Flower Friday

Here are some of the lovely flower arrangements from Grandma's funeral.

It's been nearly a week since the funeral and I need to inspect how the flowers are holding up.

They're losing some petals, but still look pretty.

But as a Man Cat, I'm more interested in the bug on the mat.

We're sorry we haven't visited and commented much lately. We really do appreciate all the expressions of sympathy everyone sent. Mom has spent a lot of time on the phone this week after work so she hasn't made time to help us blog. We have sneaked a few peeks at friends' blogs, but without the assistance of our secretary, we cannot comment.

We hope that Mom will snap out of her funk so we all can get back to the fun of visiting and blogging.

~Jake

Flower Friday with Jake

When Mom got home from work tonight, and after I had my dinner, she wanted to do a photo shoot for Flower Friday. I had to humor her. She put me atop our fence and asked me to pose with the dusty rose-colored Joe Pye Weed, a native wildflower that grows tall and is a magnet for tiger swallowtail butterflies. Mom even saw some monarch butterflies on them a couple of mornings this week.


Once up there, I wanted to explore the arbor. The darker purple flowers are New York ironweed which is just beginning to bloom. It also attracts butterflies. The orange flowers are trumpet vine, and they attract hummingbirds.

It's actually a bit treacherous up here as you can see from this photo taken from the back yard. I'm way high up! The birdhouses are what Dad dubbed the "chickadee condo" that he built a few years back. We get birds nesting in them every year, and this year we had both wrens and sparrows, but not at the same time.

Mom says that because she's going out to California on Monday she won't be able to post a man cat Monday photo. I think that this one would have been an excellent choice for the occasion, so I couldn't resist posting it today.

My older sister Bathsheba keeps talking about being "Sweet 16." Her birthday is Sunday. She may be 16, but she's not sweet to me.

~Jake

Flower Friday Time

I told Mom that she could post a "Flower Friday" photo only if one of us appeared in it. Here are the potted impatiens from our front door. Mom had just given them a drink and they wet the sidewalk.

We had hoped to visit friends tonight, but Mom says that she just wants to sleep. Bah! Dad will probably awaken her with a late night call from California. He should have arrived there today.

~Bathsheba

Good News/Bad News

The good news is that WE are not moving. The bad news is that DAD is moving. Away. Back to California. He and Mom will try to maintain a long distance relationship, but we may never see him again. He's been with us for nearly 13 years (almost Jake's entire life), but he never liked Virginia and only moved here because of Mom. She is from Northern Virginia and has never lived outside of Virginia. Packing has been going on for weeks at our house, but the U-Haul truck finally leaves tomorrow morning. I am very sad and will miss Dad a lot, but my pesky brother will be devastated when it finally sinks in.

Jake knows that something is up, of course, but I think that he is oblivious to the truth. He and Dad share a very special relationship, but it's not enough to keep him here. It doesn't help that Jake pees on things, such as this metal percussion stand in this photo.

Now I'm getting sad and sentimental and that's not like me. Let me show you some flowers and butterflies from our jungle garden for Flower Friday:

And here is a little wren egg in a nest they made in a hanging plant on our deck. There are lots of beautiful things out in the world, and we will take solace in Mother Nature.

~Bathsheba

Flower Friday for Mom

We're hopelessly behind in memes and visits to our friends, but we wanted to cheer up Mom by posting for Flower Friday.


Welcome to our back yard jungle.


The phlox (P. paniculata) is in full bloom now, and we have it in white, pink, and various shades of purple. This is a native plant.

Here is a spectacular lily, Lilium orientalis 'Sierra Nevada.' Dad picked these out of a catalog years ago; he liked their California name since he is a native Californian. Mom finds their scent intoxicating.

These are Ruellia, also known as wild petunia. Each flower lasts only a day, but another comes along to take its place. They add a bit of pale purple-blue color to the shade under the big oak trees.

It has been unusually dry this season and Dad has had to water continuously to keep our jungle green and the flowers blooming. The water bill is sky high.

Mom promises to let us blog and visit more in the days ahead. We will have to take her at her word.

~J&B

Time for Flower Friday Again

Here we go again.

Mom begged us to let her do another post for Flower Friday, so we decided to indulge her--AGAIN.

Here is a daylily that is double or even triple. Another gardener gave these to Mom, but she never learned whether they were a named variety.

Here's another of those doubles for you daylily fans.

Mom really likes her purple coneflowers (Echinacea purpurea) and we have a nice patch in the sun.

Uh-oh, Mr. Japanese beetle finds these tasty. Can you see him on the flower in the lower right? Mom picks them off and steps on them.

Then there's good old black-eyed Susans (Rudbeckia hirta). It is the state flower for our neighbor Maryland.

A lot of people consider common milkweed (Asclepias syriaca) a true weed, but Mom likes the flower and its scent. She's heard that it's toxic to cattle, but it is vital to monarch butterflies--the ones that migrate all the way to Mexico in the fall. She hasn't seen any monarchs yet this year, but she has seen other creatures that it also attracts--bees and other butterflies. This plant also has interesting seed pods after the flowers fade.

We now return you to our regular cat blogging.

~J&B