Yard Work and Kittens -- Same Old, Same Old

It does seem like life lately has revolved around working outside in the yard and dealing with kittens inside the house. I get to the end of each day wondering what, if anything, has been accomplished. And I'm usually too tired to sit down and document our progress on the blog. But the Wizard is out of town and for some reason, I seem to have more time. So here's an update of sorts.

I had to explain to the offspring that the yard work really is in aid of getting out of Dodge. Unless we win the lottery, we have to sell this house. And anyone who comes to look at this house is going to want to look at the yard. Here in Dodge, big yards are not the norm so we have to make the back yard as inviting as possible. Which means getting rid of the weeds and making the rest of it look like it doesn't take incredible amounts of time to maintain. Hah.

I finally convinced the slave labor Sports Nut and Media Guy to build some rings around the apple trees and one future shade tree.

I suppose these brick rings don't actually do much for the trees, but they give each tree a sense of space. I think they actually look pretty nice and I hope the dogs don't rip them apart or dig out all the mulch again.

Down the slope where those apple trees are located, almost all of the chamisa and weeds have been taken out. One nice thing that we found upon removing the chamisa was this volunteer evergreen:

I think its parent is up on top of the slope. To encourage this one to grow, we are going to have to remove an enormous chamisa root which is right next to the little tree. Chamisa roots are tenacious, but we have a pickaxe. If we can dig down deep enough around the root, we should be able to sever it pretty decisively.

The vinca I planted on the slope in an attempt to prevent erosion seems to be taking -- at least some of the plants seem to have survived the transplant.

So far, so good. I'm going to have to pick up a few more plants if I want the entire slop covered with vinca, but that's a project for another day. In the meantime, our peaches are beginning to look like peaches, even if they are still green.

Inside the house, days seem to be divided into three times, which rotate at random -- kitten feeding time:

Kitten nap time:

And kitten play time:

Kitten play time includes their involvement in every activity of daily life, like making music:

And preparing food:

They are growing nicely, though, and should be able to go to their permanent homes soon. I hope. The teeny-tiny black kitten, who started at a mere 10 ounces, is now well over a pound. And I no longer have to force feed him. He climbs up and over my back while I'm preparing kitten food and constantly demands to be fed.

And we have figured out how to distinguish between the three grey kittens:

From left to right, we have Chloe, Clover, and Parker. Obvious, isn't it? By the way, each kitten is being held by a separate young man in that picture. We just couldn't get their faces unless they were individually managed.

In other news, we had a major wind storm the other day which deposited large amounts of dirt inside the house because I was so happy about the cool breezes that I didn't shut the windows.

That pile is pretty much just from the area shown in the picture. I will not miss dust storms when we leave Dodge.

Future Vet decided to rearrange his room, at least partly because he was keeping one of the foster kittens separate in his room. There were just way too many hiding places for a small cat.

He's opened up the middle of the room and even though it has all the same stuff in it, the room feels much more spacious.

And we are starting to go through boxes again. Those empty boxes in the corner of Future Vet's room are some of the ones he has emptied. For example, he decided he didn't really want to keep his text books and papers from high school. And who can blame him?

Though some boxes had already been removed, I took a picture of the pile of boxes in the garage this morning, just as a reference point.

Looking at that, I'm kind of surprised that there was room for two adult human beings out there.

The first box I went through today was one of the "oh crap" varieties. Here's a sample of the contents:

Yes, this was an entire banker's box full of envelopes with film negatives. Nothing but negatives.

Maybe it's time to invest in one of those little scanners that reads negatives and converts them to digital images.

Busy Weekend

Over the past weekend, all of my many sibs and most of their family members decided to come to Dodge. We'd been talking about a family reunion of sorts, but I thought it was going to be someplace else. When they decided to come here, I didn't complain. And it worked out well for me, considering the number of kittens in the house and the amount of tending that the kittens still need.

In fact, if the decision to descend on Dodge had come after the influx of kittens, I would suspect them all of ulterior motives. I certainly would travel halfway across the country to play with kittens. Makes sense to me that my siblings would as well.

Most of the sibs have moved on at this point, but kittens remain.

