The heat here in Colorado has been unbelievable: we hit 100°F on Monday and it is still hot. My garden, however, is recovering in the lower light intensity and flowers are starting to bloom again. Feeling pretty good about things I’ve taken to knitting outside in the garden again in the cool of the mornings and late evening.
Knitting outside can be entertaining again. My sedum is blooming now and the garden where they are planted is abuzz with a steady parade of bees. This sedum is called “Autumn Joy Stonecrop” and I’m really impressed with the blooms. So are the bees, evidently!
Today while knitting and sipping my morning latte I got my latest pair of socks done.
Easiest knitting ever! I made these socks in a simple K3P1 ribbing that makes then fit well while providing mindless easy knitting in the evenings while listening to audiobooks. My project notes are here.
The yarn I used is from Western Sky Knits and I’m really becoming a fan of this smooth sock yarn. I still have enough yarn left over for some arm warmers. I think that I’ll put an interesting lace edge on then and use some Icord, but keep that simple ribbing. Adventures in knitting, people!
Here’s the book that I’ve been listening to while knitting.
My latest audiobook has been wonderful! Seriously, I knit way too long into the night because I had to get to the next chapter to discover what would happen next. It’s a book about family, ghosts, dreams, invisible ties, and, of course, a tiger that isn’t all it appears to be. The audio is done by the author and that made things even better. I loved it.
My potted roses are all doing well after recovering from spider mite attacks early in the summer. This pink bloom makes me especially happy. I’m still debating whether I will plant these roses into the ground or bring them inside for the winter again. There’s lots of time, right?
I do love the colors of fall, but right now I’m really enjoying the bits of pink going on in my life. There is pink in my garden right now…
All of the flowers in pots on my deck have recovered and are putting out blooms. These, I think, are verbena.I’m knitting with pink yarn using my favorite pink stitich marker.And the sweater being knit in the pink (and cream) yarns is finally far enough along to get checked for size. A few more inches, don’t you think? Heavens, this sweater sure needs to be blocked, doesn’t it, but I’m really pleased that it looks like it will fit okay. This is Koivua by Caitin Hunter, and my project notes are here.
Today is the last day of high heat for awhile; a front is pushing in and tomorrow will be much cooler. Okay, it will be hot, but not blazing hot. Hopefully there will also be some rain. There’s lots of time yet for roses, knitting in the garden, and days watching bees.
Oops. A flock of geese just flew over my house at the treetops, honking like crazy. It’s like they are laughing at me. No matter what is happening right now with the weather and in my garden, autumn is coming, and the first snow is on the way.
The Mother of Knits and I have been working really hard lately and we have been making progress on her projects.
She whipped up a simple pair of socks with this yarn that she really likes: Concrete Sunset sock yarn dyed by Western Sky Knits. Her project notes are here.I’ve been closely supervising her work on the Koivua sweater all week. This is starting to look pretty good, huh. Will the Mother of Cats let me sleep on this stunning and fluffy new cat bed? No. She will not. I keep trying to explain it to her, but she is so self absorbed! Always, it is about her needs and she never leaves it out for me to nap on.
This week the Mother of Cats realized that she had NOTHING to knit in bed while listening to audiobooks. There was a panicky search of the yarn stash (woohoo! I love helping the Mother of Cats in the stash room!) and a search for patterns on the computer and in her pattern notebooks. I helped her look for patterns by plopping my body down on all of the ones that I thought looked good. Why does the Mother of Cats get so emotional while I’m helping her? I only scratched her a little bit while scrabbling through the papers… Anyway, after finding the yarns and patterns we were ready to wind the yarn and get going on casting on lots of new knitting fun. I love winding yarn!!! The Mother of Cats needs to do things like this that I like more often. She can be so boring sometimes…
We picked these two yarns to make a Mount Moran Lace Cowl. I can’t wait to make this!The Mother of Cats’ feet get cold all the time now. We decided that this yarn would be perfect to make her some yummy cashmere bed socks. Oh. Now that I look at this again it would also be good to make another Mount Moran Lace Cowl. Hmmm… maybe we need to go look through the stash for some more yarn for socks. Woohoo! More play time!!The Mother of Cats and I decided to make another Suburban Wrap by Joji Locatelli with this yarn. I can’t wait to get started on this one!But the project that got started right away was another simple pair of socks that can be knitted while listening to audiobooks in bed in the evenings. I always sleep on the Mother of Cats legs and help her keep track of her rows while she works. It is my favorite time of the day/night.
