Gardening – Page 2 – Yarn, Books & Roses

Updates from the Garden

June is well underway now, and the heat has finally arrived. Yay. I think that there are some days of thunderstorms ahead, but right now my plants are rocking in the heat after days of rain. Happy, happy plants. This is what is happening on my deck and back gardens.

The roses are finally started blooming!

My favorite, favorite rose in the garden suddenly opened up blooms yesterday. This is the Princess Alexandra of Kent rose.

This rose, and several of the others, are just covered in buds after our wet spring. I’m looking forward to days of blooms ahead if the thunderstorms don’t create too much havoc. My lavender plants are also putting out some color and I’m happy with the purple color on the deck shining along the pink blooms of the rose.

There are 4 types of lavender here. The large plant with Mateo for scale is a mystery lavender brought home from the grocery store. The little group of three lavender plants shows Provence Lavender (the tall plant), English Blue Spear Lavender, and French Lavender ‘Otto Quast’. The Otto Quast is having issues with its nationality, evidently, because the tag says English, but the internet is sticking with Spanish. I await some blooms from this plant…

I just want to add that the next big show will be my roses. I counted them yesterday and I have 35 plants at this point. Yay for roses!

I’ve been slowly weeding along in the back gardens, and one by one the flowering plants are emerging from the jungle of runaway grasses to shine. The roses are all pruned, mulched and fed, and the buds are everywhere. I don’t have a lot to admire right now, but the snapdragons and some others are doing their best to represent.

All of the snapdragons are reblooms or reseeds from last year, and the purple is a salvia plant that has taken off this year. How easy can this get? I collected seeds from snapdragons last year, and as I weed out more garden I plan to work in some seeds into the bare places. I have seeds from pygmy plants and some from plants that are rockets, so I can put some height into part of the garden while getting color towards the front edges. This is a good plan because I think that I need to stay out of the garden center for a while. Did I mention that I went yarn shopping this week? I kind of bought all the yarn, wiping out any progress in reducing the stash this year. I don’t care. I love the colors of the yarn that I bought, and I plan to show it all off in another post this weekend because some of it is still winging its way to my house. They echo the colors of my flowers, and they make me happy.

On the deck I have some little experiments chugging along: my milkweed seeds have successfully sprouted and I’m starting to consider places in the yard to plant them. I overwintered a bougainvillea plant in my front room this year, and it moved onto the deck a couple of weeks ago. What a sorry looking mess it was for a few weeks even though I misted it twice a day and limited its sun exposure, many of the leaves burnt and dropped off. Today the plant is covered with the beginnings of new growth. Yay!

Did you notice that the milkweed is growing in a milk jug?

Just a little more about the garden. I have sources of water out for bunnies and birds, and the yard is filled with birdsong and regularly visited by bunnies. My new neighbor loves the bunnies, and evidently they have babies next-door, and the adults use my yard as part of the Bunny Highway towards the front yard shaded pastures. Out in the front, my new neighbor has bird feeders, another birdbath, and little bunny statues.

The left is a bunny on the highway past my deck, and the little statue under the tree with the frolicking bunnies is in my new neighbor’s yard.

Life is good!

Welcome, June.

The Scleroderma Chronicles: June is Scleroderma Awareness Month

I plan to shine like a sunflower this month.

My local garden center had sunflowers for sale.

I am still thinking about resiliency. I went for a drug infusion a couple of weeks ago, and the lady in the chair next to me and I talked about what resiliency means. She is a liver transplant recipient, and she is also taking the immunosuppressant that I take to control my systemic sclerosis. Like a lot of patients in my scleroderma community, she has had to roll with a series of escalating complications tied to her original liver disease. We both now have osteoporosis, walk with canes, struggle with anemia, and are on a lot of drugs. We laughed about the canes and drug side effects: we’re still here, we crowed. Unlike me, she never checks for drug side effects or interactions; if she knew about them, she figured that she would just worry and imagine she was developing them. Instead, she just cruises along and if something comes up, she contacts her doctors.

Resilience.

Welcome to Scleroderma Awareness Month. I’m spending the month organizing my thought about resilience into some type of logical order. I have a Word document going with an organizational table, a ton of links, and everything scleroderma in it. It will be good for me, I think.

This is a pygmy sunflower. How cute it that!

By the way, my new friend also wants an emotional support chicken.

Welcome to June.

