Tuesday, May 22, 2012

Ninja Cat!

Aaaarrrggghhh...because my garden is depressing me...who wouldn't be with all the stupid weeds...I'm dedicating this post to my cat.

Anyone who has met this cat of mine, knows that she is pretty small and very cute.  She acts much more like a dog than a cat and is not one of those shy, prissy cats.  She comes when called just like a dog...actually better than one of our dogs...ahem.  We don't really have a name for her...Kitty, Black Cat (although she is more of a tortoise), Kitty Cat, and my favorite and most appropriate name...Ninja Cat!


So, Ninja Cat gets fed every morning after I put away and feed the dogs.  She follows me around until I give her breakfast.  After I feed everyone, I go inside the house and get ready for work.  I can usually see her out the bathroom window and she is doing normal cat things. Prowling around looking for mice (she's a pretty good mouser) and sunning herself.  When she doesn't think anyone is watching...that's the time she does the most amazing things.  We call it Ninja practice and we are pretty sure it is preparation for the Zombie Apocalypse.

These are the activities I have witnessed:

*  Running full speed across the deck, leaping through the slats of the deck railing, and scaling the trunk of the magnolia tree in two bounds.
*  Catapulting from a lower limb of aforementioned magnolia tree onto the slatted roof of the deck and doing what appeared to be a tuck and roll on the roof.
*  Running at what appeared to be a 30 second 100 meter dash across the yard, scaling the vegetable garden gate, barely touching the ground in the vegetable garden, making a seriously sharp u-turn and exiting much the same way she got in.
*  Going from the front yard to the back yard and back to the front at breakneck speeds.  If two people weren't witnessing this in two different locations, I would not believe it.
*  Going undercover (actually crawling so ninja like under the weed fabric) and exiting only when I starting hitting the weed fabric with my hands.

Never have I witnessed so many acts of Ninja-ness from one small creature.  Amazing!  Tomorrow I will return to a post about the vegetable garden as I made adjustments and am not feeling so angry about the whole situation.

Monday, May 7, 2012

Stage 1 complete!

Stage 1 of my garden is planted!  Friday, Husband and Fish went to the coast and left farmer wife at home.  Actually, I was at a track meet for most of the day and didn't get home in time to go with them.  No worries...I used that time to get started on planting the garden.  I headed out to see what was ready to plant and consulted my high tech plans...yellow legal pad with pencil drawn rows and labels.  After choosing the lucky plants, I went out to survey the garden...the rows seemed a little taller than I remembered and I investigated.  Oh my...the weed fabric was supposed to keep the weeds out...instead, I think it acted like a greenhouse for them, as this is what I found:



Isn't weed fabric supposed to deter the growth of weeds??? I suppose once I get things planted and the plants get all the sun, these guys will disappear.  At least, that's what I'm hoping.  So, the planting started.  I planted cucumbers, summer squash, crookneck squash, zucchini, cantaloupe, mini pumpkins, and corn.  I wanted to plant the beans, but since I was planting solo, I didn't have anyone to help me with the fencing to support them.  Next week.  I watered them as I was planting and discovered that my watering system is quite effective.  I was ankle deep in mud at one point.  I almost fell, too, which would have been pretty comical, except that there wasn't anyone there to laugh, so I didn't.  

 Ready to go in!

They look so small...

Once I got them in, I consolidated the rest of the plants, which hopefully will get going in the growing department so I can plant them soon too.  I was hoping to get as many in as possible before the desert heat strikes.  I might be too late though, as I heard the temperature Wednesday will be around 97 degrees.  Egh.  Miserable.  Hopefully, it's a temporary spike in temperature.  

While I was planting, I kept hearing loud squawking coming from the chicken coop.  I hadn't collected the eggs yet, but knew it wasn't an egg laying squawk.  More of a "get away from me" squawk.  I took a walk over to the coop and saw the following:



These ladies were taking turns climbing into the condo with coop mama.  Not sure why they were going in there, but she was NOT happy about it at all.  This went on for a while and finally coop mama had clearly had enough.  I think she pecked one of them quite severely and they retreated to neutral corners.  I collected eggs shortly after...she pecked me too.  She takes her duties as coop mama very seriously.  Once the eggs were gone and she had nothing to sit on, calm was restored in the coop.  Love how these girls are so much like people and their weird personalities.  


Wednesday, May 2, 2012

Dreaming...


That's all for today!  Tomorrow I start planting!