Do you notice that any of these projects are for me? No, you DO NOT!! Not one of these projects is for me after all that work I did to help her find patterns and yarn. There is no mouse here! Where is the new cat bed or kitty blanket? Why is the Mother of Cats so very, very selfish!!
Okay, I’m calm again. I do love knitting with the Mother of Cats. Okay, it isn’t as good as going outside to play in the yard, but she does remember to pay attention to me in the evenings. I get my favorite cat food for dinner, she pets me while we knit, I usually get to chomp yarn, Little Miss Pitty Pat comes out to play and eat her dinner, and I get to sleep on the down comforter on the bed. Life is okay with the Mother of Cats.
Why does she do these HORRIBLE THINGS to me?
That’s right. Today she crammed me into the pet carrier and took me to the vet’s office for SHOTS!!! The horror. The betrayal. There were dogs there!!!! Why does the Mother of Cats do these things to me? She did give me some kitty cookies when I got back, but it was just AWFUL!!!
I have been sleeping since getting back from the horrible adventure this afternoon, but I’m going to get up in a few minutes to demand that I have another yummy serving of cat food and then a trip outside to play with the bugs and squirrels. She owes me! Then it will be knitting time and I’ll be chomping yarn overtime because… she owes me!!
I’m such a good boy!
Can I have some cookies now?
>^..^<
Notes from the Mother of Cats: I’ve got nothing, MacKenzie said it all! Let’s hope he stays sleepy from his vaccinations so I can cast on a couple of new projects this evening because this yarn is too stupendous to ignore. 🙂
What a wonderful week it has been. I’ve been out in the yard for a couple of hours every day with MacKenzie and a book or my knitting. The buzz of cicadas echo in the trees over my head, the squirrels frolic along the fence, and the flowers are starting to bloom again after the blazing heat of July. Life is good, I’ve raced through two books and last week started a couple of new knitting projects that are keeping my interest and making me happy. Let me show off my current knitting love, Koivua.
How beautiful is this!! I’ve just separated the arms from the body of the sweater and it is time for me to attach the rose yarn again to start the next colorwork chart for the body. Here are my project notes if you want more info about the yarns. The flowering plant is lantana, and it just burst back into bloom this week. This is what happens when you give plants some Miracle Gro… I’m wondering if this plant will survive the winter if I plant it at the end of the season. It will be a plant experiment!Sturgill sweater.Original yarn choices… NOPE!
I had some issues with the planning of this sweater. The pink is left over from this sweater that I knitted last winter, Sturgill by Caitlin Hunter. I really liked the contrast of the rose variegated yarn with the grey, so I ran right out and bought some grey tweed yarn to use with my leftover rose yarn to make a Koivua. Good plan, right? Then I thought about things a little more. Looking at my Sturgill you can see that the variegated nature of the two yarns made it hard to see the colorwork pattern in the sweater. I liked that effect in Sturgill, but maybe I shouldn’t make another sweater that had the same fuzzy pattern effect going on with the same colorways. I snuck out to the yarn store and bought some yarn that would give me more contrast with the variegated rose yarn. I was on the hunt for a nice neutral cream yarn.
Bingo! Look at what I found at the yarn store that opened just a few miles away from me. This Kelbourne Scout is a new yarn for me, but this won’t be the last time I buy it! It isn’t superwash, but it is really bouncy and soft. Just what I needed to show off the pattern.
Buying 5 skeins of yarn puts me back a little on my yarn destash project, so I need to really start knitting fast now. I casted right on and after a couple of days I had this:
The cream yarn knitted up wonderfully: it is bouncy, has a slight halo, and shows off the pattern well. I’m happier than ever about the yarn color switch as this cream really brightens up the rose yarn.