The Scleroderma Chronicles: Updates from the Sclero Front

It’s spring here in Colorado. The first baby bunny appeared this week, and the plants in the yard are starting to burst out in green buds. The roses are looking like they are going to do really well this year (except for that one that the bunnies ate…) and there was a huge outbreak of my little bulb flowers in the front garden. I have new cushions for my patio swing, and I sit in the sunshine, reading and drinking my morning latte, every warm morning. On chilly mornings I wrap in a favorite shawl and stay out with the cats as long as I can. The first grasshoppers of the year have arrived for the cats to chase, and the air is filled with birdsong. There are even blue jays!! Good days.

The phlox in the front is looking great!

A couple of day have been so warm I couldn’t stay in the sunshine long and I’ve had to deploy the umbrella shade. Then, the next day, there may be snow. This is spring in Colorado: rapid changes and big temperature swings. The same is true for the barometric pressure; look at what happened this week.

My emotional stability has been a little like the air pressure the last couple of weeks as I’ve gone through a round of testing and doctor’s appointments. I was very upbeat when I went in to get my blood draw to check my iron levels, and the bone density scan last month was just routine. I mean, I’ve been feeling soooo much better: more energy, sleeping better, more mentally alert and even my appetite has improved. Suddenly my gut doesn’t hate me, and I am getting out of the house more. I went to my knitting group for the first time in months! I was positive that my test results would reflect the improvement.

Not so much. After weeks of eating iron-rich foods and downing my iron supplement there was absolutely no change in my test results, and in fact, the test that measures the concentration of hemoglobin in individual red blood cells (MCHC) got worse. Seriously? The only gain was one value of 25.5 that went up to 25.6; still too low. After all that red meat, salmon, iron pills, avocado, and spinach all I got was 0.1 improvement? Kind of disheartening as this means that I have to have some invasive testing to see if I’m bleeding in my stomach (it’s a scleroderma thing), and I don’t think my doctor will put it off much longer. (It’s called watermelon stomach) (fabulous) (of course this is rare) (my zebra self is not happy).

Then the bone density scan results arrived. I have somehow developed a fairly serious case of osteoporosis in a short time span; the report says to start immediate treatment. Then I did some googling and found out that the diuretic that I take can cause osteoporosis, and I absolutely shouldn’t have been taking it because I have a strong family history and I’m kind of high risk. (Of course I am) (I stopped the diuretic) (now my feet are swollen) (my zebra self is crying).

I have to be honest. I was kind of crushed by the bad news that I absolutely did not expect. Then I mentally slapped myself around, did my exercises, potted some lavender plants, and went shopping on Amazon for some cheer-me-up jewelry. Just what I needed to pull myself together. One day at a time, right? I already have more than my share of challenges, so I shouldn’t waste any energy on things that haven’t happened yet. Next week I have an appointment with my internist, and we’ll work out a treatment plan for the osteoporosis and next steps for the anemia. (I took another iron supplement) (my inner zebra has pulled itself together again) (the zebra wants to point out that its lips aren’t as blue as they used to be).

I also pulled out the La Prairie sweater and knit steadily through the sadness until the body came off the needles. Gosh. It looks really nice so far. Something has gone right this week…

Today I woke up to a snow/drizzle mixture that was too unwelcoming for even Mateo to go out on the catio. All my joints hurt, and my muscles weren’t sure if they were going to play nice either. Of course, I had to drive across town to get lung testing and a sit-down appointment with my pulmonologist to go over all my results. I put on my cute Weekender Crew sweater, wore my new “in your face, scleroderma!” jewelry, and headed off for the testing. It hurt to breath as I walked into the building. I convinced myself that it was just the cold air; after all, I feel pretty good, and I was overdue for some good news.

The lung testing specialist is now my friend. We laughed and talked and caught up as she got me ready for testing, and then I breezed through all the parts of the pulmonary function testing and the 6-minute walk test. Every single result was cause for celebration as Stephanie (my technician) became more and more excited with the little graphs and data appearing on the computer screen. “This is better!” she kept saying. By the last test she was practically jumping up and down with excitement. “This is great! This is great! she crowed as she walked me to the exam room to see my pulmonologist. “I’ll let him know that you are here.”

