rubber band to for added tension, two weeks before Finny could manage to do the same. Today she was outside while I was weeding the garden, and when I finished and went to bring her in, she dashed away and scrambled a few feet up a tree. Aaaaaaagh!
But she and Finny are getting along (mostly). They fight, but I think it's mostly in fun... or tolerance on his part. And sometimes when he's sprawled out asleep somewhere she'll come and sleep nearby. (other times she'll come and start biting his tail or his neck and the peaceful scene will be quite destroyed.) The only matter I'm really concerned about right now is how much I should let her outside. Her preference seems to be Outside All the Time but there are the neighbourhood cats to consider, and while I figure Finny knows how to keep himself safe and not wander off too far, I'm not sure Josie knows her limits yet. But I don't want Josie to get bored either!! Bored kitten leads to chewing on my feet or sending my remaining african violets to the floor or cryyyying pathetically at the door. She's gotten real good at hunting flies that find their way inside, but even this doesn't provide more than a minute or two of diversion before the fly is caught and eaten. (I think this has been the fate of at least three flies so far today.)
Anyway. The other day I was at a used bookstore, browsing used children's books, and I found a Golden Book titled CATS. Of course I had to look it over. It was really familiar, right down to the facts it provided about cats (like how their pupils adjust to different light, or how their whiskers can feel how much space they have to move in, or that Siamese cats are especially loud and talkative). I must have read this book several times as a kid, but I'd completely forgotten it as the source of all my earliest knowledge about cats until I saw it in the store that day. Now it's sitting on my shelf where it belongs, next to Buster the Cat and Charlie :) I think Charlie is still my favourite book about a cat-a story of a skinny, scrappy young cat finding a peaceful home with green trees and grass in the middle of a big city. Maybe that book's influence brought me to my own little woodsy urban abode :)