Is it the next day yet?

Blog...shmog!  Think I'll sleep through all this twiddle-twaddle.

Seed in the bird feeder...water in the bird baths...baby robin chirping for his meal...two ears and eyes hunkered down in the weed patch...get ready...get set...g...hose water arching across yard...WHOOSH!  Wet cat now in his own front yard...typical lazy morning.

An order of masks is on its way to me...I think...Los Angeles to Nashville, Nashville to Chattanooga, Chattanooga to Nashville, Nashville to Chattanooga, Chattanooga to State of Georgia, State of Georgia to Chattanooga, Chattanooga to Nashville, Nashville to Chattanooga, Chattanooga to Nashville, Nashville to Chattanooga, left Chattanooga on its way to destination.  What do you think the odds are of it ever deciding which alternate universe it wishes to be delivered in?

The dentist office called Saturday to see if, due to my age, I wanted to opt out of my teeth cleaning on the first day of their reopening after two months.  Well, you know how positively positive I am in my life ;)  I'm a worst case scenario type of lady, and if the world might be slowly rolling to hell in a wheel barrel, I want to have all appointments done now, so I can pull the covers over my head and snooze an extra three years.

Miss Zoe's renegotiated her terms on that horrible practice of giving cats medication.  Sardines are history and the new love of her life is a bit of grass fed hamburger squished around each pill.  Sad to say, somewhere in the timeline of all this pill popping mania, her sides puffed out two sizes too big.  She's on a diet, and her rapid decent into a persistent grab mommy's food and run little twerp would make even a dumpster diving rat extremely proud.

Dustin, Dustin, Dustin...how he hurts himself is anyone's guess; but fortunately for him, we've found a doggy chiropractor on the same level as a human chiropractor.  Unfortunately for us, he costs twice as much as my own chiropractor.  I asked the receptionist why she thought that was so.  She said maybe because Dustin has four legs while I only have two...ha...ha...ha...

Lacey has developed into an aggressive eater.  The way she drooled as she eyed my big toe this morning made me put my shoes back on.  She has hyperthyroidism.  Her veterinarian mentioned Radioactive Iodine Therapy after she is stable on medication.  I looked it up at the Cornell University website.  A radioactive calico...it's like you're in hazmat mode as her handler for the next three weeks after she arrives back home.  I can see its benefits; but with two people, a dog, three other cats and the lack of space...living with a spitfire calico morphed into Nuclear Kitty Kill...I just don't see it happening.

Copper Iris

Native Mock Orange

Winter Density Romaine Lettuce

on the verge of going to seed

Native Cumberland Rosemary

Nature's up to her old tricks again...cramming five acres of weeds into my little fourth acre plot.  I'm ever so grateful.  Ms. Carpenter Bee miscalculated and chewed a little round window into my fence panel.  Naughty bee!  She's getting better.  Her next attempt just 6 inches away stopped short of making another peephole, and she's on her way up.  Hopefully, she's tallied just how many inches high this fence really is, before it begins to resemble Swiss cheese. 

Pardon me now, as I have a most pressing matter to attend to...picking off a jillion baby burrs from my pant legs and shirt :'(

In the Land of 'Just One More Weed to Pull'

It’s raining………again.

Distant thunder from the southwest moving in, and Dustin dog is by my feet shivering.  The cats could care less.  Lacey and Charlotte are snoozing on cat trees at opposite ends of the house, Zoe’s in La La Land in the middle of the hallway, and Austin is lounging on my bed primping before his nap.

I’m snacking on multigrain crackers covered with Manna Butter amaretto almond spread with a dollop of St. Dalfour black cherry preserves, a cup of Assam tea brewed, dumped and brewed again with same bag to cut down on caffeine, and a handful of vitamin pills.  Old age…I recommend it with caution.

Caught off guard with panic shoppers wiping out inventories left and right, it was as if we were hiking up Mt. Everest to get the freezer and pantry stocked, and enough kitty litter to keep the floors from becoming potty pans.  It was mentally and physically fatiguing.

A crisis in the back yard a few weeks ago found me prying the Chickadee bird box off its pole and removing the nest so husband could hose out all the black ants.  I had to calm myself out of panic mode and into clear thinking mode.  Moss on the bottom of the nest fell off each time I moved the nest from one spot on the patio to another spot (about every 5-10 seconds), leaving a pile of swarming ants on the concrete with each move.

It wasn’t important at the time, so I don’t remember the number of featherless baby birds opening their mouths as if it was feeding time.  The parent birds where complaining loudly, and I feared abandoning the nest might happen; but the dropping of ants out of the nest with each move never subsided much.  Finally, I had to give up and hope for the best.

I scraped off some new moss from a log and the concrete walls to put in the bottom of the box to replace what fell off the nest and give some room for the remaining ants to not cannibalize the babies so easily.  I was pleasantly surprised when all the babies quietly fledged about 1 ½ - 2 weeks later, and left the box empty except, of course, for the ants.  That box is in the trash.  The next box will have a better way to hang on the pole.

