As I settled down for my coffee this morning I was reading the latest Plant Delights Nursery catalog, Gardening Jihad.
I was doing this instead of watching the birds, as is my regular habit, because I couldn’t bear to look at the sight of the ravaged bird feeding station.
Those wicked, wicked raccoons have nearly broken a branch off my zelkova to reach the bird feeders, which they smashed on the ground. I thought, perhaps, when I installed the new feeding station, with raccoon baffle, that I should move it a bit further from the tree. But I DO seem to learn things the hard way and this is yet another example.
So rather than reminding myself so early in the morning of how very stupid I can sometimes be, I was thumbing through the pages of this clever catalog. I enjoy it when I stumble across humor in unlikely places. I mean, who thinks to read a nursery catalog for chuckles, right?
But Plant Delights offers a few good ones.
In their ordering information section there is a subsection on “How To Be a Good Customer.” It says:
We realize that most folks have never been trained to be good customers, so we decided to offer a few pointers…Our nursery uses a thought process called logic. Logic dictates that if you order plants and forget to open them for a couple of months, don’t ask us to send free replacements. If your plants are fine when they arrive, and are later eaten by a vole, die from drought, or look like a fire hydrant to your dog…don’t ask for more…to quote Trek’s Spock, “It is illogical.”
I also enjoyed their short treatise on invasive plants:
…While the invasive plant issue is a great area of concern to us, a proposed nationwide ban of plants that are only invasive and hardy in Hawaii or South Florida is absurdly extreme. We are very aware of a small but vocal group of plant bigots who advocate a horticultural ethnic cleansing as a means of satisfying their myopic view of nature. As with all vices, moderation and responsibility are the answer.
And at the back of the catalog I stumbled across a “Special Paid Ad” from Shady Deals Nursery, Emu Ranch, Nail Salon, Video Poker and Auto Body Repair. Their new releases for the season included some good ones:
Eucalyptus gunnii ‘Dick’s Adventure’ (Hunting Gum) $129.95 Very closely related to robust E. ‘Haliburton’, this selection can be a bit more brittle, so we recommend the use of a stint to support weak arterial branches. If you hear something pop, don’t worry, it’s probably just a limb heading your way.
Juglans koreana ‘Kim Jong Il’ (Nuclear Nut) $79.95 This is one of the strangest nuts that we have ever seen. The olive-green nuts hit the ground with explosive force and afterwards have a strong allelopathic effect starving anything nearby.
And given my current computer issues, I particularly liked this one:
- Tricyrtis formosana ‘Gates of Bill’ (Extrasoft Toad Lily) $44.95 This is the 20th new version of this popular perennial. The last one we sold would grow well, then stop growing, then start over again. We’ve been promised this is an improvement.
If you’re not generally given to reading nursery catalogs, perhaps you should reconsider and start with this one.
I’m so pleased with the morning chuckle that I’m ordering a grunch load of calix from this now.
Robin
Yesterday was so busy with work, helping Ben organize his room and preparations for a dinner guest, I completely missed Bloom Day. That’s when the garden bloggers all post photos and lists of what’s blooming in their garden.
But so I won’t miss the party altogether, I figure I’ll post a Day After the Day After Bloom Day report tomorrow!
In the meantime, I took some photos while I was out walking the other day and thought I would share just a few of the things I stumbled across.
Every morning I do a walk up and down the Eli Lilly Memorial Driveway (so named for the client whose writing project paid for it) for exercise. In the spring, we always begin to see a multitude a baby brown bunnies up at Bunnyville, the weed palace at the top of our driveway near the road. When the bunnies are quite small, they freeze at the edge of the road when they see us walking or running up. I can do 10 or 12 laps up and back and the bunny watches me every single time.
As they get older, they become more wary and dart for cover. I suppose it’s because they develop some common sense about what might be interested in rabbit for dinner.
So it’s not as frequent that I see an adult AND a baby at the same time.
So far–at least for now–the rabbits remain out of my garden. It’s probably because there is so much other fine food to eat they don’t need to wander down here for mine.
Also on the driveway, Harry, Ben and I have been watching this river of ants for the past week or so. There are so many ants that you can see them as a brown stripe across the driveway, even from a distance. There must be MILLIONS of them. They happen to be crossing where a drainage ditch is located under the driveway. But we have no real clue as to why they’re crossing here or what they’re doing.
If you have any ideas, will you please leave a comment?
And on to the bird news…
I’ve been checking the bluebird houses more frequently–nearly every couple of days–to ensure that house sparrows don’t try to set up housekeeping in one of the houses again. I just happened across this snake skin in the field on my way to House #6.
We don’t see a LOT of snakes, but we do see our fair share, which I define as >0. For the most part we see black snakes and king snakes. Although I don’t have warm and fuzzy feelings about snakes, I do leave these alone, since they help to control the mouse population–a BIG issue here in the country. I mean, the cat can only eat so much.
