Oznends

Saw my mother today. She’s been in the hospital part of the home for a few weeks now as they give her PT after a low blood-pressure problem. Now she’s got a medication for it and she is doing so much better. She’s not falling asleep in her lunch when we go out; in fact, she’s not even falling asleep when we go for a drive after we eat!

Flowers blooming on the mountain. In November. Weird. I saw some coneflowers last week and some Queen Anne’s lace today. But we haven’t yet had a hard frost, so maybe that’s why. I should go look at my flowerbed and see if anything is growing there.

Pulled a few ticks off the dog. Tomorrow he gets a bath and then a dose of tick meds. Never makes him happy but keeps him better smelling and safe. We just scavenged a half-deflated basketball from the neighbors’ trash—one of his favorite games is puppy-soccer and a large ball he can pick up is just perfect.

 

Summer

Sweet corn dripping in butter. Melt-in-your-mouth red raspberries. Blueberries into a pie. Cucumbers sliced with onions, soaking in white vinegar, sugar, and celery seed. Fresca in a glass so cold it sweats a puddle onto the table. Sour cherries tucked in delectable pastry.

ahhhh.

 

April 27, 2009

What happened to spring? It’s August weather out there! Ack! But it brought my hosta along very quickly. And the hummingbirds are back. Last week I brought home some daffodils from my walk (someone had dumped them). This morning I went back for some ground cover and some plant that I can’t identify but I know someone paid good money for them before dumping them in the woods. I think I’ll be closing up the windows and turning on the AC before long . . . I sure hope spring is not gone.

 

April 2, 2009

It seems the mountain has woken up. Green is sprouting all over the place.  Our grasses and perennials are popping up. The phoebes are back and doing some rehabbing to their nest from last year. A bluebird is building a nest in the box outside my window—don’t know if that one will be a keeper, but he obviously recognizes its potential. Gobblers were making a racket yesterday, competing for someone’s attention. A big gray tabby was hunting in the woodpile. Haven’t seen any sign of the bear since the midnight raid a few weeks ago, but that’s a good thing. Aahh, spring!

 

From the garden

August—and our tomatoes are ripening like crazy. Nothing better than a tomato sandwich (butter or olive oil, your choice)! All we planted this year was tomatoes and peppers. Being our first garden year we weren’t sure what the critters wouldn’t touch (they tasted some of my flowers but left the vegetables alone). Next year I’m hoping we try a few green beans, too, but they’re very popular with groundhogs.

On the floral side, my first moonflower bloomed yesterday. I read that they only bloom at night. I thought that meant they would close up in daylight, but we had one in all its glory yesterday. Mary the Photographer came down and took a wonderful picture of it.

It’s also time for the night-blooming cereus to blossom. One of the three has three buds on it right now and the one that bloomed last year has one so far. They’ll probably start to flower in about a week, depending on how much rain we get.

Sadly, this is also the season when people dump kittens (Minneapolis and St. Paul, the twin kitties, came to me around now; Ink and Blink came later in the fall). And since we still live in the woods, we still get to deal with the results of someone else’s cold-hearted carelessness.

 

This is Miss B. Don’t know what her fate will be yet, but at least she won’t be torn apart by wild animals, hit by a car, or starve to death. Spay or neuter, people!

Update: Turns out all that prettiness is a boy kitty. But he—who should be called Miracle because he was only found when my 85 Pounds of Love accidentally stepped on him in the tall grass—has found a home. One happy ending.