I love this pulmonologist. He is the doctor who first listened to me and picked up on the fact that I had a hole in my heart and pulmonary hypertension. He held my hand and told me I could cry when my interstitial lung disease was first diagnosed. He has always been the doctor who was most honest with me; he told me last year after the tide had turned that they hadn’t been sure I would make it a year. He supported me when I halted the anti-fibrotic drug due to quality-of-life concerns. Today he was all smiles as we went over the results and my exam. My lungs have maintained on the scans. I have regained some lung function. The decision to halt the drug was the right one; there is no obvious sign of fibrosis right now. This is the best possible outcome right now; everything that he hoped for. I was the last patient he saw today, and he was pleased to have such a good one. “Best appointment of the day!” he declared as he walked me out. We were both enclosed in a bubble of joyous happiness as we walked.

I took this picture outside the building.

Outside the clinic the parking lot was almost empty. The cold drizzle was steady, the sky was full of sad lumpy grey clouds, and the gloom of early evening was creeping in. Around the building some ornamental trees were just beginning to open their flower buds, but in the shelter of the courtyard on the south side, the sunniest location, one tree was covered in blooms. Kind of a metaphor for the last couple of weeks. Sit in the sunshine and bloom, no matter what is going on in the world around you.

On the drive home, in my mind, my zebra self was dancing for joy.

Hannah and the CoalBear: We have Lavender!

Hi. I’m Mateo.

Do you see how grown up I look? I turned THREE YEARS OLD last week.

The days here have been nice, and the Mother of Cats has been letting us outside on the catio every single day for a couple of hours. It has been just great. She bought some new plants and put them out for us. The backyard bunny comes out every evening to visit with us. We had a crazy eclipse that made all the birds go to sleep, and then when it was over they woke up again and we were so excited!!!! It was just like two sunrises in one day! Oh, I almost forgot to mention… there are GRASSHOPPERS flying around. Look at how happy we look in the great outside. Isn’t my new lavender plant nice?

Everything was going great until the Mother of Cats discovered that I had been testing the catio wire for weak places. Hey, there is a bunny right out there that absolutely wants to play with me. Well, actually, it is more a matter of me wanting to play with it, but you understand, don’t you? I wasn’t actually going to hurt ~~eat~~ the bunny…

Mateo: when the Mother of Cats found this, I lost my independent catio privileges…

It was kind of hard for her to miss a hole in the fence this big, especially when it is a perfect Mateo-sized gap. Sigh. She’s pretty sure that I was actually outside of the wire trolling for bunnies in the yard, but we’ll never tell. Hannah and I are in total agreement about keeping our mouths shut. I have to give her a few days of my tuna, but it’s totally worth it. We’ve reconciled ourselves to just spending time with the lavender plants in the indoor garden instead of being outside with the new lavender, the grasshoppers, and the birds. And MY BUNNY!!!!

The truth is, Hannah and I kind of fight over the spot right by the lavender plants and seedlings in the indoor garden. It’s a really nice spot, don’t you think? The turtle is nice company, and we still have our lavender so that’s good. Anyway, where I’m going with this is that we are pretty much on HOUSE ARREST and can’t go out unless the Mother of Cats goes with us. She has been weaving, and knitting, and reading, and planting more plants all week, and she hasn’t managed to get anything finished yet. Not one thing. It is kind of embarrassing. We do try to hurry her along so we can go out in the afternoons, but she gets busy with her little hobbies and forgets about how much we need to be outside. To make it worse, did I mention, she still doesn’t have anything done!!!!!

This is what I’m talking about. The Mother of Cats is far enough into the book now that there are dragons. She likes dragons. Has she finished the book yet? No. She isn’t even halfway through yet. She should spend more time out on the deck reading, don’t you think? Then there is the sweater. Do you see how long it is now???? She still isn’t down to the bottom of the body yet, and she is starting to seriously worry about running out of yarn. The weaving is almost done, but is it off the loom yet? No. No, it is not. She’s now considering knitting some lace to attach to the ends of the woven strip (scarf thingy) to make it spiffy. That means that it won’t be done for even longer.

Sigh. Somehow, she needs to get this endless crafting under control…

Still, the Mother of Cats did get us more lavender this week. Lavender is nice. Now we have 4 different kinds growing in the garden and on the deck. I’d really like to check on the progress of the lavender in the gardens, but the stuff on the deck is enough. I guess.

Have a good week, everyone.