Finally, there’s the bird report.
When I moved the bird feeders onto a proper pole with a raccoon baffle, we seem to have gotten the attention of numerous new birds. I only moved the feeders about 4′ east, but the feeders are more in the open, which is what I suppose has attracted them.
If you’re battling squirrels and raccoons to keep them out of your bird feeders, run, don’t walk, to your nearest Wild Bird Center and buy a raccoon baffle. It works like a charm.
I may still need to move the whole contraption a couple more feet away from the tree so that the squirrels don’t decide to JUMP onto the feeders. But we’ll see. I like this location because I can sit on the couch with my coffee in the morning and watch the feeding frenzy. It’s a nice, cozy way to start the day.
Okay, so much for today’s nature walk. Back to work…
Robin
The whole day started off alright. The sun was shining. The hunting was good. The little dogs were the usual annoyance, but under control nevertheless.
Miss P had just come in to cleanse her palate with a little bit of Deli Cat and was headed back outside for a sun bath.
But then…
Suddenly she realized that she wasn’t being allowed to go back outside. She sat by the door waiting for me to read her mind. Then she stepped up the campaign with some meowing. She knew something was wrong. Miss P is used to having a voice-actuated human and suddenly I was not responding to commands.
It was starting to look bad. She decided it was best to head to the basement for little siesta until things blew over.
That’s when the trouble really started–when she saw me heading for the cat carrier.
“Oh, crap,” I could see her thinking.
Only…the door kept falling off when I picked it up.
Okay, that’s bad. I didn’t want to carry a crazed cat in the car for 30 minutes to the vet. I could just see her bouncing around from side to side trying to escape. Neither of us would arrive alive. So I had to resort to the prissy dog carrier with the Velcro closure. Oh, that was a good idea. Did you know that cats can easily escape from carriers with Velcro closures?
At least I had Ben to drive for me. So he drove while I rode shotgun and kept poking Miss P’s paws back into the carrier whenever they would snake out from the little cracks around the warped Velcro closure. It took constant vigilance to make sure she didn’t make a break for it and cause an accident.
And I never really thought much before about the full range of meows in her repertoire. There’s the standard “meow.” Then there’s the more emphatic “MEOW.” There’s the very sad and somewhat desperate “Whooooeow.” Then there’s the angry “EEEOOOOWWW!” We had the full concert.
As much as she did not want to go into the carrier, when we got to the vet she didn’t want to come OUT of the carrier. Suddenly that carrier looked like a pretty fine place to be.
We pried her out and the veterinarian did a nice, thorough annual wellness exam. Happily, Miss P didn’t seem to mind much the three shots.
Then Evil Bumblebee showed up and asked the doc if he could knock Miss P out, give her a bath and brush her hair.
See, Miss P has lived with us for 8 years. She is not at all prissy and I rarely see her grooming. She is a VERY DIRTY cat. We call her the Pigpen of the cat world.
During those 8 years I have given her ONE bath. You would have thought I was killing her–and she was NOT going down without a fight. Given her extreme and aggressive response I guess we were both lucky to come out of it alive. But I learned one important lesson: Don’t give the cat a bath. She doesn’t even want to be brushed.
Eight years is a long time to wander through the woods, kill things, take dirt baths and NEVER bother to attend to your own personal hygiene. Oh, she may take the occasional token swipe at her chops, but that’s the extent of this cat’s grooming. As a result, things were looking a bit grungy wherever she decided to take a rest. Her white pillow in the basement has a black spot in the middle. The guest room bed has a dirty grey spot where she camps out. I can even tell where she’s been hanging out on the outdoor furniture cushions. She leave trails of ick wherever she goes.
We’ve been pretty tolerant of her general untidiness, but it had gone too far. Desperate times call for desperate measures.
So, I hired the paid mercenary vet to do the dirty work and Miss P got her bath. At least he could knock her out, where I had to do battle without the benefit of drugs (for either of us). She had to spend the whole day at the vet hospital during which time they did bloodwork, knocked her out and then bathed her, brushed her and cleaned her ears all while she was asleep.
When she got home, she was still woozy and staggering around a bit. But today, she’s like a new kitty. She looks about three pounds lighter. She wants me to hold her all the time, which I no longer mind doing because she’s not disgusting anymore. She actually seems quite happy with herself.
But perhaps that’s just my projecting my pleasure at her finally being clean onto her. Or maybe it’s because she’s just pleased that she gets to start fresh at getting dirty all over again by wandering through the woods, killing things and taking dirt baths.
P.S.
Yes, I know Deli Cat is feline junk food. It is all that Miss P will eat. On the occasions when I have tried to give her a better, more nutritious food she spends DAYS standing at the food bowl yelling at me and generally making life miserable for everyone. I have given up since the Deli Cat is just a small part of her overall diet, which consists mostly of critters. (Eeeww.)
Robin
