Abundance

The daylilies are outdoing themselves. Surprising because I didn't feed them as heavily this year, but they are full, the blooms on some are so heavy they're warping the stems.

I've had an enormous blue hosta in the corner of the shade bed for years--six or seven, at least--and this is the first summer it's bloomed. It's nothing that spectacular but I'm hoping to get some seed and start some new ones.

~*~

The last couple of weeks I've gotten together with a couple of other people and we've workshopped, ate dinner, had some drinks and just enjoyed one another's company. It's been lovely--and I've gotten some serious work done on revising and rethinking some of the poems I wrote earlier this year. It's also been good prep work for Los Angeles. It's been about nine or ten years since I was in a formal workshop and I've been a little worried about having lost the ability to talk about a poem in an intelligent helpful way. I still feel like I need to brush up on terminology but I feel more confident I can talk about a poem in an analytical way.

~*~

The neighbors had a cow escape last week. A bull actually. Summer is here.

Too Much Nature

Driving to work Friday I hit a crow with my car. I always wonder when I see them in the road picking at carrion if they'll fly away in time. They usually do. It was really kind of ghastly.

Last night driving home I almost hit a deer.

I am almost afraid to leave the house today.

Balance and Tipping

Sunny and beautiful but that's deceptive. There's still a bit of a chill. Really perfect though. The crocuses are blooming like mad, deep purple all over the place, but I was pretty sure I'd planted white ones as well. What gives?

Fletcher has brought me his second offering of the spring, a mole. As long as he keeps these on the front porch I'm fine with it. Keep them out of my tulips.

Have yet to hit the Powerball, so so much for the poet retirement plan. Ah well.

Taxes, done. Birthday cards, done and mailed. Overall a good day.

The Mouse that Soared

Riddle me this, riddle me that, who's afraid of the big, black bat?

I've realized living in the country, in a rehabbed farm house, you are not hermetically sealed and occasionally the space(s) you think of as your own is (are) not. Bugs get inside; sometimes mice; once a snake crawled up alongside the plumbing into the bathroom--these things happen. And they're temporarily freaky and I handle it and I feel itchy and skittish for a couple of weeks; I am at the very least very very cautious when I open drawers and cabinet doors.

But nothing really had me prepared for last night.

It had been a lovely lazy day and since I'd been grilling on the back porch that afternoon, I just left the door open. The cat appreciates it and doesn't need to yowl so much to let me know it's time to come in or go out (and anything that stops him from yowling is A-OK by me.) It's also been delightfully cool and keeping the door opens seems to help fight the mid-day heat. It's an odd feature of the house...once it gets cool or hot it holds it in really well.

So I'm at the computer last night, chatting with Brian online and surfing the web. I heard something thunk the one leg of my computer desk. I assumed it was the cat coming in for the night--it was about 10:00, I was ready for bed. I snapped my fingers for the cat, no cat. I did the kissy noise/tongue click thing that he responds to (no "here kitty kitty kitty" for me), no cat. So I turn the light on. No cat. But I see the shadow of something fly past.

First I think--o maybe it's a bird. Then when I realize that it's not flying into windows or making noise I know what it is and it becomes "holy shit, mother of fuck, it's a bat." I cuss some more (mainly about getting rid of my tennis racket a few years ago) and try to figure out how the shit I'm going to get this damned bat out of the house. I'm also thinking: rabies, plague fleas, that scene in Cujo where the future-meth-faced Danny Pintauro is dehydrated in that Pinto and trying to remember if they drink piss from a thermos in the movie like they do in the book. I open the front door and try to chase the bat out that way. No soap.

It flies upstairs. I figure this gives me time to come up with something to swat and shoo the bat away with. I arm myself: a ceiling tile left over from a repair job, my largest aquarium net, and a fly swatter. I get the banking chittering hideous thing back downstairs amidst much ducking flinching and profanity. It's at this point the cat comes in to watch. I think, great. He'll track it and try to catch it. Nope. He runs. Eventually, I get de fledermaus into the laundry room and shut the door. It's trapped and I'm trapped with it. I just start swinging at it wildly trying to exhaust it and hoping that just maybe I can hit it hard enough to stun it.