I’m much happier with the cream colored yarn than I thought I would be. I tend to avoid light colors in yarns, but this time it was the right decision as the colors in the rose yarn are just shining. The yarn is such a joy to handle I’ve been working outside in my garden swing in the late mornings with little gardening breaks.
My butterfly bush is finally getting its act together and producing some blooms. Okay, I had to baby it a little bit; I sprayed all the baby blooms with Neem oil to protect them from insects and then started deep soaking the bush a couple times a week using a big bucket and a drip line. Success! Doesn’t this bloom remind you of the yarn in my new sweater? I probably should give this bush some Miracle Gro too.
I am on fire to get the sweater done by the end of the month, but that probably won’t happen since I need to keep on babying my wrists (which are much better), and life keeps on getting in the way. Still, I am hopeful that the next report on my destash project will be a good one. 50 skeins… I can do it… must stay out of the yarn stores…
It feels like the height of summer with the flowers and the buzz of insects, but there are a lot of crickets and some of the leaves on the trees are starting to turn yellow. The kids in the neighborhood have all returned to school, and it is only a few weeks away from the colors of fall. Yep. Must knit faster!!
Update on the Suburban Wrap:
The wrap arrived safely in California earlier this week and it has already gone to school!
My knitworthy niece is a music teacher, and the wrap traveled to school with her as she met her students this week.Where it also looks pretty good on my grandniece, who is a student at the school where my niece teaches. How fitting that this wrap should be in a classroom devoted to artistic expression and worn by such knitworthies!
I have finally finished the Suburban Wrap for my totally Knitworthy niece and popped it into the mail today. Check out this piece of wonderfulness!
I am so happy with the looks and drape of this wrap. Do you remember the Knitworthy niece? Here she is flashing the fabulous mitts that I made her last winter. Yep, that it winter in California in the background there. Green grass… how odd! We won’t even talk about that tree trunk next to her!
My niece saw the Suburban Wrap by Joji Locatelli on her facebook feed, shared the post with me, and the rest was history. As soon as I saw it I knew that this was a knit that was calling my name. I dug in the stash, sent her some yarn choices, and after finishing up some works in progress I cast on and got to work several weeks ago.
My niece loves color (did you notice her hair?), and as soon as I showed her this yarn combo it was the one. All of these yarns were already in the stash… win!
This project was just one chunk of fun knitting after another. So much fun, in fact, that I got into a little tendonitis trouble because I knit too long at a time as I raced along to get to the next color section. Lace. Stripes. Textured knitting. An interesting shape and rows that were a manageable stitch count. In other words, everything that a knitter’s heart could want. My project notes on Ravelry are here.
This afternoon I popped the wrap into a box and mailed it off to California where I hope it will be useful in the cool evenings to come. It made my heart happy to send it off. I can’t wait to hear that it has arrived safely.
Then I hit the yarn stash hunting for some yarn, in more sedate colors, to make one for myself.
A few weeks ago I went to see my primary care physician for help with shortness of breath and joint pain. I totally scored! I walked out of there with a tetanus shot (fail), inhaled steroids to control my small airway disease (win) and an anti-inflammatory gel to put on my swollen, painful joints (huge win). What a difference to my life these new medications have made. I can breath! I can walk without pain! I can sleep through the night! This is huge, people. Take that Sjogren’s and scleroderma! Feeling so much better I began to spend more hours up and about, and there was a lot more knitting happening too.
I got some socks finished right up. Here are my project notes.I made a lot of progress on my Suburban wrap and was lured into knitting more than usual because I just had to get into the next section of the wrap. This is such a fun project with lots of color, texture and lace interest. So addictive. So hard to walk away from…
Oops. Then this happened.
Tendonitis!
One of the problems of getting better is that swelling is going down and the tissue is tightening up on some of my joints. My knees are really tight. My wrists are stiff. When I knit my joints loosen, so I thought I was helping them stay flexible. That is probably true to a certain point, but I guess I now need to be careful to not overdo things. Sigh. I am using the tendons in my left hand the most since I knit continental, and I push the yarn over the needle with my middle finger for each purl stitch. I’m really fast that way, but my tendons have totally rebelled in my left hand and wrist. To make things worse I can’t take NSAIDS or any other anti-inflammatory drug because of my scleroderma-battered kidneys and stomach. Sigh. My doctor ordered a knitting hiatus.
