Tag Archives: cats

Boots and the lovely Nootka

other gardens,
Nootka rose

I’ve had more time for exercise and gardening and cooking this week. It’s been raining, so I didn’t plant much, but I did buy more plants.

My favorite nursery is addictive, and expensive. So after I indulged there, I went to a “big box” nursery where I could get four zinnas for the price of one at the favorite.

Cloudy skies make it easy to take pictures of flowers without the discipline of rising before the sun to do it. I was at church briefly yesterday, but long enough to snap these brighteners of the day.

I can’t seem to help myself, and keep taking more pictures of old favorites, and whatever looks a little different from last week. It’s certainly nice to have this place to put a few samples of my catches. Occasionally I look back at old blog posts and am usually surprised at what all is stored here. Taking pictures of a few details in the incredible display the Creator puts before me every day helps me to pay closer attention.

The Nootka rose doesn’t bloom for very long, and I was startled by the cheerful little faces all over the many bushes that line one sidewalk.

Rudbeckia
 I don’t know the name of this Rudbeckia but I’d love to find one to plant at home.

The cat visitor whom I named Boots has been very friendly. Yesterday she let me brush her for a minute. This picture shows her big feet; I named her Boots because they were all white, but now I think it’s a good name because they are large.

She is so tame, she no doubt belongs to someone…maybe it’s the family down the street that has a lot of (neglected) cats. One cat we took in a very long time ago, who had kittens, ended up going back there after the kittens were all grown up. We didn’t know she actually called that place home until we had been used. But it’s o.k. We kept one of her sons and he was fully ours.

Nothing special is going on in our household relative to the holiday, because B. has to work Monday. But I’m doing some cooking and shopping today, anyway. The sun is coming out…maybe next week I’ll put some plants in the ground. I am pretty wonderfully blessed to have these gardens to dig around in!

More and more I’m also appreciating “having” several cats whom I can go away and forget whenever I want, and who won’t scratch up the furniture. I can concentrate more on my digging.

Today’s Cats and Flowers

my garden,

Giant and lovely snapdragon

Reasons these cat pictures are bad: 1) I took them through a dirty window  2) I had to zoom in so as not to scare away the cats, so they are blurry  3) The glare made streaks in some photos 4) my garden hose is always lying around cluttering up the background.

I wasn’t prepared for having so many cat visitors in one day. The first one to arrive was the one I will name Boots. He was so interested in my clogs. I decided to put some food out for Boots, because, I’m very sad to report, Jim hasn’t been around for a month. I might as well try to make new friends by means of my leftover cat food, because I’m afraid he won’t ever come back.

Boots

The next picture shows Boots eating, and looking nicer. Except for the white feet, he isn’t the prettiest. But then, Jim wasn’t very good-looking until he had eaten regularly at my step for a few months.

Pincushion

I watered the yard thoroughly this morning, and will again Friday before we leave for Oregon to visit kids and grandkids. So I had to take pictures of flowers. I love my garden, even if it is pretty messy. If I loved it better I’d coil up the hose every evening.

Boots didn’t eat all the food, so there was still some later on when Girlfriend came by.

Girlfriend

Last of all, just at dusk, came this odd-looking feline whom I’ll call Two-Tone….

Two-Tone

Oh, I take that back. It’s almost dark now, and Cow Cat is here — I can see through the window as I type — and what do you know, there is still food in the bowl. Cow Cat visits several times a day, usually, and always looks in the window and in the bowl, even though we have shooed him away many times.

Cow Cat a year ago

We didn’t like him because he’s ugly. But Goldilocks questioned the morality of that opinion….at least, that’s the challenge I felt in my heart when she said, “Why won’t you feed him?”

Calendula with oregano

Last year when I wrote about the cat visitors, I had chosen Jim, the black cat at the bottom of this post, as my favorite. So we discriminated against Cow Cat. Pippin said he may have a classic deformity of the face that makes him look the way he does. It’s not his fault. So perhaps I will take pity on him after all. Will he forgive me my past unkindness?

This yellow California poppy is very beloved, because it is unusual. The bright orange are much more vigorous and easy to grow, but I managed to get this one established, and it comes back most years.

Cow Cat is unusual, and he keeps coming back. Maybe I could learn to love him, too.

Buttery Week with Cats

church, food and cooking, ,

Springtime, and the cats are caterwauling. Jim has a cute little girlfriend. Last week they were sporting together on the patio as we ate dinner, but this week he ran away when she came to eat the food I put out for him. She was stalking him at the dish today, so I went to get my camera. When I came back it appeared he was sharing his food with her. How sweet!

I was cooking while they were eating. For Orthodox this is the week before Lent proper, and we start the Great Fast on Monday. But as we like to ease into things, we already are fasting from meat as of last Monday. Some call this Butter Week, and some say it is a fun time. Perhaps I’ve always been on a trip or otherwise distracted before, during Cheese-fare Week; this is the first year I have enjoyed it this much. But anytime you highlight butter, for me that is fun.

Oh! Jim lifted his head, and it wasn’t Jim at all. It looks like Girlfriend’s sister….maybe Jim has two girlfriends! I wonder if he ran away from fright or just to be gentlemanly. Mr. Glad doesn’t really want me feeding all the cats in the neighborhood, so after I took their picture I brought the food inside until Jim comes back. It was the second time today I tried to feed only Jim and he got chased off.