Ultimately, the bat became exhausted and lit on the floor where it began chittering and hissing at me. I realized that this thing looks less like a mouse with wings than it does a hamster--and it reminded me of a singularly unpleasant russian dwarf that a friend of mine owned. It is approximately the size of a young adult hamster and the fur looked suspiciously similar. It was larger than any brown bat I've seen around here. I got my aquarium net over it and it's fighting to get out, flipping itself around, pissing all over the floor. (I never knew bats peed as a defense mechanism and frankly I never wanted to know. Also--bat piss smells just as bad as you might imagine.)

I got it outside and slammed the doors and proceeded to scratch and tremble for the next hour. I got back online and filled Brian in, googling for info on bats in west virginia and discovered that it was a Red Bat. Funnily enough, according to this PDF I found, "Red Bats rarely come into human habitations."

The Bitch is Back

A mature blue-tailed skink--not to be confused
with the more populous big haired skank.

I'm back to blogging now that the festivities of last weekend are over and I'm not chained to the kitchen. Overall the party last Saturday was a success...the food was good, people ate and drank and it was a good time. That all said--I don't think I'm ever going to attempt such an ambitious undertaking any time soon.

~*~

Brian and I went to Pittsburgh on Monday and did some shopping and had dinner with friends. It was a nice little day trip and so much more comfortable weather-wise in Pittsburgh than here. Nothing really notable happened except an elderly woman stared at my fauxhawk when we walked into Boscov's. I'm not sure why...I saw much more objectionable hair during our visit.

~*~

I am seriously sick of harvesting vegetables. So far this week it's been about 25 gallons of tomatoes and an unknown quantity of beans...I'm ready for this all to be over. I'm much more entertained and enthused by coaxing the plants into vigor and thrive than I am dealing with their product. It has made me think of my grandmother, though. She would load every available flat space in her house with produce and be the closest to proud I remember seeing her.

~*~

I was shifting around empty planters and pots on the back porch last night and I spooked a blue-tailed skink from its hiding place. I was really surprised to see one that close to the house...I knew they were indigenous here but I'd never seen one before. It was a juvenile, about the length of a toothpick and very slender. Its tail is startlingly blue...much more intense than the photo allows.

Off with Their Heads!!

Totally forgot to mention this yesterday. Halfway to work there is an abandoned business just beside the highway. It's been many things over the years: laundromat; convenience store; car lot, and probably a couple of other things I've forgotten. I'm driving to work yesterday morning, talking on the cell to Brian. As I get closer to the business I notice a guy standing in the parking lot, a few feet behind a battered and bondoed sedan. He appeared to be administering a field sobriety test to himself--walking along the seams in the concrete, trying to maintain a straight line, arms held out straight from his sides.

I feel it's important to note he was wearing a white button down shirt and black shorts with a white hibiscus pattern, he also had socks pulled halfway up his calves.

~*~

People are offering to buy tomatoes from me. I find this sort of crazy when there's a great farmer's market here.

~*~

Went out to work in the yard this afternoon and found another 3 foot long snake, crossing the patch. No clue what sort. Definitely not a black snake, although it is (errr was) a blackish-brownish color with a subtle diamond pattern. I fetched the machete and played Red Queen with it. Apparently there are a lot of snakes this summer...huzzah. I found myself wishing my grandfather was still alive--he'd have known what it was. I just hope I don't run across a copperhead. Oy god. I'll scream like a girl. Might even tinkle a little.

Bienvenue à la Maison des Morts

Like a Peckinpah film or one of Shakespeare's tragedies, the body count keeps rising here. Avalanche paraded around the house with a mouse he caught last night until I managed to get him scooted outside. Today he tried to tangle with a huge snake sunning itself near the meadow (it was a little over three feet long)--I ended up whacking it with the machete because neither one of them was backing down. I shudder to think what else he's going to find in the next few months. I have to give him credit--he's not afraid to tangle with something significantly bigger than he is.

