Unwelcome Visitors

We woke up to a kitchen full of these little bastards this morning. I saw a few of them running around yesterday and feared they'd multiply overnight when I couldn't be there to keep an eye on them, and I was right. We dispatched them after a half hour's hard labor, but they'll probably be back again tomorrow morning. They always seem to "test" us for a couple of days before they move on. Fortunately, once they're gone they tend to stay gone for months. I think this invasion is retaliation for my drowning out one of their colonies a couple of days ago when I revived an old planter that hadn't seen any water for a long time. Actually, I rather enjoy drowning ants - I get a kick out of watching them run around like their little asses are on fire - probably very much like I'd behave if some giant six-legged creature with a multi-sectioned body smelling like formalin burst into my house with a fire hose. My mother used to pour boiling water on them whenever she found an invasion, but I've discovered plain old hose water is just as effective, and you don't waste electricity boiling up the water.

One time, an old woman at a church where I worked, put a question to me; If I could ask God any question, what would it be? I told her I'd like to know how many ants are alive and well on this planet at any given moment. The good woman was scandalized. She, it appeared, had a whole list of lofty questions to ask The Maker, most of which I thought were absolute balderdash. I'm sure God's answers to all of her nosey questions would invariably be, "Because that's the way it is, Sister." Now, the answer to my question would be one you could sink your teeth into... a number with a million billion gazillion digits. Sort of like Pi.

No, as a matter of fact, I DON'T have anything better to do this afternoon...

The Garden - five weeks later...

What a change from the pics on May 21! Most of the plants are covered with hard, little green veggies. I'm getting impatient! Another couple weeks of weather like we've had for the past two days, and we'll have veggies up the wazoo. (ACK! What am I saying... please, NO!!!)

Picked the first strawberry today...
A half for each of us tonight with a bottle of champagne to celebrate First Harvest!! (That's reason enough for champagne, isn't it???)

Hey! Some excitement...!

It F.I.N.A.L.L.Y. arrived!! I've been waiting for this magazine for what seems like forever. It was announced last fall and the Premier Issue finally fell into my hot little hands yesterday. It's an absolute masterpiece, and (though I didn't think so while I was waiting) it was absolutely worth waiting for! It's nearly 150 pages, with a gorgeous color photo (or two) on nearly every page - even the ads are beautiful - printed on wonderful, heavy paper, and filled with so many exciting ideas my head is spinning. I've barely been able to put it down! It just screams at me to dive into my studio and GET BUSY!

So that's where I'm headed, like, RIGHT NOW!!!!

No excitement here...

As my header says... Excitement??? Not here! This has been a month of taking care of sick cats and little else. It's sent us into some terrible habits that we're now working our butts off to break; staying up too late, getting up too late, drinking too much, eating too much take-'n'-bake pizza, wasting too much time in front of the computer, lumping around doing nothing... UGH. June has been an almost total waste. By the time we give three cats six doses of sub-q fluids, four pills, and five syringes of liquid meds (all of which they hate and fight like tigers to avoid), then deal with feeding the sick ones (who are fussy as hell), then feed the twenty healthy ones and worry about who's eating enough, who's not eating enough, who's trying to steal food from another, who's punching who out because they sense our anxiety, et cetera and et cetera; all of this on a daily basis just wears us out.

Even though my acceptance of the B.W.O. pledge (Blogging Without Obligation) exempts me from apologizing for lapses in blog entries, I feel bad about missing so many days. I really enjoy blogging, both doing my own and reading the ones I follow, and sometimes wish I had a more exciting life so I'd have more to post. But then I sit down and take a few deep breaths and let the feeling pass over me. I like my slow, sometimes humdrum, life very much. I had enough excitement to last a lifetime during my years in St. Louis, Los Angeles, and San Francisco - the memories are wonderful, but I wouldn't get myself back into that life style for anything, thank you!

Re the cats, Dmitri is much better - the only thing remaining from his terrible ordeal of eight weeks ago is loss of stability in his right hind leg. He gets around fine, and recently has been quite active. He tires easily due to the congestive heart failure, but his blood work looks good, and he's eating well. Right now, we couldn't ask for more. Jenny is regaining weight and energy, eating much better, and becoming more feisty and active. Diana isn't doing as well - continues to lose weight, isn't eating very well, and is drinking a lot of water - all of which probably indicate her lab values are going back up. She's going to the vet this weekend, so we'll know soon.

Life goes on...

Prayer

I've often said I'm not a prayin' woman, and the concept of intercessionary prayer (as in, "Oh dear Jesus, send me a new Cadillac or a new refrigerator or a new husband or a million dollars, etc...") really turns me off. Prayer in the form of meditation, on the other hand, really does something for me - it calms me down, tunes me in, fills the hole in my soul, and just plain feels good. This prayer is shared by the Unitarian Universalist Church of Berkeley and is hanging in their beautiful lobby atrium. I see it every time I go there for my organ lesson, and it never fails to have an effect on me - especially the part about taming that which rages within me. Click on the picture below so you can read it, and relax... breathe... have a beautiful day!

Progressing one pot at a time...

I'm slowly getting all of the planters on the front patio "repaired". I was an absolute do-nothing over the winter and practically everything croaked. And, no, I didn't do it deliberately so I could run out and buy a bunch of new stuff this spring. Here's the two latest...

This is an Oragami Aquilegia, a species of columbine. Did you know there are 70 species of columbines? Neither did I. They're all so delicately beautiful... I love them. I saw my first columbine when I was about 7 or 8, and wanted to move to Colorado because my aunt told me they were Colorado's state flower, and, as such, were growing wild all over the place there. At the time I was dull enough to think the California Poppy was boring. (Stupid kid...)


Someone's having a lot of fun with Calla Lilies this year. I've seen so many new colors it's made my head spin. I already have them in yellow and hot pink, and, of course, the requisite white, and I just found this purple and white beauty last week. I also saw one in pumpkin orange with a delicate outline of darker orange around the edges; and others in light green, red, and dark purple. I think it's time to just buy them all and get my bulb garden going...

Hooray for Hostas!

I love Hostas, but I live in a sunny, windy place, and, ultimately, Hostas don't love me. I wasn't really planning to try growing them again, but I found these two at the supermarket nursery last week. They were inexpensive, and looked pretty good, so I decided to try one more time. So far, they seem to like it here... one is already sending up flowers, and the other has shot out an entire new set of leaves. Maybe this time we'll get lucky!