Categories
Plants

Adventures in house plants

I didn’t know this, but I have green fingers. I knew I had a green thumb, but not green fingers. It could be worse – I could have green ears or green toes. Or even green eggs and ham.

For all that I can be a klutz on many things, I’m actually quite good with plants. I lived on a farm until I was seven, and then puttered in gardens whenever I’ve lived in houses since. As for indoor plants, years ago I had a house full of them, including an elephant ear that grew to enormous size.

I moved around quite a bit, and would carry my collection of plants from place to place. There was a couple of ferns, and several varieties of ivy and shamrocks and jade plants. I also had African violets, coleus, and schefflera and philodendrons – I must have had ten or so philodendron plants. When I moved down to Arizona, we didn’t have room for all the plants in the moving truck; when my Dad came for a visit, he loaded them all into his Ranchero and dragged them down. Of course he got stopped at the border – bringing plants into Arizona or California is a big no-no. However, he managed to talk the inspector into letting him keep the plants.

I hauled them around Seattle and to Yakima; from Yakima to Arizona, and back to Yakima. From there to Ellensburg and on to Seattle and Oregon and then over to Vermont. But when we moved from Vermont, we had a garage sale and I lined all the plants up with a sign saying, ‘Free to good home”. There was a woman who loved plants and solemnly promised to care for them, and you could tell she would because of the way she started talking to the plants immediately. She hesitated with the elephant ear, though; uttering a faint, “My”, when she saw it, but gamely said she would give it a go.

We had to find a new home for the plants because Zoe is a greens eater and will nibble any plant until it dies. Doesn’t matter if I haul in greens for her to eat, she wants the plants. No matter how hard we would try to keep her from them, she’d find a way to jump over barriers, or crawl under gates, and climb poles. Now, I can’t have bouquets of flowers or potted plants, and I put my life in my hands bringing in corn that’s still on the cob – corn husk is her favorite green.

I could let Zoe outside to ‘graze’, but we also feed birds and bunnies, and there seems to be something a little obscene about using natural ground feeding techniques for critters and having an outdoor kitty.

Cats and plants do so well together outside, but can do so poorly when both are trapped indoors. When I was in college, the person who lived behind us also had house plants and a sweet little white kitty he adopted. One day, he was late getting home and since he would keep her inside during the day and didn’t provide a cat box (and they say animals are dumb), she made a running jump and caught on to the macrame plant hanger for one of his plants, climbed into the pot and used the dirt as her potty. He wasn’t happy about the mess, but I was rather impressed with that cat myself – only female cats will do this, males will use any old spot in a pinch.

When I still had my plants, I had quite the assortment of plant care tools, including a device with long prongs that you put into the soil and will emit a sound reflecting the condition and amount of moisture in the soil. My ex-husband hated the thing because when the soil was not in great shape – too dry, or too acidic– it would emit a loud, screeching sound. He said it sounded like we were murdering the cat along with the plant.

I wasn’t much of a plant talker except with the Elephant Ears, and that was mainly curses trying to move the thing. I think my secret to their good health was the fact that I didn’t water too much or too little, used good potting soil, made sure they had good drainage and the appropriate light for the plant. Oh, I also followed their social habit.

I believe that some plants like to be alone, and others want to be in a crowd; I put the plants that were loners into their own corners or space, and the crowd lovers I would group together until they were almost touching. My ferns liked company, but my Christmas cactus did not. My elephant ears liked company, but it was so big it intimidated the other plants and had to go into a corner by itself. I did have other plants in the room, and since it thrived no matter I tried to do to it, it must have been content.

In addition to the balcony garden I hope to have this coming Spring, I think about getting another indoor plant for my desk – a cacti, which could hold its own against Zoe.

Loren posted a lovely poem by Roethke called “The Geranium”:


The things she endured!–
The dumb dames shrieking half the night
Or the two of us, alone, both seedy,
Me breathing booze at her,
She leaning out of her pot toward the window.

Categories
Critters outdoors Photography

A cat’s perspective

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

Hi, I’m Zoe. This is my first time writing to a weblog, and I hope I do it right. I’m not sure how many cats write weblogs. I saw a weblog written by a dog today, but all it wrote was variations on feed me and smell my butt. Seems rather limited, somehow.

Shelley is my pet person, though I think she sometimes gets the idea she runs things around here. But as you can see here in my most recent photo, I take my supervision of Mom’s care quite seriously.

cat who means business

Mom was going to write about her road trip yesterday, but she had a complicated day today and was tired; so I sent her to bed and decided to write her post for her.

Yesterday was sunny and Mom decided a walk among the lakes might be nice. She went to Busch Conservation Area, which has 35 lakes– some swampy, some clear and all different sizes. One thing they all have in common is they’re all full of fish. Nice, juicy, tasty fish. Mom said the waterfowl lake was full of ‘fingerlings’, which I guess is a small fish. Just my size, I thought, but did she bring me one? Not a bit of it! Not one lousy, stinking fish.

She did bring home photos, though what good these are, I don’t know. You can see them at Tin Foil Project, if you’re of a mnd for that sort of thing. Mom says a good photograph helps the viewer smell the scents on the air, feel the summer heat against their cheek, and hear the fish jumping in the water. All I can say is Mom must not be a good photographer because it just looked like a bunch of gray stuff to me.

(But I like the cursor. I like to chase the cursor. Wheee…there it goes! Quick, quick before it moves away. Jump! Now! Death to Cursor!)

Mom spent the afternoon driving from lake to lake, getting out at and walking around some of the bigger ones. She said it was a pretty hot day, and she had to keep the windows up and the A/C on to keep the dust of the road out. The road was in bad shape, too, and she thought she would hang her car up a time or two.