~*~

Last week's rains put a damper on some of the festivities but the plants are loving it. I'm going to be spending a lot of time the next few weeks dividing hostas, ferns and lungwort to transplant.

I'm not sure when this landscaping project is ever going to be done. So much to clear out and kill that I think I'm never going to be on top of it all, much less ahead.

~*~

An entree to the long poem I've been working on has presented itself--not sure if it'll carry through all the revisions, but it's given me a way to proceed.

What Would Eva Do?

Sunday, when we were driving back to Buckhannon, I avoided a squirrel in the road. It was hunkering and darting beside another squirrel who had not been so lucky as to avoid a car. Actually it was pretty flat--it had not avoided a lot of cars. I had to avoid the skittish, befuddled, living one. I'm not one of those people who stops and helps box turtles across the road or who'll run into the ditch to avoid a bunny; but if weather conditions allow, I'll try to veer away or brake enough to avoid killing something.

I sometimes think we're like the couple in Green Acres--he's Eva Gabor, I'm Eddie Albert. I'm pretty adaptable. I like the options of cities: the venues, the anonymity, the restaurants, the shopping. At the same time I really love the space and quiet I have here. Sometimes it's grating, but overall it's a fair trade. We drove past people I knew and without thinking I'd point them out, oddly happy seeing them out running errands or whatever on a Sunday. Unlike Eddie A, I'd never ask Brian to relocate to an area like this--it'd drive him mad, I fear. But one of the things I'm gladdest for about this visit was that he got to be with me and some of my favorite people and see that part of my life.

~*~

Last night before bed I heard a thumping and clanking on the front porch. I knew it wasn't my critters, because they were all inside, bedded down and sleeping. I went to the door and turned on the light and there, rattling about the kibble and water bowls (during the late spring and summer I leave a few bowls out for the cats and dogs, because they're outside as much they're in) was a sizeable possum. It lurched off the porch and ran its odd jerky run off through the ferns toward the meadows. Hideous little beasts. I'll start bringing the kibble in at night because I don't want repeat visits.

Every time I see a possum I think of Gerald Stern's "Behaving Like a Jew" from Lucky Life.

Behaving Like A Jew

When I got there the dead opossum looked like
an enormous baby sleeping on the road.
It took me only a few seconds – just
seeing him there – with the hole in his back
and the wind blowing through his hair
to get back again into my animal sorrow.
I am sick of the country, the bloodstained
bumpers, the stiff hairs sticking out of the grilles,
the slimy highways, the heavy birds
refusing to move;
I am sick of the spirit of Lindbergh over everything,
that joy in death, that philosophical
understanding of carnage, that
concentration on the species.
--- I am going to be unappeased at the opossum’s death.
I am going to behave like a Jew
and touch his face, and stare into his eyes,
and pull him off the road.
I am not going to stand in a wet ditch

with the Toyotas and the Chevies passing over me
at sixty miles an hour
and praise the beauty and the balance
and lose myself in the immortal lifestream
when my hands are still a little shaky
from his stiffness and his bulk
and my eyes are still weak and misty
from his round belly and his curved fingers
and his black whiskers and his little dancing feet.

Diggin' In the Dirt

Despite the rain's insistence on intermittent drippling I got most of the stuff planted. 3 lilacs transplanted (1 white, 2 purple) 3 types of columbines transplanted. Also sowed a bunch of seeds. Almost 20 varieties...too much to sit and retype. I'm hoping the cats don't think this new sandy expanse is a bigger better cat box and do their business there; at least not until the seeds have a fighting chance to sprout and establish. I even managed to get in some more weeding before it got too drizzly. If it's even marginally nice tomorrow I have to plant the bulbs.

The bunny survived the night, so he/she/it has been released. Of course, as Brian pointed out, this is probably in vain--if the cats want to eat him, they will.

70 Degrees and Partly Cloudy

It's really beautiful today...just a skosh muggy...but there's the barest breeze that counters.