I want to be a compliant patient, really I do. I read a couple of books, managed to get through a couple of days without knitting, and then I snapped. I must knit!! Want knit now!! Knit, knit, knit. Why go on if I can’t knit? Sniff. Obviously this is totally unacceptable and I am going to figure out how to knit in spite of this bad boy wrist. Really, my left hand is the one having trouble, so maybe I can work around that. I tried to tension the yarn in lots of creative ways before I remembered that lots of people on the planet hold the yarn in their right hands. English knitting. I have never mastered purling English style, but now I’m really motivated!
I was in the last striped section of the wrap when disaster struck; stockinette means I have to purl back every other row. I managed to continental knit with the brace on (okay, it is a little loose) and am moving my left hand very little by working slowly and relying on my right hand.Working very slowly I am also managing to purl back English style. So slow. So awkward. So much safer for babying rebellious tentons.
Last night I finished the stripes and am ready to enter the last section of garter eyelet. Yay. Knit all the way! I can do this! Then it is into the last, ribbed section of the wrap.
Ribbing. That is going to be slow going. I think that I will check out Norwegian purling. Somehow I need to do this without moving my fingers too much. Yay. A new stitch to learn.
I’m on it!
Take that, scleroderma. You are messing with the wrong knitter!!
This morning I woke up and found a post by nothingbutknit2 with a “Tool Talk” in Q ans A format with questions about the tools that we use. She gave us her answers about the tools that she uses and loves, and then invited us to comment about our own tool love/use or to blog about it ourselves.
Oh, I had to do this. I love my knitting tools. I am in terror of losing some of my knitting tools… I’m more afraid of losing my stitch markers than I am of wool moths! Before I show off some of my treasures I should share nothingbutknit2’s questions:
Is there a tool that you own that is your absolute favorite? Which is it? What did you use before you had that tool?
Is there a tool that you bought that is way less useful than you hoped? Does it detract from your crafting?
Is there a tool that other people think is necessary and you just don’t use it? How do you get around it?
How do you store your tools? Do they have their own special space?
Here are my answers:
I love my tools so much it is just impossible to pick just one. I dumped out my zippered pouch stuffed with my treasures and pulled out the ones that I absolutely, positively cannot live without. Oh. It was kind of a big pile. I looked at all of the things I had on the floor and settled on the one item that was most essential to my knitting existence.
I love my ChiaoGoo knitting needles the most. I have the needles with the lace points, and the interchangable set has lots of extra tips and cables stuffed into the holder. I also hacve lots of sets of 2 16″ cables in almost any size I need for socks and handwarmers. No matter what I am knitting, I can put together the exact circular needle that I need. The metal points fit exactly right into my scleroderma hands (I push the needle with the back of my hands because my fingers are ill-behaved) and the tips dig with absolute precision into my stitches. I love these needles!!
Before I bought the two sets of needles I used a whole drawer full of cable needles that had cables that fought with me, required dips into boiling water before they would behave themselves, and had joins that caught on the yarn. I had to keep buying new needles because I needed a cable with a longer/shorter length, or a second needle in the same size because I was casting on a new project, or any of a number of nonsense reasons. I had lots and lots of bamboo and square double-pointed needles. Hunting down lost needles has become a hobby all of its own. Ugh!! All of that is replaced with these cool needle sets.
2. I don’t buy that many tools, so there really isn’t one that I am unhappy with. Some certainly get used more than others.
3. Okay, this may not be a tool in many knitter’s minds, but I have never used a lifeline. I took me a long time to figure out what everyone was talking about, and then when I saw some I did understand the potential, but having laughed in the face of knitting disaster for so many years, I continue to do so.
4. Tool storage is something that is big with me. I have a fabulous zipper pouch (with a llama on it!) that I carry the majority of my knitting tools in, and then I have a little plastic case with the neatest little compartments that I use for the small essentials like stitch markers.