Notes from the Mother of Cats: The endless cardigan that I’m knitting is called La Prairie by Joji Locatelli. I’m very close to the bottom of the body. I’m considering leaving it short sleeved…

Look at what these cats have done to the knitted pika I made for them!

Hannah and the CoalBear: Purple Glam Caturday

Hi. We’re Hannah and Mateo (AKA the CoalBear).

We’ve been hanging out with the Mother of Cats today.

The Mother of Cats has been friskier lately. She’s been working with her indoor garden, and went shopping to buy a whole bunch of new flowers to put outside. She did a lot of cooking. She expanded the indoor garden and repotted a bunch of plants.

The indoor garden now has three shelves. The bottom shelf has the miniature rose, some lavender plants, and the seedlings. The middle shelf is mostly African violets and the baby fig trees. The top shelf is mostly orchids, but there are a couple of African violets up there too. We really like the new shelf and extra space, and Mateo especially is walking around among the plants keeping tabs on how they are doing. The Milkweed is growing great! The baby lavender seedlings are growing more leaves. The planted rose seeds: NOTHING!! The Mother of Cats also fixed up the catio some and has been reading outside with her morning coffee with us every morning. Things have been kind of great lately. She took some great photos of us.

Don’t we look great? The Mother of Cats says these are our glam shots.

The Mother of Cats then spoiled everything by going off and leaving us overnight while she visited her son. What is up with that?

While she was gone, she read this book about dragons and made two PICC line covers with yarns that have dragon colors: the green is called Green Dragon and the purple is called Purple Dragon. How come she went playing with dragons and left us alone? Did the dragons get OUR TUNA?

We absolutely were not surprised to see that she knitted with a purple yarn while she was away. Everything has been kind of purple lately.

Her new sweater (which is kind of purple) is getting longer. It is so big it covers her legs and Hannah while she’s knitting on it. Hannah really like the sweater and want one of her own.

The Mother of Cats say that the name of the sweater is La Prairie. What a crazy name, right, but the Mother of Cats likes it because we live right at the edge of the prairie and that is why there are so many wild things in our yard.

Her weaving is getting bigger and now the weft has changed to a purple color. The CoalBear likes to whap at the purple yarn while the Mother of Cats is moving the shuttle back and forth.

So, there seems to be a lot of purple lately. Enough with the purple and the Mother of Cats. It’s time to talk about us, right. After all, it is Caturday!!! Look at how big our bunny is getting in the back yard. You can barely see it in the first shot of us watching it (it hangs out at the bottom of the tree) so the Mother of Cats took a closeup of the bunny. Look! It looks just like the tree! What a clever bunny! Besides the bunnies, there are lots of birds and GRASSHOPPERS outside and it is kind of exciting on the catio now. The Mother of Cats even moved out some plants for us.

So, that’s about all. Guess it is time for us to go pester the Mother of Cats to get up and play with us. She’s been more active lately, but we still like to keep her busy taking care of us. Hannah is pretty sure that we need TUNA because we were left alone one night last week.

But first we are going to grab another nap… Did you notice that our blanket is purple?

This is Hannah and Mateo, signing off.

Happy Caturday, everyone!!

These are a few of my favorite things…

Hannah is taking the week off, but she would like to remind everyone that they should have a good Caturday. Go outside and listen to the birds! Roll around and coat your fur with some nice dust to take the oil off. Look for a bunny. Demand tuna!! Run wild through the house, chase your brother, and sleep in a sunbeam.

I’m still struggling with fatigue, and even though I’ve been trying to eat iron-rich foods, my doctor has decided that I need supplementation. Ugh. I’ve discovered that iron supplements are pretty much evil. Seriously evil! Like, the awful goes on for at least three days after each supplement, but I am starting to feel better. I sleep better. I have more energy. My GI symptoms are starting to calm down. I’m more mentally alert and have an urge to write. Huh. Anemia. There is another post in here somewhere, but not today. Today is about my happy place, the crafting room.

For some reason that I don’t understand, Hannah has decided that I need to spend all my waking hours in the crafting room. She trills and carries on (like, she scratches the woodwork around the doors to make me come running…) until I come back to the room. She is okay if I’m up and moving about, but if I try to read in bed, she intervenes and makes me get up. Okay. Transferring my reading to the craft room… huh… there is lots of sunlight in this room. I have a little loveseat along with the indoor garden, my loom, and a television, so this is actually a good place to hang out while I’m iron-loading. Did I mention that there is a walk-in closet attached to this room with all things crafting inside? Maybe Hannah knows what she’s doing. Over the last week I’ve been gardening and moving things around, and I realized that I really have made a happy place for myself in this room.