I reek. I'm sweaty. I got a few hundred pounds of sod moved and then replaced it with a few hundred pounds of sand, peat hummus, cow manure and dirt (all in a 1:1 ratio). It's raked and aerated and ready for planting. All told I think I've moved half a ton of material. My back however is ready for a couple of Extra Strength Tylenol. The planting can wait til tomorrow. I need to rejigger my map and plotting.

Fletcher, lord love him kept me company while I worked and was kind enough to bring me a not-dead-yet bunny. I used Gluck's "we do not experience will in this manner" on him. He's not nearly so impressed with that line as I am. I got the rabbit away from him and it's in a secure location. Its prospects as of now are dubious.

I resent the havoc the rabbits, the chipmunks, the moles and their kind do to the garden. This is the first time he brought one that wasn't expired. It's so small and I'm torn.

Poppies, Poppies, Poppies

Some gardeners can grow anything.

My uncle is one of those. He seems to have an innate sense of just what to do with a plant, a seedling, a graft. It's stunning.

I'm not one of those. I do okay--and I can get certain finnicky plants to thrive. But there are certain plants that take me a while to figure out and get a handle on that are supposedly easy to grow. Columbine, common thyme and poppies all took several years and abortive plantings to get going. And now they're doing beautifully: reseeding and spreading to the point I can dig up and transplant some to other areas. I have a neighbor I trade plants with each spring/summer. She saw the ice poppies last year and said she wanted some. I gave her some pods for seed, but that didn't do well. I have about two dozen plants in all now, they've tripled since last year. I need to dig up about a half dozen small poppy starts to take her before they get too big and settled.

Run for Cover

It's getting colder. Blech. Apparently we're in for about five days of cold and ick. I went around and covered as many of the young plants and fresh growth as I could. Hopefully things won't be too badly damaged. It's a shame because the lungwort, bleeding hearts and trilliums in the shade bed are doing beautifully so far.

I Feel Like Flex Mentallo*

Productive day today: ran errands, went to the bank, paid for the car license and got some yard work done. Sprayed some weeds, pruned some stuff down that I'm going to try and kill in the next couple of weeks and pulled a tree out of the ground with my bare hands. I felt huge and manly. Huge and manly, I tell ya. Grrrr. I might have to go flex....

Going to plot out the new beds this weekend and try to be sensible and not just throw plants together. I like the whole cottage garden look but for now, until the plants are really established, I'm going to keep them separated and simple. I have plenty of time, according to the plant guides...seeing as to how I'm in the newly created Hardiness Zone 5A, I can wait until the end of April/beginning of May to sow seeds and set out plants. But that's going to be here before I know it...so I might as well just bite the bullet and do it now.

I called around earlier in the afternoon, looking for places that sold Saltpetre (aka Potassium Nitrate, KNO3) this proved a little more difficult than I imagined. I called a chain pharmacy which told me to call a hardware store or an independent pharmacist depending on the quantity I needed. Since I'm going to use it to kill a couple dozen unwanted plum and cherry trees, I decided to call Lowe's. Bad idea. Well--not so bad in theory, but in execution.

I called, got patched to the right department and ended up having perhaps the worst customer service call of my life.

Lowe's Employee: "MumblemumblemumbleLowe'scanIhelpyou?"
Me: "Do you carry Potassium Nitrate or Saltpetre?"
Lowe's Employee: "Peter?"
Me: (slower and louder) "Potassium Nitrate or Saltpetre. To kill stumps?"
Lowe's Employee: "Peter?"
Me: (more slowly and loudly) "Pooo-taaass-iuuuum Niii-trate or Saltpetre. To kill stumps?"
Lowe's Employee: "Peter?
That was when I hung up the phone.

I'll just go tomorrow and see when I shop for a machete. They're supposed to have one in stock. I really really really need a machete. Like this one:

*Flex Mentallo is some comic book geekery. But he's got those animal print trunks that I always thought were nifty.

