Hi. I’m Hannah.
There was a big snowstorm this week. It just snowed and snowed and snowed and Mateo got more difficult to manage than usual because he was so frustrated…
The snow kept up for so long the Mother of Cats went out and whapped at some tree branches with a stick to make the snow come off. The trees are all okay, so that was good! There was so much snow in the end it was taller than Mateo. Did I mention that he was grumpy and frustrated? He chases me way too much when he is grumpy… Lucky for me the Mother of Cats had just ordered more chirpy toys for him along with a second automated laser light so there is a fresh one for him to play with while the other one is charging. Sometimes the Mother of Cats is kind of smart. Sometimes…
You can see how much snow there was with the bear. When the awful stuff finally stopped coming out of the sky there was almost 15″ of it on the ground. I absolutely refused to go out onto the catio with Mateo the Idiot, but the poor Mother of Cats had to go out to shovel it twice to get the sidewalks and driveway cleared. Poor Mother of Cats.
Mostly we stayed indoors and knitted away on the new sweater and listened to an audiobook when we weren’t playing with plants (that’s coming up soon…) or suffering in the cold whiteness.
Look at how much sweater got done! The Mother of Cats is listening to The Adventures of Amina Al-Sirafi while working on her La Prairie cardigan. She really likes the book (but so far there hasn’t been even a single octopus in the story…), and she is below the armholes on the sweater and getting ready to start using the third color of yarn. Whew. That is a lot of knitting. I’m a really great support for the Mother of Cats while she’s working. I deserve more tuna for sure!
We also worked a lot with the garden plants this week. The Mother of Cats planted her little fig tree seedlings, and they are looking great.
Now there are 4 new fig trees growing in the upstairs garden with the orchids. Speaking of the orchids, another one started blooming this week!
There are some other projects with plants going on which I don’t understand all that well because… I’m a cat… but the Mother of Cats seems to be really happy with the way they are going. The milkweed seeds came up out of the ground this week and the snapdragon seedlings are so big the Mother of Cats is going to have to put them into bigger pots soon to get them ready to go live out on the deck.
The Mother of Cats was really excited to see the milkweed sprouts, but I think that she is a little silly. She thinks that the milkweed will make butterflies come to the garden, which I guess is good because I like to chase them a lot, but it is hard for them to get into the catio. Maybe she can put some of them in pots on the catio? That would be nice!
She is going to plant some more rose seeds this week (they have been in the refrigerator for 6 weeks) and this time I promise to not knock them down onto the floor, and hopefully there won’t be any nasty mold. She is also trying to get the jade plants to bloom, but so far there isn’t anything happening on the plants. Well, they may be growing more leaves, but that isn’t exactly what the Mother of Cats was hoping for.
This is Hannah, signing off.
>^..^<
Notes from the Mother of Cats: The lung CT scan results came in. I still have lungs. They still look the same as they did 6 months ago: not better, but not significantly worse, and I have less fluid around my heart. I’ll take it!
Yarn, Books & Roses 
Shit, mate ! – less fluid around the heart is GREAT !! – like, really great !!
Oh, sorry, Hannah – hello, how d’you do ? Is Mateo bullying you ? – or is chasing just a game ?
Terrif news about the milkweed – I know you were dead keen to get it going, and you certainly have !! Fingers crossed for the rose seeds: that’s an experiment a bit like sending something up in a Space Shuttle !! :)
Kitty paws are divine.
I know, right?! I had a little talking to about maybe needing to have a procedure done to remove the fluid, so I was so happy to see that it had decreased this time. It’s been months since I stopped the anti-fibrotic drug, so it is also good news that my lungs aren’t worse too. Yay!
Hannah: HE IS BULLYING ME!!!!! He slashes at my back legs to make me run, and he even slashes at the Mother of Cats to make her play with him. A little snow and he turns into a DEMON KITTEN!!!! The Mother of Cats cut all of his claws off, but I still have mine because the Mother of Cats loves me more.
MoC: that is an unsubstantiated rumor. Claw cutting did happen, however.
I planted the the rose seeds again tonight. It’s another moon shot!!
Great medical news for you! Thanks for sharing it. As for the kitties, cute photos, especially the one of the not-so-happy catter on the catio. Sorry you had to use your snow shovel. That must’ve been difficult. Thanks to El Nino, my long-suffering snow shovel has been propped under big rose canes holding up the right side of a leafless rose arch. I gave thanks that I didn’t have to use the shovel…yet…when I untangled it yesterday to serve as an oversized dust pan. It worked well at removing the winter goop and leaves from under the freshly trimmed ivy along the front steps to the yard refuse bin. Your new plants are promising. I stuck my geraniums out on the 2nd-floor balcony to get sun, but when I brought them in, the weakest one, now down to one slim stem and leaf, was bitten by some opportunistic critter that left tooth marks on the stem. I’m afraid it’s done for, but we’ll see. Beautiful colors of yarn in your knitting projects. The sweater made me hungry for raspberry sherbet with plum sauce.
Poor geranium. I used to overwinter mine in the greenhouse at work (one of the perks of being a biology teacher) and then returned them to the outdoors each spring where all the leaves would burn and die. New leaves grew out from the stem, so maybe your little critter-chomped plant will make it. I’m trying to imaging the critter that chomped your plant on the second squirrel balcony… squirrel? Those little guys will try anything.
