Garden Cat

Hi! It has been forever since my last post, and the mood has changed dramatically around here.

Spring is here, and Mom LOVES spring. She also has a very loving man in her life. We still miss Jake very much, but Mom no longer bursts into tears at the mere mention of him.

Our garden was one of three featured for a local wildflower garden tour on April 19. Our Virginia bluebells (Mertensia virginica) were in full glory that day.

Mom asked me if I wanted to participate in the tour by being outside,

but I told her that I would rather nap. We had 117 guests visit our garden that Sunday afternoon. Refreshments were served on our deck and the guests had a good time. The non-floral stars of the tour were a pair of flickers who were busy carving out a nesting cavity high in our dead ash tree.

It has been very warm (HOT) lately. Mom had to work late last night, but she came home tonight and took me outside with her. Can you find me in this photo amidst the wild geraniums?

She stalked me with the camera.

I showed my displeasure by slipping under the shed. A groundhog and an oppossum lived here at different times.

Mom continues to be busy with work and her activities. She is co-chair of a native plant sale that will take place the morning of May 9. I continue to conserve energy and nap.

Love,

~Bathsheba

Fickle March

March sure is a changeable month. Just last week I wanted to step outside onto the deck and this is what was out there! My pawprints makes it look like I have a lots of extra toes, but it's only one extra on each paw.

Mom was happy that she finally got to use her cross country skis--first time this season! She doesn't get too many chances around here.

Then spring came! It was in the 70s this past weekend. Here I am in the flower bed with some crocus. I would have posed better had Mom brought some treats outside with her. Last year Jake posed only because she bribed him with treats.

I think that I can go for a nice afternoon snooze in the sunshine.

~Bathsheba

It's the Season . . .

. . . when all these pretty leaves fall to the ground and Mom has to rake and blow and shred and rake and blow and shred and rake and blow and shred endlessly.

The front sidewalk fills with leaves and Mom tracks them in when she gets home from work.

My deck becomes a mess and leaves fly into my water dish. We have our deck built around a maple tree so lots of leaves fall on it.

~Jake

But it's also a sad time when all the potted impatiens on the deck are killed by a freeze as they were the night before Veteran's Day. Late last month Mom brought inside all the house plants that summer on the deck. It's a ritual for them - six months inside and six months outside.


The same day that the impatiens croaked, Mom found blooms on the witch hazel (Hamamelis virginiana) that she had just planted this spring. That turned her frown into a smile.

Today's weather is very weird. There was rain early, then it let up and was windy and warm (70 degrees F.) so I was outside with Mom as she took advantage of the weather and read her newspaper on the deck. It rained again just a little time ago and is supposed to get very cold here in the days ahead. I like to be outside when it is warm and that Pesky Jake is inside.

Here's a parting shot of me. Notice the dirty spot on the door? That's from Jake who scratches on the door when he wants to go in, then prompty scratches on the other side when he wants to go out again.

Enjoy the weekend.

~Bathsheba

We Took the Environmental Dare

In memory of Anastasia, our friend Karl asked the cats of the blogosphere to come up with a fun dare. Many cats, including us, submitted suggestions, but Mr. Chen's dare impressed the judges enough to win. Thus, we were all dared "to come up with one creative, fun, useful way to save the environment and put a picture of yourself doing it on your blog!"

We are not particularly creative, so we decided on quantity, not quality. Our mom considers herself very committed to being sensitive to the environment, so she welcomed this dare.


First off, instead of driving to work, we offer teleworking, which Mom did today. We highly recommend this--it's win-win for everyone. We get a servant at home to cater to all of our needs and she gets to enjoy us and have less stress doing her work on the computer and phone.

If you have to report to the office, one thing you can do is ride your bike to work. Mom tried this for the first time back in May for "Bike to Work Day" and has been doing it at least once a month since. Yesterday was a beautiful day and she rode in--12 miles one way, 24 miles round trip. It helps to keep her in shape. She's lucky to have showers at her office--or rather her office staff is fortunate!

I didn't like having to pose on that bike pack. I work from home as deck patrol so I don't have to ride to work.

On those days when she has to drive, Mom takes her Prius. We highly recommend this hybrid vehicle because it has low emissions plus gas mileage in excess of 50 mpg.

On the home front, there are lots of things you can do to make your yard more environmentally friendly. Here is our brush pile at the bottom of the yard. This is a great place for little critters and insects. Birds love to peck around in the brushy leaf litter.

You can also make a compost pile. Though I have been known to raid the compost pile for avocado rinds in the past, this time, Mom placed me in the midst of this stuff. There are lots of shredded leaves and vegetable waste. You can see that some of the cantaloupe seeds sprouted and a vine is growing. This pile is super high in the late fall when Mom rakes and shreds leaves, but a lot has decomposed by now.

Then there's garden plantings: try to plant for wildlife. Mom uses lots of native plants and no pesticides. So what if our lawn is "weedy"; at least it's healthier for me to walk on.

See the tall "stalky" plant here? It's a milkweed, the only plant that monarch butterflies eat in their larval stage.

During Tropical Storm Hanna, one of the big Bradford pear trees in our neighborhood split. The neighbors cut it up and put the wood out with the trash. Mom knows that it makes better firewood than fodder for the landfill, so she took it home. We just have to wait a while for it to season.

How about some solar power? Ours is old technology, but it's a renewal resource that could be viable in many sunny climates out west.

We also recommend natural cleaners like vinegar rather than harsh chemicals.

And reuse your plastic take-out food containers. They're great for lunches and leftovers--or for carrying our food on long trips.

Of course we recommend recycling. Just be sure you know the rules in your area and don't contaminate the recyclables.