Here’s my loveseat with my emotional support chicken, my knitting, and one of my favorite shawls.

Did you want the links for those knitted objects? Just in case you do, here they are. The sweater is La Prairie by Joji Locatelli. The shawl is another Joji creation called Julie’s Wrap, and here is the link for the Emotional Support Chicken.

Do you see all the popcorns on the edging of Julie’s Wrap? It took FOREVER to make all of those, and you would think that I’d learned my lesson, but noooo…. I went ahead and made those popcorn stitches on the La Prairie. Do I regret this choice each time I come to that row on the chart with the popcorns? Why yes, yes I do. And yet…

Look at how cute they are in this cardigan!!!!

If you commit to knitting this sweater, and it is a serious commitment, you might as well commit to the popcorn. I’m really pleased with how this is looking. I’m into the third color of yarn and can’t wait to get to the fourth one. This is going to be a fun light cardigan later on this year.

Back to the happy things. They have pretty much piled up on the table in the room that usually has my fabric cutting station on it. This is what has moved onto it over the last week or two.

That teddy bear is the one that my son gave me in the ICU after my lung biopsy. He’s wearing a hat that I’ve knit for Frayed Knots donation, and the little zebras are ones that my niece sent to me as happy surprises. The Amazon Echo on the table reads my audible books to me while I knit. Happy. This is happy stuff.

Did you notice the green cat tail in the last photo? Here is the knitted cat, in fun spring colors. He’s propping up my current dragon/octopus books and doing a great job at it, too. Those books make me happy! The watercolor painting in the background is one I bought with a girlfriend at an art sale one perfect fall day in Golden, Colorado. My friend died two years ago, but the memory of her and that perfect day lives on in the painting.

Some of the plants from the indoor garden have overflowed onto this table. (Actually, that’s what set off the rearrangement of happy stuff.) This white orchid is a rebloom on a plant from last year (yay!), and in front of it is one of the new little fig trees. To the right, in a little terrarium that MAKES ME HAPPY is an African violet that is blooming its heart out. Above them you can see a bit of the quilt that my cousin made and sold to me a few years ago. Hey, doesn’t this make you happy too?

If you are interested in knitting your own cat, the pattern is Grey Kitten, Calico Cat by Claire Garland. I think that some more things will be joining this assembly on the table. I have some little statues that were put away because… Hannah… that I can now take out and arrange with the flowers. I have some special skeins of yarn that might be fun to display. Maybe I should focus on weaving a little wall hanging on the loom.

Tomorrow it will snow again, but I will be safely indoors with Hannah in the craft room, embracing the popcorn stitch, and enjoying all the little happy things that have been collected in here that are emblematic of friends, family, favorite knits, and happy memories.

There is a little take-home lesson here somewhere. If you are struggling with extreme fatigue, shortness of breath, and everything hurts, just go with it. Make yourself a happy place. Make something beautiful. Hang out with your cat. Embrace the popcorn stitch. Read in the sunshine.

Don’t forget to take your iron supplement, though, no matter how nasty it is!

Hannah wants me to mention that the Chewy tuna fairy visited us yesterday.

p.s. MR, how could I have forgotten to post the picture of the whole quilt? Here it is, a ribbon winner by my wonderful cousin Ruth Ann. Ya’ll, MR is at Downunder with Boodz and sets me straight whenever I wander from the straight and narrow…

Hannah and the CoalBear: Snow Days, Indoor Gardening

Hi. I’m Hannah.

I’ve been hanging out with the Mother of Cats in the craft room all week.

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.

Mateo went on the catio while she was shoveling, but I’m too smart for that!

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.

Not my jade plants, not my problem. I’ll be more excited when she plants catnip.

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!

Hannah and the CoalBear: The CaterSunday Report

Hi. I’m Hannah.

Chewy brought me more TUNA and this crunchy paper this week. How awesome is that?

The Mother of Cats was busy yesterday shopping and cooking and reading and stuff, so I’m finally getting the news of the week out today. It’s CaturSunday. That works, right?

The Mother of Cats brought a little loom into the craft room and Mateo and I have been checking it out. It’s kind of strange, don’t you think?