My husband is o.k. with butter, and even cookies. He just told me that if a cookie is really good, he will even eat two in one day. This moderation on his part doesn’t jive very well with my own Cookie Monsterish behavior and the fact that there are only the two of us here now. So I rarely bake cookies.

But, two of my friends revealed their Freezer Cookie Ball method. I thought it would be the perfect solution to the alternate problems of me eating up all the cookies before Mr. Glad could get to them, or the cookies going stale on him. I can bake one sheet full, and freeze the rest of the dough for baking later.

I forgot that I also like to eat the dough. I’m a little shy about admitting it to the world, because my husband thinks it is the most base behavior, something like eating cat food, maybe, only more repulsive.

My sisters and I ate cookie dough as children, but I consumed the most ever in one summer between college semesters, when all three of the girls in my apartment agreed on our favorite cookie: mint chocolate chip. And we all liked to eat half the batch before it went into the oven or was even dropped on the cookie sheet.

I know that in modern times, we are cautioned against this because of the raw egg in cookie dough, but as this is nearly the only risky behavior I indulge in, and that rarely, I hope you will allow me.

 
So I confess that just freezing the dough doesn’t ensure that my man will have a cookie when he needs it. Luckily I also had the bright idea of freezing already-baked cookies, one to a waxed paper bag, so when he is so inclined he can defrost one in a jiffy.

Butter Week is still here for now, so I made a fresh batch of these cookies. I baked nine and crowded the rest onto a sheet to quick-freeze. It’s an adaptation of the Oatmeal Scotchies on the Nestle butterscotch chips package. I think it might be improved by doubling the recipe except for the butterscotch chips. Even though I left out half the sugar, the cookies are plenty sweet because of the high density of chips.

Buttery Week Cookies
(Oatmeal Butterscotch)

1 1/2 cups spelt flour, white and/or whole-grain (if you use wheat, use only 1 1/4 cups, because wheat flour absorbs more moisture.)
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
2 sticks salted butter, softened
3/4 cup brown sugar (I just left out the white sugar)
1 large or extra-large egg
1 teaspoon vanilla
3 cups regular rolled oats
1 2/3 cups (1 package) butterscotch-flavored chips
about 1 cup chopped walnuts

Mix as usual for cookies, adding nuts and chips at the last. Bake about 10 minutes at 375°F.

Goldilocks and Jim

crafts, , , ,

Goldilocks is the nickname I am giving to the little girl who had her first sewing lesson from me yesterday. I was very nervous leading up to the appointed time. She’s only six years old, for one thing, but she’s been using a needle and thread (and even Scotch tape) to construct clothes for her stuffed gorilla toy and a naked doll she inherited. I hadn’t had a look at her stitches until our first class, by which time I had come up with a few ideas we might pursue. It seemed wise to have a few projects in case her attention span was as short as I imagined from what I know of her from church.

I picked Goldilocks up at school and brought her here, so we needed to have a snack before beginning our work. Offering a child cake and milk sounds like something a woman in a storybook would do, so I felt very romantic about it, and I didn’t mind changing the liquid offer to hot cocoa, it being a rainy day and all. This yummy marzipan cake came in a heavy foil wrapper all the way from Germany so that our Czech friend Jerry could give it to us for Christmas. I had stowed it in the freezer for such a time as this.

As it turned out, my student didn’t yet begin any of the projects I had in mind, which included a 9-patch potholder, a hat for her, a blanket for her gorilla, and embroidering a dish towel. She seemed to want to get some clothes on that doll (poor doll doesn’t even have a name), so we started on a skirt. I showed her how to plan for the right amount of fabric based on measuring the doll, and she took home a rectangle of flowered cloth which she had started basting along one edge. I will show her how to pull up the gathers and sew it to a waistband.

Earlier in the day it was raining when I first came downstairs and found “my” feral cat Jim sitting outside the sliding door with his fur getting sprinkled as he waited for me to feed him. I thought perhaps he would be willing to stick his head in out of the wet this time, so I set the bowl just inside the door, and went away a space. After some deliberation he did partly enter the house, so I took his picture.

I hadn’t put quite the usual amount in the bowl, though, so he waited outside again after finishing it.  I added more food and set the bowl even farther into the kitchen. The temperatures have been higher lately and I hadn’t turned on the heat yet, so I didn’t mind leaving the door open for Jim for a little while. He came in again, and I busied myself building a fire on the other side of the room.

When I turned back around, he was sitting all the way inside on the rug, while he ate. But when he saw that I saw, he was greatly embarrassed, grabbed one more bite of food and ran out the door with it.

The sun is shining today, but again, the air wasn’t too cold, so I put the bowl inside, and once again he came part way in and ate it. When he had finished and was walking around the corner through the gate, I looked out the door, he looked back at me, and I told him to have a good day. He switched his tail. So we have leaped a great hurdle, Jim and I.

This morning I’ve been researching flights to take me across the continent in about two months to visit Pearl and family. It seems that the two airports I want to use have almost no direct flights connecting them. I had thought that if I paid enough money or reward miles I could make the trip less exhausting. Now I find out that not much can be done to make traveling easier, and I’m suffering a temporary setback in my excitement. I will have to focus on taking healthy snacks, and on the wonderful reading I can do. But for now I’ll just be glad I don’t have to go anywhere today.