“Kitty, Golden Girl might not be an SUV but she can handle rough roads with the best of them”, she said when she got home. Of course, if she’d busted an axle or flattened her tire, she’d be moaning and groaning, and feeling damn sorry for herself today, wouldn’t she?

I crawled up into her lap to get some neck scritches and Mom took this as me wanting to hear more about her trip. No, I just want more neck scritches. However, everything in this house comes with a price tag. if you want your neck scritched, you have to listen to a story. It’s like those places that feed you when you’re poor, but you have to hear a sermon, first.

At one lake Mom had to drive past waist high weeds on a poor track to get to it. As she was moving slowly along, these hard, black things started flying into side windows and windshield. Turns out it was some kind of big, black, shiny bee-like creature, and she figures she must have driven right into some kind of feeding ground, or perhaps even into their nest. She was mighty glad she had those windows, up, she said.

(Yeah, yeah, Mom. It’s just bugs. Who care. More scritches, less chatter. )

When she got back yesterday, she went online to check out the weblogs like she does most days. She’d been following a lot of stuff lately having something to do with being a woman and not being seen or heard or something like that. It doesn’t make sense to me, a cat, but Mom refers to it as being invisible on still water. Must be a human thing.

I kind of wish Mom wouldn’t get involved in this stuff because it upsets her. She ends up writing something here or in other’s comments, but doesn’t feel like she’s heard when she does. Then she gets both angry and sad, and forgets all about my snack.

Today was tech day, though, and Mom was hard at work on code, humming under her breath as she typed away. She was working at something called “Movable Type”, and why it’s called that when the type doesn’t move, not even a wiggle, I don’t know and believe me, I’m an expert on moving things. She was pushing stuff into it from something else called “Wordpress’, and that one makes sense as the words do seem pretty squished and flat on the screen.

Then this evening she read something in another weblog that surprised her and, she said, made her feel invisible again. She was pretty somber for awhile; just sat and stared out the window as it got darker, and I was beginning to worry that I was going to miss out on both evening cuddle and chase the feather-that-is-dead.

But someone else wrote something that also surprised her, but this time it made Mom smile. It was a good smile, too. Sometimes I don’t see enough of it, and I’m not sure all this “Movable Type” and “Wordpress” and ‘asshole-rss’ (what is an ‘asshole-rss’?) and people writing things and doing things that make each other somber is such a good thing.

But then there was that smile at the end. And I got my cuddle, time with the feather-that-is-dead, and even an extra scritch. So maybe this pressed word stuff is okay.

Categories
Plants

Roses, too

For those worried whether I am given completely over to technology and politics (you mean, there’s something else?), I am on a real kick this week to do floral photography. And butterflies, as the fall Monarch migration is about to start. And hot air balloons, as the festival is coming up in a few weeks.

Color. I want color. I think that’s why I switched my default stylesheet to Lemon Shake-Ups. As my roommate said when I showed it to him, “It’s certainly yellow, isn’t it?”

Color. I am desperate for color.

My need for color is inspired, in part, by my plans to start a balcony garden next year. I plan on growing vegetables and flowers, though I have to be careful of my use of space (making sure to leave room for the air conditioning unit and my roommate to lay out in the sun and develop skin cancer) but there should be enough room for me to grow cherry tomatoes, green beans, carrots, and mixed greens. Perhaps some herbs.

(The leafy greens are as much for my cat as they are for us.)

There will be some small room for flowers. In particular, I want to put in one antique rose. I didn’t think an antique rose would work in a balcony garden, but found out they can do nicely–depending on the plant. Lucikly we have several hours of sunshine a day, which gives us options.

Container gardening has become quite popular now. It’s a great way of having gardens in limited spaces, as well as controlling bugs and other pests (think rabbits). It doesn’t have to be that much work, not with the self-watering containers. And many plants have been especially bred for container gardens; I’ve even heard of a form of corn that can be grown on a balcony–but that would mean my roommate would have to sun standing up.

There is nothing better than carrots or cherry tomatoes fresh from the garden.

Categories
Plants

By any other name

I do love roses. I know that the orchid is more exotic, and the daffodil more egalitarian; the tulip more proud, and the sunflower more bold; the daisy is more shy and the iris much sexier, while the carnation fills buttons the world over. And how can I forget the buttercup and dogwood, or the rhododendron that provides the only color in areas bleak and gray. There are a thousand, thousand other blooms to choose from, and the rose so ordinary…but I do love its promise.

O my luve’s like a red, red rose,
That’s newly sprung in June;
O my luve’s like the melodie
That’s sweetly played in tune.

As fair art thou, my bonnie lass,
So deep in luve am I;
And I will luve thee still, my dear,
Till a’ the seas gang dry.

Till a’ the seas gang dry, my dear,
And the rocks melt wi’ the sun:
O I will love thee still, my dear,
While the sands o’ life shall run.

And fare thee weel, my only luve,
And fare thee weel awhile!
And I will come again, my luve,
Though it were ten thousand mile.

Hee. Who else? Robert Burns

Categories
Critters outdoors Photography

Resigned forests

By 6:30 it had cooled enough to go walking and I went to my favorite path. I thought I would see the deer, but wasn’t expecting to see them right at the start of the walk: the mother and her twins I’ve seen so much over the summer. This time I grabbed my camera to take pictures, but it was too dark to get much of a shot.

The forest is in that end of summer green, where the leaves hang heavy in resignation, and even the birds fall silent, exhausted. If I were to write a story and wanted a scene thick with meaning, I would pick dusk in a late summer forest after a heavy rain.

Towards the end of the walk, I was amazed to find a fawn still sporting spots eating leaves by the side of the trail. She came close enough for me to get a passable photo before walking over by a tree and lying down. Her mother was no where to be seen.