Kittens like lasagna, by the way. And I'm happy to report that I have coerced talked my friends into adopting all of the kittens. Every single one will go to a good home rather than to the questionable fate of a shelter kitty.

Thanks to the obligatory (and cursory) pre-company cleaning and the essential post-company cleaning,  there's no decrapification update this week. I talked to the slave labor offspring tonight and tomorrow we are going into Full BBSP Mode. (BBSP refers back to my original goal -- a box, a bag, a shelf or a pile a day.) If three or four of us work on this goal each day, next week should yield some major decrapification progress.

There's garden news this week. We have a winner in the First to Flower sweepstakes!!

One squash blossom looks much like another to me. This one happens to be a pumpkin blossom. There are almost-blossoms on the tomatoes and the zucchini and yellow squash plants. By next week, there should be an explosion of flowers in the garden plots. I'm ready.

How Does Our Garden Grow?

The vegetables and herbs we put in a few weeks ago are growing, thanks to lots of sun and diligent watering. The clean-up of the dead weeds and undesirable plants continues.

I know that doesn't look like much, but a week ago this area was full of chamisa plants (same as the light green/grey plants that can be see in the background) and all kinds of dead weeds and grasses. Sports Nut had cut down to the roots at least 10 or 12 chamisa plants. When the weather is a little cooler, we'll work on digging out the roots so they won't come back.

The fruit trees suffered some losses, however, in a big wind storm a few days ago.

There are still apples and peaches on the trees, so I continue to have dreams of applesauce and sliced peaches in the freezer come fall.

In another, mostly neglected, area of the yard I noticed that the volunteer mimosa tree is in bloom.

That's really kind of pretty. Maybe I'll let the other volunteer mimosa that's growing "down the slope" stay a little longer. This one is in the corner by the little porch off to one side of the house. In the same corner of the yard are a couple of wisteria plants that are growing all over the lattice that Sports Nut and I put up two years ago.

I'm beginning to think that the wisteria needs pruning.

And one last effort that is underway -- our yard has a hill or slope down to a lower level. Last summer we tried to put in some plants to stabilize the slope, but they all died. This year, we put in some vinca plants. We have vinca in front of our house and it's always green, produces pretty little purple flowers in the spring, and rarely needs water. My kind of plant.

We'll have to see how they do in full sunlight out in the back yard.

Kittens, Kittens, everywhere

As mentioned yesterday, Future Vet got a foster kitten. 

 He fell in love immediately and wants to keep the kitten, but that's another story. All went well the first day. Sophie met the newbie kitten and was cautious but not overtly hostile.

Then the next morning, we were asked if we would take another whole litter of kittens who had shown up. They were an "owner surrender", which is a euphemism for "irresponsible owner didn't spay cat and won't take responsibility for finding homes for kittens."

By the time we got to the shelter to pick up the kittens, another kitten (a stray -- euphemism for "owner tossed kitten out because cats can take care of themselves") had shown up. We came home with a small carrier full of six tiny, tiny kittens. We're pretty sure that the stripey-backed kitten is the "stray" and the three grey and two black kittens are the "owner surrender" litter.

Over the past week, they have settled in somewhat. Most of them like to sleep.

And some of them like to eat. Others just stare at their food.

At least one has a promising future in computer technology.

And another is considering a career as a DJ. Just as soon as she wakes up.

Crocs have become a favorite place to hang out.

A couple like to nest in my hair. They climb up on my shoulder and fuss until I let my hair down so that they can wrap themselves up.

To be fair, they do play with their toys from time to time.

But they also like to pose for the camera.

The smallest kitten is a little black ball of fur known variously as Fuzzbutt, Fuzznut, and Yoda. We weighed them all yesterday and he was only 12 ounces -- at least 4 ounces less than any other kitten. But he is sweet, if a little ... odd. He likes to stare intently at things, such as an oscillating fan or a person who is just sitting around minding her own  business.

We think we've persuaded a friend to adopt this one from the city shelter. If not, we may try to sneak him into the family.

On the very day that we picked up these tiny felines, I took my camera to the shop for servicing. I still don't have it back, so many thanks to Future Vet for sharing his pictures with me.

