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I was home in Florida this Christmas and made the mistake of casually pulling a few weeds from one of my Mom's flower beds in the back yard. The weeds were all dead (thank-you RoundUp!) but they were dry, tough, and knotted up like a 2-foot x 5-foot ball of twine. My hamstrings are still tight days later but it was a satisfying job. I'm sure I wouldn't have felt the accomplishment as much if I'd known that my mom owned a Garden Weasel. Ah well. The soreness has inspired me to start my new year's resolution to exercise early!
Anyhoo. After the weeding, it was too easy to move over to the next patch needing attention. And then on to pruning the shrubs-turned-small-motorcycle-death-cage. By this time, Dan and the sibs were committed to making another Eden in Mom's backyard. Dan was especially excited when Mom brought out the chainsaw and discovered it wasn't broken. (Men and their chainsaws. : )
A couple trips to Lowes for mulch, sand, annuals, gloves and sundry, plus a good day's work by a team of slightly hungover holiday-goers, produced a beautiful panorama for Mom to enjoy morning coffee and paper with.
Happy Birthday, Mom!
Attacking the Cage of Doom:
You can see the deck!
Dog beach (sand not warm enough yet)
Look who I saw peaking out this morning.
Callie ran out immediately on seeing me at the back door but when I put food in her dish, she looked at me with a morning face that begged for breakfast in bed. Not the most fun time to be a feral cat, I guess.
Though there was a little ice in the garden, the water dish hadn't frozen over so that's a good sign. I'll stuff a little more hay in the shelter when we warm back up to the 70's on Thursday. That's Austin winters for you. One day, high is 33 and the next day, high is 70. I wonder if cats know the difference between Austin winters and Springtime proper....
With the first hard freeze coming to Austin, I decided that I needed to take care of my adopted garden-mates, Callie and Eb.
Callie and Eb are a couple of feral cats that decided to make my back porch a permanent station in their daily rounds. In fact, I think Callie knows my truck now because I've seen her run from a neighbors yard when I pull into the driveway.
Anyways, I caught Callie this summer for the Austin Human Society's Trap/Neuter/Return program. (A story for another post!) And despite the nipped ear, she was back at my door within a couple hours and daily since then.
She loves to follow me as I go back into the house, but as soon as I turn around she runs away again. I really wish I could let her in the house, but she freaked out when I had her in the garage after the procedure. I've read that feral cats get really stressed when trapped in human surroundings. So I had to find another option.
Turns out, building winter shelter cats is a pretty common thing to do. (Hah! Crazy Cat Lady, indeed.) Since Austin winters aren't too bad, I built a simple one out of a Rubbermaid tub based on this idea. I couldn't find sheets of styrofoam so I used styrofoam plates. Then I went down to Callahan's General Store (same one Ann likes to stop by at when she comes to visit) and bought some honest-to-goodness hay. For good measure, I sprinkled some catnip in there, too.
Well, she checked it out immediately and walked right in. About 2 seconds later she jumped right out. I guess she still remembers the last time I trapped her in a box near my back porch.
I did my best. Do I feel guilty? Just a little...