Before I decided on the ChiaoGoo needles as my favorite tool I took a picture of the other items that I find essential to my knitting life. I mean, look at this collection: stitch markers, little scissors, needles with bent tips for seaming, instructions for Kitchener stitch, and the case for all the small things…Look at my little case! It folds open to allow access to all of those little compartments that hold stitchmarkers, needles and safety pins. I think that there is a little crochet hook in there, too. Isn’t this just the best little case?
So, there are my answers to the tool talk questions shared by nothingbutknit2 this morning. Jump in and give your own answers as a comment below, or feel free to write your own post that you share with a link on my blog. I’m heading off to NothingButKnit right now to post this link in her comment sections.
Happy knitting everyone, and treat your tools with the love that they deserve. 🙂
The Mother of Cats and I have been hard at work this week trying to get her new shawl done.I’ve been doing quality control as much as possible…which is just exhausting so I have to admit that there have been some naps. Just a couple. Okay, it has been hot, so I spend most of my day napping. But I carefully check the Mother of Cats’ work every time I wake up to make sure she hasn’t slipped any stitches. There may be also s0me requests for cookies while I’m up. What? I’m working hard, and I need COOKIES!!
Yesterday the Mother of Cats finally finished the bind off of the shawl (an I-cord bind off that made her grumpy because it took so long) and we took it outside to get some pictures. By the time we got out there it was getting ready to rain, so we had to work fast. I don’t like rain. If you had fur like mine you wouldn’t like rain either!
Do you see that she hasn’t even woven in the ends yet? The Mother of Cats can be so lazy. She also needs to steam block the shawl so that the edges are smooth. Still, it is really nice and cushy for kitties to lie on.I, MacKenzie the Magnificent, claim this shawl for my very own!!
The Mother of Cats likes to take pictures of shawl hanging on the fence, but we were running the sprinkler while this picture was being taken, so that will have to wait for another day. Still, can you see how nicely these colors show off my fur? Obviously, this shawl needs to become my new blankie! The Mother of Cats would give it to me if she loved me, right?
I’m such a good boy. She never could have made this shawl without me!
Can I have some cookies now?
>^..^<
Notes from the Mother of Cats:
This shawl is the What the Fade?! shawl by Andrea Mowry. I was having some trouble getting Ravelry to update my project page this afternoon, but if you want to peak at the yarn that I got into the data base my project notes are here.
I cut MacKenzie’s claws right before this photoshoot… no shawls were harmed by cats in the production of this blog post!
The upper portion of the shawl is brioche (slow, but so squishy and rewarding) and the lower portion is garter, garter, garter. All of the border, CO and BO are I-cord, and that stabilizes the shape of the shawl and keeps the squishness under control.
MacKenzie will not be getting this shawl for his bed!!
Do you see how hot I am? I collapsed on the Mother of Cats’ knitting as it was too hard to even yarn chomp…
Yesterday while the Mother of Cats was driving around in the car (she went to the yarn store… she tried to sneak in some yarn, but I saw her and I’m absolutely certain that she has SLIPPED again…) she glanced at the dash and noticed that it was 101° F outside. I believe it. It is so hot I can’t go outside without burning my paws, and I barely have enough energy to put a claw into the Mother of Cats knitting. Barely. It is so much effort, but when you are a cat of superior personality and strength of will, you persevere and grab yarn anyway. It shows character in the face of adversity…
The Mother of Cats CUT MY CLAWS again!!!
I don’t know why she hates me so much. I’m just trying to do my part in this endless fade project that just keeps going and going and going… Seriously, I don’t know when this project is going to get done. It just keeps getting bigger and hotter and the Mother of Cats whaps me with it every time she turns it. It would be different if she would let me sleep on it, but nope. The Mother of Cats never lets me have fun!!
But we are making some progress with all of that knitting and whapping. Look at where we are!We have completed the endless sea of brioche stitch that we did for the first couple of weeks of knitting. Now we are working our way through the endless garter stich section at the bottom of the shawl. Today we finally got started on one of the lighter colors of yarn.
The Mother of Cats and I do go out into the garden in the evenings so she can water and I can look for bugs and squirrels. It is so hot outside that even the bugs are hiding.