Monitoring nest boxes is never ending.  I’ll wrap sticky tape upside down around the poles and carefully use insecticide on the bottom of the pole, but it all must be replaced every time it rains.  This year the woodpecker box was trashed after a carpenter bee adopted the box and chewed a hole too deep before I discovered it.  Birds don't nest with bees, and bees will re-use the box for years to come.  

Throughout the history of these gardens, the bird houses will be outdoors for a few years; and then when wasps, bees and aggressive birds become a problem, they are moved into storage for a few years until the cycle of enemies is broken.  It’s the only way I have been able to give baby birds a fighting chance of survival in their nest boxes.  

It's a dog eat dog world in nature.  Creatures have no hospitals, police, or 911 centers; so while I may try to do all these things on my own at one level or another in my gardens, it isn't feasible to think I can save every creature.  To look out my window at the waning day, is to look at softness and harshness as one.  Life...death...its the nature of things living.     

I’ve finished cleaning the gardens.  They’re still messy, but the rabbit I flushed out of the totally gone wild clematis vines near the back fence needs shelter, and if I keep cleaning, I will obliterate all safe places from its life in these gardens.  That would be the opposite of all that I try to accomplish.

I'm tired, and I've taken way too many breaks while trying to finish this post.  Started at breakfast and now it's past bedtime.  Creativity's not my forte these days, as I seem to have passed through that timeline of vintage into being an antique.

I have a cat who has caught up to me in cat years, so I can empathize with her plight these days.  She has added blood pressure medication to her growing list of pills, and it's becoming easier to take care of myself than taking care of her...poor baby.       

So…………………………………….................what’s new with you?

Cats in the House...Spring in the Gardens

Broccoli Bolognese with Orecchiette will be dinner tonight.  It's a madhouse at the moment in the kitchen with my family of cats.  The moment they smell broccoli roasting in the oven all hell breaks loose.  It takes all the mustering up of patience I can eke out of myself to not scream bloody murder and run for the hills.

Lacey racing back and forth meowing a thousand times in one minute; Austin yowling at the top of his lungs rubbing in circles around my legs like Indians coming in for the kill; and even Charlotte, around the corner and down the hall in my studio, joins in when the aroma of roasting broccoli tantalizes her nose. 

Zoe yawns, moseys over to the hassock under the window sill and jumps up to dream of a dinner of fresh little cardinals, as she watches them pluck seeds from the hanging feeder.  She doesn't get it.  All this frenzy for some foul smelling green stuff.  What gives?

It's enough to drive anyone bonkers when in the presence of begging cats, but like the cool lady I really am :) my mind dreams of my happy place and leaves me only half bonkers.  They will be appeased when a small dish of those succulent roasted greens is placed on the floor to be gobbled up by furry little piranhas.  Who knew roasted broccoli would rival fried chicken in this household of kooky meowzers.

Blackhaw Viburnum

'My Mary' Azalea 

Native Honeysuckle

My gardens are a personal expression of what lies in the soul of my being.  Transforming Mother Nature into an artistic endeavor of personal pleasures is a road only the foolhardy travel, as it's a work grounded in everlasting heaven and hell.

Mother Nature is always redesigning my designs, winning out more often, as I lose out more often.  I'd like to say it's a compromise, but I'd be lying.  It's more like competing with a little bully with one hand tied behind my back.

I've found going with the flow works much better.  I give a little, she takes a lot.  She's happy with that arrangement.  I, on the other hand, moan and groan as I constantly cut off the heads of all those pesky weeds she seems to love with a passion.

Will it ever end?  I think only when I am no more.  Will my gardens live on?  They'll fade into oblivion, as one person's passion is rarely ever the next owner's desire.

Sad...happy?  It's all a matter of attitude.  I may bitch a little at times; but there's no place I'd rather be than in my gardens, where I can enjoy heaven and endure hell all at the same time :)

An unpretentious kind of rainy day ~

An insightful gardener :) I know plants don't care what the catalogs or magazine's opinions are about themselves.  These free-spirited leafy individuals do as they darn well please, and it's my lot in life to manage their well-being in my gardens on that endless roller coaster ride that teeters ever so slightly towards hell at times.  It's wearing me out a teeny bit a lot.  Help!

Alright, already, Austin!!!  I need to feed a meowing cat who's driving me crazy with five minutes of pleading feed me feed me feed me feed me feed me feed me feed me...you get the jest.  I'll be back in half an hour or so.

FIvE

TEN

FIFTEEn

TWENTY

TWENTY-FIVE

Today it's raining cats and dogs, with the wind and a few hippos thrown in.  If my photo below could talk, it would chat your little head off for the next two hours; but alas it can't, so...here goes.  Dashed out the back door and lowered the umbrella canopy halfway to prevent the wind from reducing it to shreds.  Soaked in the process; so, after a change of clothes, I sopped up the water on my rain drenched head with a roll of paper towels...all good :/  

I would have closed the umbrella tight, but as you can see, it's protecting a cardboard box and its inhabitants.  Wanting to recycle their pots to use again, I moaned a phrase somewhat like "what the hell" when I looked into that opened box from I won't mention where, at four large clematis root balls wrapped in plastic bags with no pots.  This only works if the day is sunshine and the soil two days dry when received.  Have you ever known the weather to be that cooperative?