The Frogs and Other Things

Ladies and gentlemen, allow me to introduce you to Pseudacris crucifer, otherwise known as the Northern Spring Peeper. It is truly spring. These little buggers are out in force, calling and sounding and looking for love. Though allegedly nocturnal, they've been doing their thing most hours of the day this week. There must be thousands of them due to the sound. I've had the windows open because it's been balmy and breezy and their calls are inescapable. They seem to work as a chorus, so it's nearly impossible to single out when a specific call begins or ends, unlike larger frogs or toads. It's almost like when cicadas are out in force. Their sounding never really becomes white noise that you can block...at best it becomes like a case of tinnitus. If you click the link above, Wiki has a sound file of hundreds of them. It gives a rough idea of it--but the scale is definitely off. Useless critter trivia: a group of frogs is referred to as an army or colony. More useless trivia: contrary to its poster, the 1972 animals amok flick, Frogs does not contain a scene where a large bullfrog eats a human hand. This one didn't make it into my recap of favorite killer critter movies because Joan Van Ark survives. I always hated Val.


Today is the last day of meds--huzzah! They've done the trick, although I'm now in that "feeling fine but have an energy deficit" zone. This is the hardest part of the whole illness/recovery cycle for me to navigate. It's a battle between stubborness and sensibility. I know I'm still not completely well, but dammit I feel fine. I wanted to work in the yard today, but am going to resist because I know I'll be clammy and coughing in about half an hour. I learned this on Friday when I went out to pick up some small branches and things that had blown out of the maples. I lasted twenty minutes and then ended up sacked out for a couple of hours. No need to repeat that. A few days of waiting isn't going to change much since the dead stems will still be there.



Daffodils are blooming like crazy, as are the tulips. In addition to the bargain packs of bulbs I'd nabbed at Lowe's, I had gone around last fall and dug up several large clumps of daffodils to transplant on the bank. What's astonishing is the amount of bulbs I must've missed. There are still sizeable clumps growing and blooming from areas I know I harvested. I might feed them heavily and then transplant more in the fall. Not sure how viable this plan is--I need to consult some books.

B-A-N-A-N-A-S

Late winter and early spring are always wonky weatherwise...I know this. But the last few days here have been exemplary of that sort of meteorological crazy. Wednesday: 70ish degrees, warm and balmy. Wednesday night: thunder and lightning and a hail storm. Some of the biggest hail I've seen. No golf ball sized chunks...but at least 1/2". Thursday: Rain. Friday: More rain, some limited low level flooding and the ditches overflowing. Later in the day: snow. The water and weird weather interfered with phone service something crazy. Today: prolly 4-5" of snow. At least it's deep enough to cover the damage the hail did to the crocuses and plants. That depressed me. Tomorrow will bring...?

Forget the Rain--There's No Washin' These Boys Out

Out of all these movies, Kingdom of the Spiders is the one that freaks my shit out. The rest of them tickle me because they're just patently bad. And I'm not saying this one is a winner by any means, but it makes me scratch for a good two hours after seeing it and has me checking inside my shoes for days.

Yea, it's got Shatner. Yea, it's a bad movie. Yea, there are way too many of the "characters behaving stupidly" bits. But this movie has lots and lots of spiders. Tarantulas, actually. And they're dumped on the actors. By the bucket-full. I can't imagine how badly these people needed the money to subject themselves to that--but you could not pay me enough to do it.

This movie gets closer to being effective than most of the others on my list. It doesn't toy with making them huge or by being a hybrid sort of movie. It takes something that legitimately creeps people out and pours it on. Granted they take some liberties (tarantulas are not social; these buggers are immune to DDT; they're hyper-poisonous; they spin webs [this becomes important later]) but for this genre of movie the film-makers show remarkable restraint. They know what's scary and they give it to you.

William Shatner plays a western veterinarian who goes by the name of Rack. He's called out to a farm to check on a dead calf. He takes samples to see what the cause of death is and sends some off to the big city. If it's due to some sort of virus or disease, the farmer might lose his herd and property. Later in the movie, when the hot big city entomologist arrives, it turns out it's spider venom. Five times more lethal than normal. No explanation is really given for this--but hey, just go with it. There's a lull for character development--we realize Shatner and the bug-chick are gonna hook up because they get off on the wrong foot; we meet Shatner's sister-in-law (his brother's dead) who's in love with him and has a kid; we meet some more of the locals. All just setting us up for the third act fun. The pacing is a little slow here--but sort of worth it just for the overwrought Shatner emoting.