Now I want raspberry sherbet with plum sauce.
I think you’re right about a squirrel being the culprit. One tried to bury an acorn in one of the other geranium pots a month or so ago. Or maybe he was unearthing it. Whatever, a huge mess of dirt all over the balcony floor. I think I’ll cut the geranium stem above the chomp mark and turn it into a cutting that I hope will root in water. And here I thought geraniums were so icky tasting that a squirrel wouldn’t bother it because the deer won’t touch them.
The squirrels here are driving me crazy because they bury peanuts in all my potted plants on the deck. One year I tried strawberries on the deck and those dang squirrels got all of them. I’m shocked that it went after a geranium, tho, as because it does seem that they wouldn’t be very tasty…
I thought about that. Maybe because it’s a zonal hybrid and has most of the scent/taste bred out of it, unlike the old fashioned red/orange pelargonium that wafted a sharp, heady fragrance when the leaves were bruised or the stems plucked. I noticed that about marigolds last year – no scent. Even the deer tasted a few.
Wow. I didn’t know they came without the strong scent. My geraniums are pretty untouched, and I have squirrels and bunnys galore.
Maybe your squirrels and bunnies are more discriminating chompers with a finer food sensibility than the deer that live in the woodlots behind our homes.
Yes, poor Mother having to all that white stuff clearing; Marilyn – I wish you well.
Thanks. Here’s hoping for less white stuff.
Good news from your CT! Lungs are nice things to have. We didn’t get anywhere near that amount of snow but it has been snowing off and on for 2 days now, which is not a normal thing for us. I am taking it as a win as I plan to hermit today and enjoy the cold white stuff from inside.
White stuff is best enjoyed from inside. 🙂 The CT results are good news, but I still have autoimmune pneumonia so I have to keep masking… sigh.
Sorry about the reason for the masking. As for the white stuff, it’s best enjoyed on the page of a calendar that you can shut when you don’t want to look at snow! Too many years spent in Maine and Wisconsin to appreciate snow. Yuck! Give me temperate any day.
I do love the snow here (fluffy sparkling stuff) when it is cold, and I have to say that with our bright sunshine it melts off really quickly, but I am over the heavy spring stuff!
So glad your CT gave you some good news! Wow you got a ton of snow – hope that your are not pushing too hard with clearing it. Sounds like the gardening is going pretty well!
Hannah – you are such a smart girl to stay indoors helping Mother of Cats. You definitely deserve more tuna 🙂
The CT was a relief because of my illness last fall and all the fibromyalgia that came afterwards. Yay, I am maintaining!
Hannah: I think that I should get extra tuna on snow days, don’t you?
Yay!
Hannah, yes definitely! Emotional support tuna.
15″ of snow? Wow! Typically it is heavy this time of year. I understand why you had the grumpies. Can you ask your mama what her secret is to getting the orchids to bloom? Please? For all the years I have had jade, never once has mine bloomed. There is a shop down the street with a giant (and I mean G.I.A.N.T. one in their window. When it blooms, it is magnificent. The owner swears by rain water. I’ve not had that experience.
It was the heavy stuff and there was some significant tree damage even though the trees haven’t gotten their leaves yet.
So, the orchids. I feed them with Miracle Gro every month and in the fall I leave the window open in their room so they experience big temperature swings. This room faces east and heats up quickly in the mornings and gets pretty hot during the day, and then overnight the temperature drops quite a bit (like 30 degrees) and a window fan brings the cold air in. That seems to do the trick. I started doing this after reading a “how to get orchids to bloom” pamphlet put out by University of Northern Colorado who is the plant expert in our area.
My jade plants… I want them to bloom so much! I went online and learned that a lot of people recommend that the plants go outside for the summer, so mine have been going out for three years now. I also read that they need a boost of fertilizer in the spring, so I’m giving them the blooming formula from MiracleGro now at the start of the month (I started in Feb). They are putting out new growth, but so far nothing that looks like it will be a bloom.
Hannah: she is sad. She wants the jade plants to bloom. Maybe they need tuna…
I read about jade as well and age and temperatures seem to influence the bloom. I will add a regular dose of feeding to the mix.
We are women on a blooming mission!
Dang, I just read that they need total darkness and long nights to bloom, and I have a light on a timer that stays on until almost midnight in the room where they are. That doesn’t sound promising for blooming this year.
I wonder how much truth is in that. The jade that I mentioned is in a store front window with street lights on all night.
I think that it depends on the specific wavelength of light, but hopefully my indoor light will also affect the plant the same way.
Yay for some good medical news! Not yay for so much snow all at once, that’s just unnecessary
I’m happy with it. There is a new drug in the pipeline that just got fast track status, so if I can maintain until it gets here that would be optimal. It is an antifibrotic drug, so it will help with lots of other conditions too.
I’ll keep my fingers and toes crossed then
Love positive news on the medical front!
Wow, you really got dumped on by that storm. We only got about 8″ here in Thornton, and my wonderful neighbor cleared the front walk. Everything else melted off (er, sublimated) over the next day or two. No tree damage.