My ancient body isn't any more cooperative than the weather, so...by Friday, one of the Arabella's was planted out back.  Yesterday the other Arabella was planted in the huge pot behind the deck table.  Today the yard is a swimming hole.  Saucy Alice is stewing in her prison, while Vinacea is chilling out like the laid back sort of plant she is.  Meanwhile, I'm visiting my happy place for the rest of the day.

What happened to extraordinary?

A little bit of not much on this quiet day...

Fascinating, laying six pasture-fed chicken eggs in a stainless steel saucepan, and watching them all stand tippy-toe upright in the water that covers them, like sailors ready to jump ship when their swimming hole heats to the boiling point.  They will adorn my salad of ‘Winter Density’ Romaine lettuce picked fresh from the raised beds this morning.

Planted too late last year, the lettuce was only one or two inches high before freezing weather set in.  They all stood their ground and tucked in for the long winter ride.  Whenever a warm day showed up they grew a little bigger, then back to snooze time when the cold reappeared.  February snow, then icy breezes alternating with warm winds, and now they're fattened up for the eating.  

I’m falling behind in cooking all the parsnips that have wintered in the raised beds.  They're sending up new leafy shoots, and I’m losing the race to evict them all to the dinner table before it’s time to plant corn seeds in their place.  Vegetable gardening is a science I sadly haven’t master.  I’ll blame old body hating me on that one :)

Spring wildflowers are beginning to carpet the gardens in fuchsia, pinks, reds, corals, blues and whites.  To stand alone amid all this beauty is such a calming euphoria.  Hard to believe, in this moment of balmy breezes, the weather report says next week will bring back coat weather.

Not too long ago I read an article on tulips, and the methods the Dutch have thought up to keep them coming back every year better that the year before.  It’s not something any sane individual would ever want to do in their own backyard anytime in their lifetime.  I do have wild little tykes called ‘Little Beauty’ I planted years ago that do manage to reappear each spring to my joy.  A little drift of those fuchsia beauties are blooming under the old ash tree where the ground is a bit higher.

Nine years ago, in my front yard, a drift of say twenty or thirty Generaal De Wet tulip bulbs were planted...a kiss of sunshine when they bloomed the next spring.  A blog post way back then is filled with their photos.  Three have always popped their leaves up through the soil every spring, fattened out, and then gone back to sleep bloomless.  Several weeks ago my heart skipped a beat when I saw a bud on one, and today the flower has opened.

Tenacity sometimes has surprises most pleasant…a little kiss of sunshine once again after all these years. 

Prelude to Spring

Little faces watch me stop on their path,

gathering my sweater tighter and looking down to adore

shimmering smiles in cool laughing breezes.

Life with my Calico

The dim lit room, when all is at peace in the hush of late evening, is my refuge from all things expected.  It often times finds me stroking my calico across her cheek and back neck while her soulful eyes gaze into mine with such sublime ecstasy. To think of a cat as solitary, is to not have known the cat at all.  Some of my best friends have been cats.  I know this one is.

She will attack play as if you’re the prey, and when one attempts to make her do what she simply does not want to do, well…there are consequences to pay.  None the less, when she chooses to lie upon my lap, an angelic cherub is gracing my presence.  She’s rather amazing, this little feline of perfection and imperfection.

She wears a coat of mottled colors, more like patches of orange, grey and white blended into each other.  Her Amazonian ways may find her zigzagging up the cat steps to race across the bookcase top through the wall tunnel onto the cat tree then armchair back and a flying leap to the couch, before racing back to the cat steps for a second go-around.  When she’s in this Wonder Woman fur flying claws extended mode, we all know it’s best to have vacated the room ten seconds ago.

Her place in the social hierarchy of the four cats of our home appears to be at the top, although it is all somewhat complex and not always crystal clear.  The Persian was never in the calico’s good graces until time left just the two of them, and they became best buddies almost overnight; but then the addition of the two grays four months later dissolved that relationship almost overnight as well.

This complicated little calico bullies one of the grays so repeatedly, that the gray’s territory is now the room called my studio.  A three foot gate of bars expands across the entrance, and although the gray could easily jump out or the calico jump in with no problem, they never do.  It’s an acceptance of territory they seem to understand.  I’m resigned, after multiple solutions tried and failed, to accept this arrangement as how it will always be while the two are under the same roof.

So…as I quietly sit listening to her low soothing purr, she turns her gaze once again in my direction followed by a hoarse little murmur of a meow.  I’m wondering where I’m regarded in all of this feline melodramatic interaction?  I vision myself at the top of the pecking order.  I don’t think my calico cares what I envision.  She already knows how it really is.

My life will always be content with a cat on my lap, and she will always be content to be that cat on my lap whenever she chooses.  She asks so little of me, so I can ask no more of her.  This spirited little calico, with all of her quirks, charms, and difficulty; will always be a favorite of mine.