Haphazard Homestead Happenings

Where does the time go?  The days are just flying by lately and so much is happening around here.

The gardening is beginning to show signs of growth.  Except for the potatoes, onions and ginger, everything we planted this year went directly into the ground as seeds.  Almost all the little seedlings have started to come up.  We have carrots, onion, radishes, peas, lettuces, Swiss chard, spinach, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cabbage, kohlrabi, turnips, and beets.  No signs of cauliflower yet, though.  We've been eating asparagus on a regular basis, and some of our rhubarb is almost ready to harvest.

We had a couple of nights of freezing temps last week (in late April?), but we covered everything and it all made it.  The weather, and therefore the garden, are running a few weeks behind this year, and I'm wondering now if we'll have any room for our late spring plantings that I had thought would follow behind some of the early crops.  Oh well, we might just have to build another raised bed or two.

Like everything else, our flowering trees are behind schedule.  Our red bud, white bud and crab apple are just now starting to bloom.  One of our young rhododendrons is in full splendor right now, though.

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I have almost completed my April craft project and I'm pretty sure I'll be able to finish by tomorrow afternoon.  Look for it on Wednesday, along with the rest of my April goals update.

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For those who enjoy hearing about Bob the Basement Cat, he is doing well, but we've come to the conclusion that he is either partial or completely deaf.  I'm not sure how we missed it, actually.  We can often go in and out of the basement and do whatever we need to do, and if he's asleep or just looking away from us, he might never realize we're there.  Also, when you speak or make other noises, his ears don't move toward the sound, not even a little.  It might also explain why his meows are so very loud and might be the reason he craves touch so much.

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Our weekend schedules are filling up fast for spring/summer.  A couple of biggish home improvement projects, a trip to the zoo on Mother's Day, a day of city-wide garage sales, and camping, have us booked up for most weekends until after Independence Day.

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19 more days until school is out for Kat, possibly for good!  We have decided we will unschool her once this year is over.  Learning about this lifestyle change is huge in our lives right now and is what I've been spending much of my time on recently.  I promise, though, that this shift won't turn this into an unschooling blog.  I'm not sure I'll blog about it much at all, but if I do, I'll spin it off to a separate blog much like I do with our RVing stories.  Just thought I'd mention it, since it's been taking me away from the blog and Facebook page lately.

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I apologize again for not being around to visit your blogs and pages much lately, but I'm going to try to remedy that this week. 

A Hard-To-Shoot Cat

I know a few of you are interested in updates on our cat Bob (aka Bag O' Bones), who was a starving stray that showed up at our house last July.  When we decided to keep him, we moved him into our back yard, where he made himself right at home.  Last December, just before our first snowfall of the season, we decided to move him into our basement. 

He's a pet -- he has been declawed on his front paws and has been neutered -- so he really prefers to be indoors.  Although we'd like to let him stay in our main living area, our other cats won't tolerate a newbie, so the basement it must be.

We haven't weighed him, but you can see he's much more plump and healthy than he was when he first showed up.  We've been trying to brush him and have been cutting out matted fur, but his fur is just a mess no matter what we do. (I'm looking pretty messy myself in these shots, but enough about me).  He needs a bath, or at least to have his face and eyes wiped with a wash cloth, but we're waiting until it warms up a little before we get him wet.

He's definitely a lover boy and will let you hold him indefinitely.  Never -- not a single time -- has putting him down been his idea.

Bob doesn't make eye contact very often, so it's really hard to get a good shot of him.  Since he loves to be held, I decided a self-portrait shot might be the easiest way to capture a decent picture or two.

Friday Foto Fest with Random Ramblings

I caught Siesta drinking water from Shane's glass and trampling his blueprints.

Up On The Rooftop.

Shirt-sleeve weather on Dec. 1 and 2 was perfect weather
for hanging Christmas lights...

and waving to me while hanging on for dear life.

Blurry, but I like it!

End result.  The white blobs in front and center are deer.

New, thinner tree fits our room much better. 
Blob in front and center is Siesta.

Purple and gold.  We unintentionally picked our school colors.

  

Some days, all you can do is sleep...

or scowl.

Today's Post Brought To You By The Letter B: Bob, Backyard, Butterfly

It's been quite a while since I posted an update on skinny ol' Bob, the stray cat who adopted us in July.  It's hard to get a good picture of him because he doesn't look up when you talk to him and doesn't like to make eye contact.  But he's as sweet a cat as ever and is finally starting to look more like a cat than a bag of bones.  Still, I'd like to see him put on a little more weight before winter gets here.

And since we're outside, lets take a look at what's still growing in the backyard.

We have lots of big, bushy tomato plants left, but because of the heat and drought, they just didn't do as well this year as they have in the past.  We're still getting 3-4 small tomatoes a day, though.

This bunch of collard greens was strictly volunteer.  It didn't do much of anything until we started getting rain again, then it took off.  I'm just going to leave it there for a while, since they are said to be sweeter after a frost.

We planted and harvested (dry) pinto beans earlier in the summer and then replanted with green beans.  They are just now starting to set beans on, so hopefully we'll get a few jars' worth.  The ones we planted with the corn (in a Three Sisters planting) didn't do anything.

Kat still has two large Moon and Stars watermelons in her garden.  We already picked three.
You can see the stars on the rinds and the leaves, but none have had spots big enough to call moons.