Can you see it on the table behind the chair? Mateo has been whapping at the metal heddles on the loom because he likes the sound.

The Mother of Cats wound some yarn out to make the warp, and I helped her with all of that. I’m such a good girl.

Yesterday she cut the warp off of the warping board (that’s the wooden thingy with the pegs) and put it all into a bag to keep it safe from me. Why would she do something like that? How am I going to learn how to weave when she doesn’t share her toys? Anyway… when we finally start weaving I’ll give you another update.

The Mother of Cats also spent some time knitting this week. She made another Alpine Bloom hat in fingering weight yarn to give away to the Kaiser infusion center, but this time it is shorter. Here’s the tall hat next to the shorter one.

Can you see the difference? The Mother of Cats has enough yarn to make another one of these hats, so she just started another one.

The leaves at the bottom of the flower are chopped off in the smaller hat, but the Mother of Cats says that it fits her head better. I think that she should make a really small one for me, don’t you think that would be cute? She would have to something to let my ears out of the hats, though.

This is me on top of the new hat while it was blocking. She put a towel on top of the hat, but I can still smell the wet wool. Don’t you just love the smell of wet wool in the morning?

Finally, I should give you the latest updates on the plant experiments that the Mother of Cats has been conducting around the house. Hold on to your whiskers, here they come!

The rose seeds got moldy. Goodbye, rose seeds.

Luckily there are more rose seeds chilling in the refrigerator and the Mother of Cats plans to try again in a few weeks.

The snapdragon seeds came up and are doing great!!

There was a fig tree in the front room that was growing really tall and thin. It was growing crooked and looked kind of silly. The Mother of Cats wasn’t sure what to do with it, but finally decided to CUT IT OFF to take the top two-thirds of the tree off with the thought that it might bush out some. She took some cuttings off the branches of the ~~killed~~ chopped tree and put them in the orchid garden to see if they would grow some roots.

Do you see the beginning of the little roots on the seedlings? Yay! Next she will try to move two of the rooted cutting to dirt to see if they continue to do well. What will she do with all these trees if they keep growing? Sometimes I worry about the Mother of Cats.

Finally, there is the milkweed seeds. Remember them? Mateo and I check on them every time we are out on the catio, because they are outside in milk cartons hanging out in the cold.

The iris plant has shoots coming up, but so far, the milkweed seeds are still asleep.

Well, that’s all I have to say for today. That was a lot of updates, huh. I’m pretty sure that I need some TUNA to keep my strength up.

This is Hannah, signing off.

Note from the Mother of Cats: I modified the Alpine Bloom pattern to use fingering yarn. You can see my project notes here.

Hannah and the CoalBear: So, we have had a couple of tough days…

Hi. I’m Mateo.

I’m being cute so I can get more attention…

The Mother of Cats has been ignoring us for days and days. I mean, our food bowls were almost empty, and she ran out of tuna over the weekend. I seriously question her fitness as a pet parent at this point…

Do you see this? I absolutely did not deserve this either!!!

First it snowed. Like kind of a lot of the wet sloppy stuff. Hannah refused to even go outside on the catio, and I could only stay a few minutes without getting covered in the white stuff because IT KEPT FALLING OUT OF THE SKY!! The Mother of Cats wasn’t letting me out all that much either because for the most part, we couldn’t get her to get out of bed. Seriously, she is the laziest human on the planet. She just stayed in bed listening to books, sleeping, working on her computer, and basically ignoring all of our needs. Finally, it stopped snowing, and the sun came out again. Like magic, the Mother of Cats also started to pay better attention to us. She charged up the laser friend that Hannah likes to chase and ordered me more toys from Amazon. Also, she had some tuna delivered because we needed it DESPERATELY!!

Once she was back into the kitchen, she made more of that crazy squash soup that she likes and spent some time playing with the lemons that her niece sent her. She cut them all up and put them in the countertop oven on the dehydrate setting for hours. Kind of a stupid thing to be doing when I NEED TO GO OUTSIDE AND SEE BUNNIES!!! Luckiy, she had taken care of the tuna issue already… I’m a good boy, but I do meow in emergencies!

Now she can put lemon slices into her tea while she is being lazy in bed and ignoring our needs. Thank heavens the new toys arrived, and the laser friend kept working because I never got to see any bunnies or squirrels or anything for the whole weekend.

