In case y’all missed it on Saturday, a note from the Challenger’s House shelter manager:
Thanks to all of you who participated in the kitten pool. The money you donated will cover leukemia/aids testing, spaying or neutering, & rabies shots for all 6 kittens plus a bit left over. I am always amazed at the response Robyn gets from her readers and I appreciate that most of you probably have local organizations that you support. We are lucky to have so many generous animal lovers who jump in to support the cause. And I love the name Fergus Simon. Thanks, Lori, and congratulations on being the name-the-baby winner.
Sincerely, Susan B., Shelter Manager
And in case you didn’t see it on my Facebook wall on Sunday, Fred has made No Limit (the book he wrote and then self-published on Kindle last year, then took down after a few months) available again, in case you missed it last time around. It should be available on Smashwords in a few days, too.
I’ll add the link in the sidebar at some point, too.
We had two nice, sunny days this weekend, which gave Fred the chance to get the grass mowed (it was getting realllly long), he got the fence put up around my raised beds, and this morning I’m going to plant my romaine, purslane, spinach, carrots, radishes and… is there something else? Oh, right, cauliflower and brussels sprouts are going in the last bed. I’ll wait ’til the threat of frost date (Friday) has passed to transplant the cauliflower and brussels sprouts (everything else is seeds).
I really feel like I’m behind schedule, garden-wise. I always feel that way this time of year, though, I guess.
Later, Fred’s going to till part of the big garden, and I’m going to get my onions and garlic planted. My tomato plants need to get a bit bigger (and the garden needs to get a bit dryer so Fred can till the whole thing with the tractor) before I transplant those.
I’m so anxious to get the show on the road I can barely stand it!
We have a big raised bed where I had planned to grow some of my tomato plants this year, but yesterday Fred and I drove to the Huntsville Botanical Gardens to visit the mulch pile, hoping to fill the back of the truck with mulch that we could then fill the big raised bed with. As it turned out, the mulch looked great from a distance but when we got up to it, there was a lot of garbage in the pile. Pieces of black trash bags, pieces of plastic, I saw a CD case. Fred started to shovel mulch into the back of the truck, but I stopped him and said “Look, I don’t really want to grow vegetables in this stuff”, and he agreed.
It would have cost over $100 to buy enough topsoil to fill the raised bed at Lowe’s, so in the end we decided that I’ll grow my potatoes-in-straw in that bed this summer, and then this Fall we’ll fill the bed with shredded leaves and let it compost over the winter. We did buy a couple of bags of gardening soil to top off my little raised beds, so hopefully the stuff I’m planting today will be happy.
Fred also put up a fence around my raised beds so that cats – NEWT, I AM LOOKING AT YOU – won’t use them as litter boxes. At some point this week I need to take a look at the pots we have, and get something to fill six of them with so I can get my herbs planted.
Perhaps I have mentioned that I love this time of year?
When I was doing laundry yesterday, I pulled a load of towels out of the washer, and along with the towels came a (dead) red wasp. Now, how the damn thing got in there, I neither know nor wish to ponder.
(It’s bad enough that there was a wasp on Fred’s pillow when I went by his room Saturday morning and I went in with a piece of toilet paper to grab it, and it FLEW AT MY FACE and then behind the blinds. So I pressed on the blinds with my piece of toilet paper, and instead of squishing the wasp, it just kind of held the wasp in place, where it buzzed angrily, no matter how hard I pressed. So I let go and stepped back and it FLEW AT MY FACE AGAIN and I screamed and did a dance, and ultimately it rested on the end of Fred’s bed where I successfully grabbed and squished it before flushing it down the toilet.)
So I was pulling the towels out of the washer, and the red wasp fell off one of the towels and landed on the dryer, and I kind of shuddered and then went out to hang the towels on the clothesline. Later, I was headed out the door with the kitchen compost bucket, and I glanced at the wasp and figured I’d add it to the compost bucket. So I picked it up and NO it did not come back to life. Instead, every inch of skin I possess crawled right off my body.
I don’t know what it is about those damn wasps, but everything about them ooks me out and touching one – dead or not – with my bare fingers was especially bad. Fucking things.
Also, Sunday afternoon there was a yellowjacket that was buzzing angrily around the front room, and I grabbed the vacuum cleaner, and after some chasing and swearing (on my part) and angry buzzing (on his part), I finally vacuumed that fucker right out of the air.
Now there’s a very angry mortally wounded yellowjacket living in the vacuum cleaner bag, and I’m sure that when I’m asleep tonight, it will figure out how to escape and the damn thing will be looking for ME and I’m not sure I’ll sleep much tonight.
First, your McMao video, entitled McMaos Belly up to the Milk Bar (bet you can’t guess what that’s about, huh?)
And now? The names!
The kitten formerly known as Dark Nose is now Macushla. (This is the Americanized spelling of Mo chuisle, a phrase that literally translates as “my pulse”, but is used like “my darling.” Someone mentioned it in the comments to Friday’s entry (I think it was Friday), and I immediately loved it.)
The kitten formerly known as Dark Splotch Right Nostril is now Declan.
The kitten formerly known as Dark Nose with Pink Splotch is now Cillian (pronounced “Killian.”)
The kitten formerly known as Pink Nose is now Finnegan.
Of course you know Fergus Simon.
And the kitten formerly known as Little White Face (who is looking at Fred as if she’s saying “How DARE you? Unhand me, Sir!”) is now Ciara (which is pronounced “Keer-ah”). I’ve loved that name since I read it in an Andrew Greeley novel years and years ago.
Eyes opening, all over the place!
Check out Fergus Simon there, rolling around on his back.
Look at little princess White Face there in the middle all “What do YOU want, lady? Go ‘way!”
Little stripey-pants there on the lower right escaped the cat bed, but immediately turned around and went back.
“What IS this place?!”
Abandon ship!
Mama comforts.
“Oh, Kong Kickeroo, I love you so.”
Rufus makes himself at home.
Comfy are we, little man?
::smile::
Elwood, ever alert for the sound of the cat food can opening in the foster room.
Previously
2010: No entry.
2009: No entry.
2008: All the cats have “J” as their middle initial, including the girls (Pootie J. Pooterson, Stanker J. Belle, and Miss Maxi J. Momma).
2007: The man loves nothing so much as getting his fret on.
2006: Smart man, that one.
2005: Back from Gatlinburg.
2004: No entry.
2003: I love Von, and questions answered.
2002: No entry.
2001: Miz Poo gives me a scare.
2000: My husband, the diplomat.