Things pick up when they discover a huge hill crawling with tarantulas. More of these hell-condos appear later and of course that means more spiders. Shatner has a fight with sis-in-law and bags the bug girl. Another cow dies. And from this point on it's just carnage. The farmer and his wife both meet their ends due to the spiders. Pa is attacked in his truck and drives off a cliff. He's found dead and webbed (this is one of the creepiest effects in the movie to me.) Ma is assaulted by the tarantulas in the homestead and has them crawling up her arm--instead of shaking it off her, she SHOOTS her damned arm off. She, thankfully, also becomes arachno-chow. The mayor sends up a crop duster to poison the spiders. He's attacked mid-flight and crashes into a barn. The horny sister-in-law is next to go. And so it goes.

Shatner tries calling out for help, but you see the operator all webbed up with spiders crawling over her. There are also seens of webbed up victims looking dessicated with tarnatulas crawling on them. And then the town just goes bug shit. You see people running from spiders; cars driving over spiders; people succumbing to spiders. And people running around screaming covered in tarantulas. It's lunacy. And I just shuddered typing this paragraph.

People hole up at a lodge for the night after battling spiders. In the morning, Shatner looks out the window to see what daylight brings: a town covered in webs. Yep--spiders win.

Haiku Synopsis
Kingdom of the Spiders
Not even Shatner
can stop the killer spiders.
The spiders win, bitch.

The Ultimate B-Movie

Helicopter Pilot #2: Oh, my God! Bees! Bees! Millions of Bees!

The Swarm is an Irwin Allen spectacular. Africanized bees run amok, brought to you by the guy responsible for The Poseidon Adventure and Towering Inferno. So you know what that means: a busload of old movie and tv stars in peril. The cast includes: Michael Caine, Jose Ferer, Katherine Ross, Henry Fonda, Richard Chamberlain, Olivia DeHaviland, Patty Duke and Slim Pickens.

The Swarm is a B-movie that presents itself as A-list drama, playing out Allen's favorite movie theme: man vs. disaster while we meet lots of secondary characters and follow their subplots. Think of him as Robert Altman's schlocky step-cousin.

Thankfully, the menace we face is not giant-sized. Though the giant-critter run amok genre is fun, considering the limited production values and technologies at hand, there's more of a "you've gotta be kidding me factor" at work in those movies. Their failures are obvious in their execution. The Swarm gets it sort of right. Take something a little scary (after all the Africanized bee angle was worked and is still brought out in the tabloids and the legitimate news), tweak it just a little (these bees have stronger mouths and can sting more than once before dying), and just go balls out. Where The Swarm goes off the tracks is the dialogue.

Brad Crane (Michael Caine): We've been fighting a losing battle against the insects for fifteen years, but I never thought I'd see the final face-off in my lifetime. And I never dreamed, that it would turn out to be the bees. They've always been our friend.

Brad Crane: These bees, General, are of joint concern, and they are killing Americans, without reference as to whether or not they have a serial number and are expected to salute YOU! So there will be no air drops of any kind until I give the OK!
General Slater (Richard Widmark): You're OK, huh? Then just possible I can persuade you to attack this particular swarm, now that we know where it is! Attack and eliminate it!
Brad Crane: Possibly, if you can explain to me, how you air drop chemicals, without killing the native insect life! If your chemical will kill the African bee, it will also kill the American bee, right?
General Slater: Right! And better a few American bees than a lot of AMERICAN PEOPLE!
Brad Crane: That is the point, general! The honey bee is vital to the environment! Every year in america, they pollinate six billion dollars worth of crops! If you kill the bee, you're gonna kill the crop! If you kill the plants, you'll kill the people! No! No, general! There will be no air drop, until we know exactly, what we are dropping, and where, and how! Excuse me!

Brad Crane: [while the giant bee is hovering next to him] There's no bee here. I promise you, there's no bee here.