We aren't showing them, but we assume that all of our friends reuse plastic bags for the daily scooping of the litter box. And those plastic newspaper sleeves are great for those of you with dogs and need a disposable pooper scooper. Sure, reusable bags are great for groceries and shopping, but you still need something for the stinky stuff.

Yes, Mom still gets the dead tree version of the newspaper. She's a geezer and loves to read her hard copy version. She especially likes to read the Sunday edition in bed. She likes to think that by being a paid subscriber she will do her part to keep the newspapers in business because online versions still don't pay for themselves with ads.

Just remember - CATS are NOT recyclable! They all deserve forever homes.

~J&B

Second Blogoversary on Mancat Monday

It's our second blogoversary! We started blogging back in 2006 after being inspired by our friends Kismet and Skeezix. Our first post was rather lame, but our secretary was thrilled just to be able to upload photos. Our dear friends Rosie and Cheeto were our first visitors. We have made the most wonderful friends across the US and around the world. This is such a great supportive community. I have a beautiful girlfriend cat DaisyMae Maus in San Diego and Bathsheba even found a nice mancat Bubbles to like and admire her. (Why, I'll never understand.)



As most of our friends know, I like to hang out on the deck. Here I am with a pot of cardinal flowers (Lobelia cardinalis), and I am just waiting for a tasty ruby-throated hummingbird to alight.

Why don't they ever seem to visit when I'm standing here? Mom recently heard some cool hummingbird facts from a dear friend that she wanted to relate, but I told her no because this is MY blog and is supposed to be all about ME.









Well, if no birdies are going to come by when I am out in the open, I must go undercover and await them. You may think that I'm asleep, but this mancat is always on alert.






P.S. From Bathsheba: Jake, this is a joint blog, and it's NOT all about you. I want to let all our dear friends know that I really appreciated all the birthday wishes and hope to visit all of your blogs soon to thank you personally. I was overwhelmed by your sentiments.






P.P.S. We accepted Karl's challenge in memory of Anastasia and we encourage you to do the same.

Tall-Tailed Tabby versus Tortie for Toesday

Bathsheba: After a dreary morning, it cleared up a bit yesterday afternoon and I went out on the deck to look around.



Jake: Oh, Bathsheba, you don't know how to patrol and guard my deck.

Let me show you how it's done.

Bathsheba: This deck isn't big enough for the two of us. (Note from Mom: It's 20x24'.) I'm going back inside. I'm moving so fast, my face is a blur.

P.S. Mom says thank you to the Castro Valley
boys. They're lovely.

Sad on Saturday

Mom continues to feel sad and mopey. She says that she feels the way these impatiens look.


We've been visiting our friends, but not leaving comments since we need Mom's help with writing them.

~J&B

Flower Friday Again

There's still time for Flower Friday so our secretary is taking over our blog. Again. Sigh.

This is a calla lily on top of beebalm. Calla lilies have pretty speckled leaves. They aren't supposed to be hardy here in Northern Virginia, but Dad planted them very deep and they've now been in the ground at least five years and have come back and bloomed every year.


Here are some pale specimens of purple coneflower (Echinacea purpurea).

More calla liles

And here's what happens to some of our lovely calla lilies--Japanese beetle damage. Mom and Dad don't use any chemicals in our garden, so they just pick off the pesky voracious beetles as best they can. I think we should close the fast food restaurant (bird feeders) and put the birds to work eating the beetles!

Daylilies

With all due respect to the Big Piney Woods Cats who started Flower Friday, I think I'm getting a little tired of being upstaged by flowers. This is supposed to be a CAT BLOG, so I'm going to insist on at least one photo of ME. Here I am making the world safer from a sucker upper machine. It can't do its sucking without being plugged into the wall outlet. I have conquered the evil machine!

~Jake

Wildlife Weekend

Welcome to my patch of wildness in the middle of suburbia.


Mom and Dad tried to create a wildlife sanctuary in the garden, and I think they succeeded. It is certainly an informal garden, but has a kind of neat wildness about it.



In our Flower Friday post, Jeter asked about bees since there is a lot of concern about their state of health nationwide. While bees are certainly having problems in Virginia too, we have our own colony of bees. Some years ago, Dad built a large birdhouse intended for "our" red-bellied woodpeckers, and he erected it high in one of our white oak trees. No woodpeckers nested in it, but we did have great crested flycatchers live in it. After that, bees moved in.

Here is a closer photo of the house, but without a good telephoto lens, you can't tell that bees inhabit it.

We have a family of bluejays in our yard. They are very colorful and beautiful, but they like to squack a lot. The youngsters perch on branches of the elm tree and flap their wings "helplessly" as their mom or dad go to the suet feeder and bring back food for them.

The young blue jays appear just as large as their parents--and fatter. It's no wonder since mom and dad must not have much time to feed themselves as they tend to their offspring. That must be why the parents like coming to the suet feeder in summer: it's like fast food for them in their busy lives.

Recently our friend Skeezix showed us some birds' nests from his yard, and now we have one to show. We think that this was the blue jays' nest in the photinia bush next to the sunny side of the house.

Our state bird the cardinal nested in our yard this year too.

Now let's take a look out front. What do we see in the sunny front bed but a female eastern box turtle! We know she's a female because her eyes are yellowish-brown. The male has red eyes.

Here's a photo of part of our wild (but controlled) front yard where the common daylilies (hemerocallis) are now in bloom. Dad calls them "freeway lilies" because they often grow along highways.

I love my wild yard, but I think that I am the wildest beast in it. Happy Man Cat Monday.

~Jake

P.S. We hope to get to visit our friends this week. Mom wouldn't let us on the computer here for several days straight and now it's getting late. Hiss!