So I just hang out in my favorite cool spots in the garden after she waters.The lavender is now blooming in the yarrow garden so that is my favorite spot right now. Do you see any bees buzzing around? No, you don’t! Even the bees have gone home in this heat!Ha. Now that my claws are cut the Mother of Cats is letting me sleep on the end of the shawl while she works. Maybe she does care about me a little.
Since we are hanging out in the house during the afternoons I think that the Mother of Cats and I may get the shawl done in the next week or so. I can’t wait to show it off. The Mother of Cats could never get things like this done without my help.
This shawl uses 6 skeins of yarn, which explains why I am still knitting and knitting on it. This morning I started the 4th color used at the bottom of the shawl, so the end is now in sight. Yay! This weekend the heat should break, the afternoon storms will return, and my Fade will be finally finished. Stay tuned for the final update!
It’s summer now. I can hardly believe it, things have gone by so quickly. I’m feeling pretty darn good these days and have been steadily working my way through projects around the house and in the yard. It is cutting into the knitting time, but I’m still being pretty productive.
Mr. Demanding is hanging out with me in the yard while I work on projects out there.
Yep. I’m out of the flare! It was only about 2 weeks this time, which is something like a record. I credit my dermatologist and the new antibiotic/anti-inflammatory that she started me on for this. Scleroderma/Sjogren’s/fibromyalgia begone!! Okay, they are still misbehaving on a daily basis, but I have energy, my brain fog is gone, and I am up doing stuff every day. Good days.
Anyway, back to the knitting and the yarn destash project. Back in January I cleaned and organized my stash, gave myself a good mental shake, and resolved to use/remove at least 50 skeins of yarn from the stash. I made great progress over the winter, had a little slip when I went to the Interweave Yarn Fest, and have been catching up from the setback since then. Here’s what I have finished since my last report:
I finished up my V-Neck Boxy sweater by Joji Locatelli. Skeins used: 3I cranked out this Nordiska sweater by Caitlin Hunter pretty quickly. I love, love, love the colorwork in this one. Skeins used: 3.I collected the yarns for a pair of No. 5 Union Street socks to match some new shoes. Then I made matching arm warmers. There was still yarn left over, so I made some mitts. I still have some of the silver grey and bits of the others… a cowl? I’m having so much fun! Total skeins used: 2I’m also cranking out socks with single skeins of yarn that are lurking in the stash. This was a colorway from Chasing Rabbits produced for my LYS called Colorful January. Skeins used: 1
I still have a some projects on the needles: a Suburban Wrap, a What the Fade?! shawl, and another pair of socks. All this knitting brought me up to 25 skeins used this year, so I am right on the pace to meet my resolution.
Tomorrow is my DIL’s birthday so she took a tour through the stash hunting for some gift yarn. Woohoo! She took 5 skeins of yarn that I don’t really love or have a specific project for, and three skeins that will make a fabulous Suburban Wrap of her own; those three are a set that I love and felt a pang in letting go, so they make the gift.
All of this yarn headed out the door with my DIL this afternoon. Yay!! The three on the right will become the Suburban Wrap and the others were colors that I bought for her in the first place or didn’t love anymore. I’m so happy that they are going to a good home.
There has been a surge in the Destash Resolution project. With the skeins that just left the building I am now up to 33.5 total skeins used/removed this year. Yay! Some of those yarn bins are getting kind of empty and it will be time to reorganize the stash soon. I already have two sweaters and another wrap organized and waiting to move into the knitting workroom, and the goal of 50 skeins is suddenly in reach. Woohoo! Maybe I should up the total?
Best to not get cocky! I’ll just keep knitting on and let’s see what happens.
Happy 4th of July everyone who is celebrating that holiday.
When I was a girl my grandmother had a little phrase to describe someone who was acting crabby (little me, of course) as having gotten up “on the wrong side of the bed.” You know what she was talking about. A person being constantly irritated by a never-ending series of triggers.
Today I woke up pretty sore, crawled down the stairs to make my morning latte, and once I had pulled myself up the stairs and back into bed I found a post from another blogger, NothingButKnit, on my phone called ThingsThat Are Bugging Me Right Now: A List. Oh. A list of all the things that are bugging me right now. Wow. Where do I start? There are so many things that bug me. Yippee, I can do this!!
