lavender – 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.

Hannah and the CoalBear: Chickenitis Continues…

Hi. I’m Hannah.

I’ve really been keeping a close eye on the Mother of Cats.

The Mother of Cats has been completely out of control for a few weeks now. She spends all her time working outside and hunting for lavender plants to put in the garden. I mean, there is a lot of lavender now, and it kind of smells funny. What is up with that?

See. Lavender. She now has five different types of lavender growing in pots on the deck along with the baby roses that get way too much attention. Why does the Mother of Cats play with plants when I need her to play with the CoalBear so he doesn’t bother me?

The only good thing about the gardening is this wagon that the Mother of Cats bought for us to play in. Then she took it outside. Why does she do these things?

When she isn’t outside working in her gardens or hunting for more lavender, she is knitting CHICKENS. Lots and lots of chickens. I really don’t mind that she is knitting, because I really like to hang out with her while she is working, but this is getting ridiculous. The chickens are starting to take over all of the room on the back of the loveseat where I like to sleep.

Do you see this? One more chicken and I won’t be able to fit on up here. Why is she doing this????

To make things worse, she saw some photos of LITTLE chickens on Facebook that made her go crazy in the yarn stash pulling out yarn for chicken construction. Then she had some people ask for chickens. Then the people who got the chickens had friends who DESPERATELY needed a chicken for themselves. I think that the Mother of Cats should charge people for the chickens (TUNA FUND!!) but so far, she gives the money to her community knitting group, Frayed Knots. Why is she doing this? Now I’m getting pushed all around by the chickens, and I’m not getting any tuna out of the deal, either.

Here all of the finished big chickens to date. She has a couple of other chickens that still need their stuffing.

The three chickens in the individual chicken photos (did you notice the big lavender plant behind the chickens?) were mailed out this week. The blue one with the little shawl went to a lady whose husband is battling cancer, and the other two flew to members of the Mother of Cat’s family. Good riddance!!!

Sigh. Is the chickenitis getting better now that some are gone? No. No, it is not. She’s determined to make even more for some people she met on Facebook. Then she went away in the car for an afternoon a week ago and returned with EVEN MORE YARN for more chickens. She says the place where she went for the afternoon needs the chickens.

She says that chickens need to go here. I hope that they take flight soon!

I guess they asked for the chickens. She showed them pictures, and they got really excited when they saw how cute they were. I’d be happy to send them Mateo to keep patients entertained, but they weren’t interested in a cat. Just chickens.

So, that’s all I have to report for the last three weeks. Gardening, knitting, and chickens.

This is Hannah, signing off.

Happy Caturday, everyone!

>^..^<

Notes from the Mother of Cats:

The chickens are knitted from the Emotional Support Chicken pattern on Ravelry. I’ve lately joined a KAL group on Facebook, which is feeding me lots of ideas for more combinations. Today people started posting little hats and shawls that can go on the chickens…
I visited the Kaiser Infusion Center last week to get Reclast to treat my osteoporosis. This is the infusion center that I knit PICC line covers for, and when I told them I was one of their knitters a whole party broke out! There was cheering and general excitement all around, and when I mentioned emotional support chickens, they insisted on seeing the pictures. Yep. They want chickens.
One of my Facebook friends with systemic sclerosis has been accepted into a CAR T-cell therapy clinical trial. She will be receiving chemo and I’m going to send her a chemo hat and, (wait for it), a chicken!
What is CAR T-cell therapy, you ask? It is new technology that is now being adapted to address some autoimmune conditions, including systemic sclerosis. The video in the link above explains how it is used with cancer.

Gardening for Cats and Bees

I just finished reading my first “Bee” book, A Sting in the Tale by Dave Goulson. This book was a quick friendly read about bumblebee biology, ecology, and the efforts to build habitat in the United Kingdom that will support and grow wild bumblebee populations. One of the techniques that the researchers in the book utilized to detect bumblebees was to have observers sit in their garden (or some other location) for 20 minutes to tally the number of bees they saw.

I’ve been a little sad over the absence of a strawberry crop this year, and I thought that it was due to a lack of bees. As I read the book, however, I realized that many of the bees that I have seen in the past were actually bumblebees. I plant a lot of flowers that should be attracting bees, too. Late yesterday afternoon I headed out to the garden for 20 minutes with my camera to see what was actually going on out there.

Bee — Well look at that! There is steady bee traffic to some of the plants in the garden. All those hairs on the abdomen of the bee is the tip off that this is a bumblebee. Aren’t those red bands on the bee cute?

A little search of the internet led me to believe that this is a Bobmus huntii bee. The bees were really targeting purple flowers yesterday afternoon. I saw them on the lavender, this catmint plant, and on the pincushion flowers. I don’t know why my strawberry plants were a flop this year, but maybe is was due to a very wet and cold spring that made it hard for bees to get to them. I learned that bumblebees struggle in those conditions as they need to maintain enough heat to work their flight muscles. Who knew?!

As I was sitting out with the bees and the flowers I realized that while I have a lot of plantings that attract wildlife, I have actually made my yard and garden into a habitat for cats. Check out what I’ve done for them.

Cat in catmint plant. — As you can imagine, the catmint is a big favorite with the cats. The plant is really hardy, doesn’t need a lot of water and tolerates cats building nests inside of them. Yellow Boy sleeps inside this nest with the bumblebees buzzing over his head.

Uncut grass under the tree. — I leave a little circle of grass and plants around the base of one of my trees as the cats like to sleep in the tall grass. Easy solution to cats needing shade in the summer sun. One year a visiting cousin cut all the grass thinking that she was doing me a big favor. Sigh…

Cat in grass. — The grass nest is a big hit with MacKenzie.

Cat water dish. — I bought a nice saucer for large pots at the nursery and now it is a source of water for summer kitties. I hose it out and put in fresh water each morning.

Lavender and invisible fence wire. — This lavender draws a lot of bees. Behind the plant attached to the fence you can see a wire. The wire is part of the invisible fence system that I put up to train the cats to not jump out of the yard. They trained really quickly and I haven’t activated the fence for the last 3 years. The bricks at the bottom of the fence are plugging small gaps.

Squirrels use the yard constantly and provide the cats with some quality exercise as they chase them, but I no longer put out food for squirrels. They have been raiding a neighbor’s trash and burying stuff in my planters, so they get little else from me. I used to have a bird feeder and nesting boxes in the yard, and I really liked the birdsong and the activity was hours of entertainment for the cats (who really never managed to catch anything, but they loved to try!). I discovered that the birds also attracted other cats (AKA enemy cats!!) so I had to stop putting out food. Even an invisible fence will not keep a cat in the yard who chasing out an invader!

Now my cats think they are dogs. They make me get up in the morning to let them out, mill around the door carrying on as soon as I come home, and are happy to go in and out all day through a cat door. They come running in from the yard when I shake the kitty treat bag, and stay in all night (asleep!) like good boys. I can do cat-free crafting activities during the day (like warping my loom) while they happily doze outside dreaming of bugs and garter snakes. By making the yard an appealing habitat for my kitties they stay put and are safe outside.

Crazy cat-gardening lady, huh! Some of my friends think it is strange to let my animals tunnel thought plantings, but they are just a part of my overall scheme. After reading Dave Goulson’s book I also realized that this isn’t just a backyard; it is also important habitat for wildlife in the city. I will be putting in more plants with an eye to supporting bumblebees (who evidently are critical to the pollination of strawberries and tomato plants!). Later this summer my butterfly plants should get going and there will be hummingbirds and butterflies for kitty entertainment. Everyone wins!

I wonder what other people are planting for cats?