i {heart} pickles

Happy Adoption Anniversary to my best furry friend and faithful garden companion. I wish I knew how old you are (3 ½? 4? Maybe 4 ½?). What a sweet and loving cat!

30 Day Thanksgiving Challenge - Day 1

When I read that Cat of The Whimsical Gardener was beginning a 30 Days of Thanksgiving challenge, I thought this would be a perfect way to slow down and count my blessings this season. I'm starting late, and don't know if I can post every day, or always post about the garden, but I shall try my best. [Here's Cat's original post about the challenge and what inspired her to do it. ]

Today I'm thankful for my pets, my two cats, Pickles and Cleo. They are not skittish hide-under-the-bed cats. They are good little companions who follow us from room to room, hang out with us while we watch TV, and Pickles likes to join me outside in the garden. He sits on the deck, either directly in the sun or hiding among plants to better watch the birds. He is content to sit peacefully outside, observing. 

I am thankful that my Pickles and Cleo are healthy. I am also thankful for veterinarians who take care of the non-human loves of our life. I'm thankful for all the people who go to rescue groups or shelters and adopt dogs, cats, rabbits, lizards, etc., and I'm especially thankful to anyone who simply shows a little kindness to the smallest of Earth's creatures.

Post #100: Black, White, and Cute All Over

Bumble Lush has reached its 100th post! Ironically, I will not be marking this happy occasion by talking about vegetables or flowers. Just for today, this will be "Kitten Lush" because I want to introduce my new garden helper, Cleo.

Cleo was one of the five kittens we fostered this summer. They were feral kittens that someone found in his backyard and brought into the shelter when they were about 2 months old. We took them home as fosters a few days later with the assignment of getting them healthy, making sure they gain weight, and getting them used to human contact. They are now 3 months old. We brought Cleo's sister and three brothers back to the shelter last Tuesday so they could go up for adoption. I miss their cute little faces, but I'm very happy that my house now looks and smells back to normal.

For a while, we'd been thinking about getting a second cat to be a playmate for our other cat, Pickles. We decided to adopt Cleo because Pickles seemed to get along with her best out of all the fosterlings. In the last few days they've become good friends and are playing together and grooming each other. It's really very sweet.

She's still too young to go out on the deck with me and Pickles. She's small (almost 3 pounds!) and really fast, and if she decided to run off I know I wouldn't be fast enough to catch her. For now, she'll just have to stay inside learning the bookkeeping and helping take inventory when we pick veggies.

I never considered myself to be cat person until we adopted this little guy last year (from the same animal shelter). He's a good little pet, and he loves coming outside with us and sitting amongst the vegetable pots, watching us work in the garden and staring at the birds and squirrels from the cover of the plants. I hope to have Cleo join him out there soon.

This picture was taken the night we brought the 5 kittens home to start our foster assignment. Cleo is the one on the far left. I went to the shelter yesterday to log some volunteer hours and met a nice couple who was planning on adopting one of the males (not pictured). Here's hoping the others find permanent homes soon!

First Cucumber Harvest! and Kitten Update

Over the weekend we harvested our first cucumbers!

These cucumbers are in the small 10x2 plot in the ground. We also have some growing in containers but those haven't developed fruit yet.

We harvested a handful of onions from the bulbs we planted early in the spring. These were also in the ground. I'd say this ain't too shabby for our first time growing onions. They smell delicious!

We also harvested a few early girl and grape tomatoes, as well as some yellow squash and broccoli (not pictured because we ate it). I saved these containers from produce I bought from the farmers' market a few months ago. It's great for storing these small harvests.

KITTEN UPDATE!!!

This is one of the few pictures I have of all five foster kittens. They love sleeping on the bathtub like this. They're doing well--very playful, eating well, gaining weight, etc. Two of the boys are big enough to get neutered this week, and then it's on to the adoption room for them. I'll probably only have the rest of them for another week or two. I would love to take each one individually out onto the deck so they can be in the garden, hear noises, smell different things, etc., but the paranoid part of me is worried about compromising their health in some way. I attended a kitten care workshop over the weekend that, quite frankly, scared the crap out of me! That sounds a bit dramatic (these were strays, after all), but the instructors did present worst case scenarios in terms of diseases and parasites that can affect kittens in your care. I would feel so horrible if something bad happened to any small creature that is in my care, and heaven forbid anything should happen to my own little pet cat. I think they told one story too many of a kitten suffering from burn marks from being left on a hot concrete sidewalk, so no hot deck for them. The kittens are sweet little animals; I hope they find their way to loving and responsible families.

Do you have any pets? I'd love to hear about them.

Garden Odds and Ends (and Kittens!)

Something weird is going on with my Endless Summer hydrangea plant.

The middle blooms just started drooping and turning brown. So far the online research I've done points to a possible fungus. There are spots on some leaves, but not all of them. I'll do a little more research, but in the meantime, has anyone else seen this? Any advice?

In more positive news, we found a volunteer tomato plant out amongst the weeds beyond our property line. Sometimes we toss half-eaten or rotten tomatoes and squash over the fence and into the weeds and trees where the squirrels, wild rabbits, and birds pick at them. (Side note: If the critters bother to come to the deck to eat my veggies, I wish they would just finish them here). My husband was walking around the common areas of our development over the weekend and noticed this tomato plant. We think it came from the seeds of a tomato we tossed over last summer. He dug it up and put it in a pot; it even has a tomato growing on it! We're not sure what kind of tomato it is, and it doesn't look too good now, but I hope it survives. It's a bonus tomato plant!

3 of the 5 foster kittens

Lastly--posting may be infrequent over the next four weeks. I volunteer at our local animal shelter and we're fostering five adorable stray kittens--three boys and two girls. They're underweight but gaining steadily and super playful, cute, and time consuming. We need to get their weight up and get them used to household noises and being handled by humans before we return them to the shelter so they can go up for adoption. Our resident cat is curious and friendly (and trying to be nonchalant about being so curious). It's going to be extremely difficult to send them back. They're cuter than baby tomatoes!