More examples of the it's so bad it's goodness here.


OK so here's the quick (considering the movie runs about 2.5 hours depending on the version you see) breakdown. Africanized bees come over the border into Texas, invading a nuclear base (underground!) and killing everyone. Now let's just stop a minute and consider this...Africanized bees, coming into America from Mexico... no, never mind, let's move on. It gets worse from there. A family's picnic is ruined. People die. Old people are in a love triangle. Patty Duke doesn't do much. Houston is in flames. They lure the bees to an oil slick in the ocean using "sonics" (portable radios in little rafts dropped into the water). Once the swarm has been drawn to the oil slick missiles are launched setting the whole mess aflame. Finis.

Irwin Allen was noted as the "Master of Disaster." This film was a disaster. It was one of the final nails in his movie career. He pretty much stuck to television stuff for the rest of his life after When Time Ran Out also tanked.

Haiku Synopsis

The Swarm
Awful, awful film.
Urge friends to watch? They'll hate you.
Michael Caine is sexy?

Ephemera

Went out today to get some deadheading and weeding done before the rains come. Breezy out, warm, lots of birdsong. The earth isn't quite so warm you can smell it yet...but it's close. I love those couple of weeks when even the grass and its tight little mats of leaf and root and sod can't contain that scent. I've been thinking of it a lot the last few days--what that scent is exactly; why it acts on me the way it does; how much longer it will be before it's here. Soon, I keep telling myself, in this and so many other things, soon.

Big crocuses have opened up since yesterday. They are alarming--rich violet and amazingly orange stamens and pistils. So hard to find just the right word to describe the intensity of that orange without being cliche. So let me just say: they're really damned orange.

Fletcher is the gift that keeps on giving. Returned from my labors to find a single dead shrew-like thing. Since the weather's improved the cats have been far happier. Like me they get cabin fever. So the more agreeable temps. and conditions have allowed them more time outside to climb and hunt and do what they do. It's drawn down their "running of the circuit"--during the coldest snowiest weather they were prone to making high-speed kidney shaped runs through the house beginning in the kitchen, into the living room and bath and back. They'd do this two or three times in a row then go off somewhere and collapse. It could be the warm weather and their free time outside or it could be the liberal doses of catnip I've been giving them. Either way, we all seem more content.

I'm in the mood to bake. I've been craving starch all week--potatoes particularly. I hate when I get these highly specialized cravings. It makes me feel out of whack. Maybe some pie or another batch of molasses cookies will help. (This recipe from epicurious is fabu. Delicious, spicy, and a perfect texture for dunking in coffee. M'm M'm good. I recommend giving the dough a thorough chill before working with it--very very sticky.)

Bummer SASE news--but that just means another round in the mail Monday.

Spring is sprung, the grass is ris...

I sewed a bunch of seeds earlier this week and am jazzed that some have already germinated. I've managed to do pretty well the past few years growing tomatoes and herbs from seeds so I decided to really try this year to do it with flowers and do it right. Just to be safe I made sure I kept some reserve seeds in the fridge to plant later. So far the amaranthus 'hot biscuit,' the bells of ireland, and a couple of four o'clocks are all sprouting. The cleome is being stubborn but it just might take a little longer. I don't mind planting annuals as long as they reseed--and from what I've read these varieties are all reliable reseeders. I'd love to get some nicotiana varieties, but despite my best efforts the last six or seven years, I've never been able to get them to thrive. In a couple of weeks I'm going to do the tomatoes because I honestly never plant them until the end of May or early June, so a later sewing should prevent them being leggy.

It's been lovely here today--warm with a light wind. So nice after the mud and rain and snow. If it's still nice tomorrow I'm determined to get out and deadhead, weed, and get things ready to go for late spring planting..

Spring must be on its way

Fletcher, the orange and white tabby, left me two dead mole heads on the welcome mat. He was sitting there yowling to be let in, looking up, waiting to be praised. I assured him he was a fine specimen of tom, got my gloves and disposed of the pressies. It could be worse, a friend has a cat known to bring in live snakes.