April Garden
So it's my first time at the blogging thing. Usually, I just read over what Brett posts, make any changes I'd like to see, and go on with my life. However, for the past week or two, I've been taking pics of the flower garden. This started out as a quick snapshot here and there, so we'd know where the bare spots were and if there were any places lacking in certain colors when fall bulb planting season started. However, it turned out this year there aren't really many bare spots! It's taken 2 years, but we're finally starting to fill in the garden beds like we'd hoped to. It looks so striking, the other day 2 elementary school age boys rode by the house on their bikes and stopped to admire the flowers! There's a family down the road that walks their kids to school past our house and they leave extra early in the mornings so the kids can have time to check out what's new in the garden. Of course this just makes us more excited to add new beds (mostly because any bed is, by definition, a place that doesn't have to be mowed). :)
On a sad note, RC and Marie, our neighbors next door have sold their house. They went to an assisted living facility back in November after RC had a series of falls and have been looking for a buyer since, but the market around here is pretty much impossible during the school year. Marie actually grew up in our house and when she got married, her father and uncles built them the house next door. I talked to RC yesterday. They're settled in, but I doubt it will ever feel like home there. On the bright side, he does like to point out that no one has to do the dishes. :) He says they drive by every few days to look at our garden. It makes her happy to know that it's a place her "dad would be proud of". That was really cool to hear.
Calvin is now venturing outside. We were hoping to keep him as a strictly indoor cat. Honestly, after Paco, I never wanted another outdoor cat again unless we had acres for him to roam. But Tyler was born on the streets and was a stray before we got him and had only known the outdoors and as much as we tried to convince him how GREAT our house was, he still wanted some time to go chase butterflies and no amount of catnip filled toy diversions was going to sate him. We tried to put a harness and leash on him, but it was a terrible experience. You've heard about animals chewing their legs off in traps? Yeah. Like that. So we didn't try the harness thing again and we just let him out and make sure he comes in by dusk and stays in all night. Calvin, however, wasn't eager to go outside. He's only eager to be where we are. So if I stepped outside to get the mail, he would be well behaved and not try to sneak out the door. But then he'd start to HOWL like the sky was falling. This went on whether we were outside 30 seconds or 30 minutes. Once I was across the alley in a neighbor's backyard talking and Calvin was so loud that the neighbor who is hard of hearing asked me what was wrong with the cat. So we decided that if he wanted out that bad, he might be willing to go with the harness thing. And he was. He took right to it. The first day we didn't let him out, he just wore the harness around the house to get used to it. He hrmphed about how uncool it made him look and spent the next 2 hours straightening his fur. But that was pretty much it. The next day we put it on him and immediately took him outside and tied him to a fence post with a good length of rope. The day after that he even helped me get him into his harness! So now we seem to be in a groove. We're allowed to work outside, unharassed by caterwauling so long as Calvin is allowed to come out and supervise. This has also had the added bonus of keeping Tyler closer to home. He likes having Calvin outside as a playmate/thing. The only thing we haven't really worked out about this is the shade issue. The pictures will show various pieces of lawn furniture sitting in the middle of things. This is so that Calvin can reach shade at all times of the day. He's asked for Brett to install a canopy with girl cats waving palm branch fans and feeding him small pieces of chilled tuna, but Brett says that's not a priority in our landscaping.
Anyway, so I've posted some of the pics I took. The first couple are of the same spots over the past few weeks, so you can see it go from daffodil swamped yellow to many colors of tulips. There are also a lot of shots of close ups on tulips. I was intent on learning how to use other aspects of the camera than the general point-n-shoot part and managed to get the macro function to play nice...and I like the colors. :) Hope you enjoy.
Megan
posted by Unknown @ 10:46 AM
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