The only other thing that she did last week was to set up an experiment with dirt and seeds and stuff.

The Mother of Cats collected the seed pods from her roses last fall, and they have been out in the cold of the garage ever since. She carefully planted half of the seeds and put the trays onto a warm pad on the floor because Hannah pushed the trays onto the floor from the table in the craft room. Silly Mother of Cats, doesn’t she understand that they needed to be on the floor in the first place?

Hannah: I was just trying to help out! I take the covers off the planter trays too so I can keep my eye on things.

Now the rest of the seeds are chilling in the refrigerator that I like to shove my toys under where they are going to stay for another few weeks. They will get planted then if the first seeds haven’t sprouted. She also put milkweed seeds into dirt that is out in the cold of the garage or outside under the snow: another experiment! She likes to do stuff like that. I think that she would be happier if she played with chirpy toys instead, but what can you do. I’m only one cat, and she is a lot to handle, let me tell you.

This is Mateo, signing off.

Note from the Mother of Cats: The barometric pressure really dropped quickly when the snowstorm came in, and I evidently developed a bit of pulmonary edema when that happened and gained almost 8 pounds in two days. Friday night I realized that I was dizzy and having trouble breathing: diuretics to the rescue!! It has taken several days to get the weight back down and I’m breathing a lot better now, but the cats sure were neglected while I was in bed on oxygen dealing with it. Just another scleroderma adventure…

Also, Amazon delivered the tuna and the chirpy toys overnight. Yay, Amazon. It is good to live in a city with a fulfillment center…

Heading into a Pink Autumn

Autumn is right around the corner now. I love this time of year! The light has softened, the plants are recovering from the heat of summer, and wildlife is on the move again. A flight of geese flew over me last night, barely clearing the treetops, and this morning a hawk supervised my watering out front. Butterflies are everywhere, and I am suddenly seeing a fresh rush of life in my garden. The squirrels are standouts in this: they are going crazy digging up my planters and the flower beds as they create caches of peanuts and other goodies for the coming winter.

Mateo caught that leafbug (katydid) as soon as I let him out onto the catio after returning home from a weekend away. Poor thing! He definitely did the bug some damage (part of a leg is now missing…) but I put it into a nearby bush hoping that it would survive. The next morning, he caught another one. I’ve never seen a leafbug at my house before, but it is part of the resurgence of life that I’m seeing after our very wet spring this year. Look at what is happening in the garden:

Okay, Hannah isn’t exactly in the garden, but she kind of fits into the theme of the day, don’t you think? Everything is in shades of pink at the moment. The standout star is the stonecrop (upper left photo) that has been blooming like a champ for a couple of weeks now to the delight of every dang bee in the vicinity.

It was my birthday this weekend and I spent it up at my son’s place. He drove me up to The Loopy Ewe so I could find some yarn for a new sweater, and the drive took us up north through the countryside past fields of corn and sugar beets. Hawks sat on light poles, and the ditches were filled with flowering plants and some pretty interesting weeds that I wanted to get some cutting of (I know, I know… this sounds strange but… biogeek!) I had my portable oxygen machine with me and it served me well as I searched for the yarn to knit a Weekender Crew this fall.

I had to get that dellaQ bag to go with the yarn. Perfect, right? The color of the yarn isn’t quite as bright as it appears in the picture, but it is a nice happy color called Wilted Roses. Just what I need for fall, don’t you think?

I’m kind of stuggling with getting started on the new sweater. I have been knitting PICC line covers and (pink) hats like crazy the last couple of weeks, and I’m finishing out the week with a set of large sized PICC line covers that I plan to turn over to Frayed Knots on Saturday. Then I can knit sweaters!! I am going to wind the yarn for my La Prairie cardigan and the Weekender at the same time, and I’ll be knitting away on them both I think. If it snows, the Weekender. If it is warm, La Prairie. If I feel like purple, La Prairie. If I feel like pink… well, you get the idea. Knitting options. They are really important. There are also some socks, hats, and scarfs calling my name. So many projects, so much (pink) yarn, so little time. It’s like I’m making caches of knitting projects for the coming winter. Did I mention that several of the projects involve pink?

I feel a little bit like those hyperactive squirrels in my yard.

The Autumnal Equinox is this Saturday. Happy Autumn everyone!

Embrace the pink this fall.