NothingButKnit had only 4 things on the list. Gee. She is kind of a light weight, don’t you think? I mean, there are so many things that are bugging me at the moment it is impossible to prioritize them, but I can certainly try. Ignoring all the things happening in politics and current events, which are their own exhausting list that force me to call or write my congressmen EVERY STINKING DAY, and excluding my trifecta of autoimmune diseases, here is my own list:
Robocalls. Seriously. How many times do they think I need to be informed that this is their last attempt to contact me about my insurance. Especially since it is several times a day. This is why nice people can’t turn on their phone ringer.
Food packaging that I can’t open without dragging in the tool box from the garage. Don’t laugh. I have half of the toolbox in my kitchen drawer at this point. The big stars are the rose pruners and a pipe wrench.
Hailstorms! I bought a new car last summer and I’m pretty nervous about hail. A few weeks ago I got caught in a storm that dumped 4″ of hail; I was pumping gas when it started and was able to stay under shelter. Last week there was golf ball-sized hail. I don’t even want to think about baseball-sized hail…
I grabbed a picture early in the storm. Those stones are 1/2 inch across.
Bindweed. This plant grows at virtually the speed of light, swallows rose bushes overnight, and never dies no matter what I do. Stop bugging me, bindweed!!
Sigh. I’ve resigned myself to pulling weeds for 30″ a day. It’s best in situations like these to just keep chipping away at the problem without looking at the big picture.
Yowling cats. Cats that belong to my neighbors wander into my yard, roll in the cat mint, and sleep in the best cat sleeping spots in the yard. They also stop by the ground-level windows to chat with MacKenzie. How sweet. Especially at 4am. I love the sound of hissing, smacks on glass and yowling in the morning, don’t you?
MacKenzie also yowls every morning to let me know that he wants to go out into the garden for a nap. He loves his garden. I can’t let him out unless I can supervise him because of the stray cats and the dog next door, so he only gets to go out while I’m pulling weeds and watering. “Stop yowling!” I tell him every morning. “Let me out now!” MacKenzie yowls back. It’s like having a toddler again.
Barking dog. Ugh. The neighbor next to me got a sweet little puppy three summers ago that grew up into a territorial barking, growling, fence-charging Pitbull nightmare. After months of work she no longer goes berserk when I go into the yard, but if this dog sees a cat… it gets scary. The dog has chewed a hole in the fence that she can stick her face through. All the better to watch and bark at the cats that come visit my yard and MacKenzie. When she sees a cat she growls, body slams the fence and barks furiously while tearing at the hole in the fence.
This week I was outside pulling weeds with MacKenzie (between thunderstorms with the phone ringer off) when the dog suddenly saw him through the fence. Oh, oh. The dog got her face through the fence, the growling and barking commenced and I started running towards MacKenzie to see if I could shoo him away.
Nope. MacKenzie snapped, charged the fence from his side and went into total feline fury mode. In stunned amazement I watched my geriatric cat hiss, slash, and crash into the fence in a frenzy I’ve never witnessed before. I’m sure there was yowling, too. Every time the dog put her face through the hole, he let her have it again. Just as I was heading to get the hose the dog broke off the attack and it was over.
Mr. Victorious
The dog’s face was slashed in several places and she hurt herself trying to get more of her jaws through the hole. Luckily, she wasn’t able to get a good bite on the cat. MacKenzie, two claws ripped off and toe pads damaged by hitting the fence, stalked off to take a nap in a nearby (unweeded) garden patch. The dog’s owners now keep her inside to PROTECT HER FROM MY CAT and they repaired the hole in the fence that very night.
Be like MacKenzie, I tell myself. Don’t let things bug you too much. Defend yourself and smack down the things that you can, and spend the rest of your time sleeping in the garden.
Excuse me, I must head out to pull some more weeds, then it is knitting time. Maybe I will listen to an audiobook with my new sound-cancelling headphones while I knit. Outside, on my swinging garden seat, with my roses.
Robocalls, hailstorms, weeds, barking dog and yowling cat, begone!!