Summertime and it's Hot as .... well, you know

We had our first days of 100+ degree heat this past weekend. It's only June! What will the rest of the summer be like?

Going back a bit, we spent Memorial Day weekend finally getting some plants into the ground. We decided to follow at least some of the recommendations made by the square foot gardening people, but not quite all of them. We built boxes so that our plants would be above-ground and followed their recommendations on size. Most are 4'x4', but we also have one along the side of the house that is 8'x2'.

Next, we cleared out the weeds and other plants that were in the boxes and lined them with weed fabric. Then we mixed up compost, vermiculite, and peat moss and filled the boxes.

Up to this point, we were right in line with the principles of Square Foot Gardening. But that's about as far as we went. Instead of putting in grids to divide each box into one-foot square areas, we bought some plants (not seeds, also suggested by the purists).

And we put them in the boxes, giving each plant more or less the square footage recommended by the book.

The boxes in the front have zucchini and yellow squash planted in them. The ones further back now have tomatoes, cucumbers, cantelope, basil, and catnip. Around the side of the house (the long box and square box seen above), we have more tomatoes and basil, more squashes, and some onions. And in that box shown in the first picture, we planted pumpkin and yet more squash.

We've already had to replace one tomato plant that was dug up by a dog the other day, but everything else seems to be doing okay. In a few weeks, I hope to have more excitement on the garden front. For right now, I'm just relieved to finally have planted something.

Sophie continues to settle in. It took her a while, but she finally found herself a bed that is large enough for her personality.

She was not quite prepared for what happened next. Future Vet had been looking for opportunities to work with animals this summer. He has a couple of irons in the fire, but the first opportunity to present itself was fostering kittens for the city shelters, who are overrun with kittens at this time of year.

Tomorrow .... more kittens!

The Secret Project -- One Week Later

Written Thursday, May 27:
This one's a secret because it affects the Wizard, who is out of town this week. He doesn't know we are doing this -- and by the time I actually publish this, he will probably have figured it out because he will have come home and opened his office door.

Yup, this week we decided to dismantle the Wizard's office.

It started out innocently enough. The previous owners of this house had animals and those animals occasionally did things they should not have done in odd corners of the "bonus" room, which we turned into an office for the Wizard. Our animals added to the undesirable things done to the carpets and, finally, I got tired of trying to clean up after them. So I wanted to rip up the worst part of the carpet in advance of our plan to replace the carpet in the fall.

I didn't take good "before" pictures because I thought this was going to be a smaller project. Trust me, the carpet was really ugly. You can get a glimpse of it here:

Anyone who knows the Wizard, however, will be more interested in the desk surface than in the carpet. We removed about 6 boxes of papers from the desk top before we started moving furniture around to pull up the carpet. We had to do this because, once we started pulling up the carpet, it was hard to know when to quit. Finally we decided that it all had to go:

Ugly carpet gave way to ugly sub-flooring.

And my nice, relatively neat bedroom that I spent so much time decrapifying not too terribly long ago? Well, it became full of boxes

and odds and ends of electronics, with optional cats:

and CDs and fans and all the other odd ends that had been stuck into the office to get them out of sight:

Even the lovely balcony got its share of stuff:

We are almost done now. Good thing, too, because the Wizard will be home tomorrow night. The bookshelf is back and re-filled. The CDs have been alphabetized and put into storage cabinets. The enormous mass of no-longer-used electronics have been put into one area for the Wizard to sort through. (Four non-working lap top computers? Really!?!) A new area rug is covering at least most of the ugly sub-flooring.

The six boxes of papers..... well, that's another story. We are going to take a look at them in the morning, but probably sorting through his papers will become the Wizard's Memorial Day weekend activity.

Update, Thursday, June 3:

The Wizard sort of figured out what we were doing, though not the extent of the project. There have been only minor complaints -- like we "lost" his electric screwdriver in one of the boxes. What his electric screwdriver was doing buried among the papers on his desk is a good question. And one that I doubt he has an answer for.

His office has since been taken over by Future Vet's summer project. But more on that later.