The squashes we planted as part of the Three Sisters planting fared better.  We were late getting them in, but I think they will ripen before we get frost.  I can see several butternuts like the one above and several acorn squashes.  The zucchini plants gave us a few, but we weren't overrun with zukes like we usually are.

These last pics are of a butterfly (or is it a moth of some sort?) that Bob was chasing and that Kat rescued from him.  It seemed stunned, but unhurt.She and Shane were able to hold it for a while until it finally walked up Kat's arm and flew away. 

Boney Bob is a Good Garden Companion

We're doing what we can to keep things alive around here, and that includes both cats and plants.  We water our gardens every other day.  They could probably benefit from a daily watering, but because it takes me more than an hour to water it all, that just isn't happening.  Every couple of days will have to do.

Our tomatoes seem to be doing well.  We have a total of 30 plants in various areas of the garden; all but 12 of those were volunteer plants.

We're still getting a few of our ever-bearing strawberries; we pick about a cup every 2-3 days.  I'm not sure if this is normal or not, but our raspberries have flourished in the heat and have set on quite a few new berries.  We picked just four berries in the spring and thought that would be all, so this is a pleasant surprise.  Our ground cherries (aka, cape gooseberries, aka husk tomatoes) are done for the year, but yielded a few pints.

We don't have a lot of luck growing bell peppers, so we only planted four plants, but they have done a little better than usual this year.

Our cucumbers are struggling.  They didn't germinate well, so we only have about 1/3 of the plants we expected.  There will be plenty of cucumbers for salads, but probably not enough for pickles.

Our pinto beans look sad, but they aren't.  We're drying them on the vine on purpose.

The Swiss chard just keeps going and growing.

Kat's garden still has three small melons in it, all of which seem to be growing well.

Back behind the shed, we have a Three Sisters planting.  The corn is tall and I think the ears are just about ready to pick.  This is a late season variety, so it feels like we're running behind a lot of other area gardeners.  Under the corn is green beans.  The plants are green and pretty, but there are no beans.  I think we're running out of time.  Between the corn/bean clusters are squash plants -- zucchini, butternut and acorn.  They look pretty good, but so far,  no blossoms.  A couple of tomatoes volunteered among the sisters, so we left them and I noticed they have blooms now.

The Jersalem Artichokes are thriving, and we haven't watered them at all!  We're giving our asparagus, rhubarb and blackberries a little water, just to keep them alive.  They're done for the year, though.

I think that's about all we have going on in the garden right now, but very soon it will be time to think of late summer and early fall plantings.

And before I forget, here is Bones again.  We have also started calling him BOB, which stands for Bag O' Bones.  He's gained a few ounces, I think, and it appears some of his fur is growing back in.  We moved him to our back yard and he seems to like it there.  He's quite the garden companion.  He loves to follow along and keep us company while we're watering and harvesting.  He's even started pouncing on the garden hose and chasing butterflies, so I'd say he's starting to recover.

Bones

Meet Bones.

I first saw bones asleep under our truck on the day before we were supposed to leave for vacation.  The temperatures were in the 100s that day, with a heatwave forecast for the entire time we were to be gone, so I gave the poor, starving cat some food and water.

Then I called animal control to come get him.  They take cats to a nearby no-kill shelter and I felt that was the cat's only chance to survive the heatwave.  By the time they got here, he had vanished.

When we returned six very hot days later, there was the cat!  He'd made it, somehow.  Now that we're back with no plans to leave for more than a couple of days at a time, we named him Bones and decided to see if we can restore his health.

He's so thin that I can hardly stand to pet him, except for on his head and his tail.  He's literally just skin and bones.  As far as we can tell, though, he is just malnourished. 

He's missing large clumps of fur and seems to have an injury in his mouth, but there are no other bruises, cuts, or lesions of any kind.  His eyes are bright and the fur he does still have is soft, shiny and not matted.  He is the most loving cat I've known in a long, long time, and not fearful of us in the least.  He was obviously a pet until just recently, as he has no front claws and has been neutered.  We suspect someone moved and left him behind, either because they couldn't find him or couldn't take him with them for some reason.

He stays in our front yard and sleeps in the storm drain when he's not eating or being petted by us.  We are careful to wash our hands thoroughly after we are done petting him.  We don't plan to bring him inside with our other cats, but will be glad to have him as another outside cat.  We will eventually have him checked out by a vet to assess his health.  We don't want to do so just yet,  because we are afraid the vet will want to put him down.  We don't think that's going to be necessary, though.

Stay tuned for more pics as Bones (hopefully) puts on some weight and becomes a healthy cat again.

Now, Who Didn't See This Coming?

I need a blog break.  I promise it will be short, as I have plenty to say when I come back.  I just have some pressing things to take care of here at home.  Everybody and everything around here thinks they need to be fed, cleaned, clothed, petted or otherwise cared for.  Unreasonable, if you ask me.

BRB.
I promise.

Yesterday's News

Just a quickie post to show you what happened yesterday.

Our first spear of asparagus made an appearance.

Our first leaf of rhubarb broke through.

Our first daffodil bloomed, and by first, I mean first ever in this lawn.  The cluster was transplanted from our neighbor's yard three summers ago.

Our outside (feral) cat, Pinky, is becoming more and more trusting.  After more than two years, we can pet him if we stay in the house and reach through the door.  This week, though, we have been able to go outside -- both on the deck and in the yard -- without him running for cover.  Oh, he still runs, but he doesn't hide.

In these pics, I am halfway down the deck steps while he sits below the deck trying to figure out what I'll do next.