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.