Wednesday, June 01, 2005, 17:37
Ta-DAAAAAAA!
Four weeks to the day after they were born, on Friday, our wild black momma kitty brought her kittens out of the nest in the barn. I resisted the temptation to peek into the nest before that, although I did once when I knew Momma was out for the day only a few days before she brought them out. And yes, it is as I thought, there are three of them. Two are "black tabbies" -- you can see the stripes on them when they are in the sunshine. One of the black kittens has a white tip on its tail. The other kitten is gray.
Monday I put up some rabbit wire along the fence in the barn so the kittens wouldn't accidentally wander under the horse's feet. Kajun would not step on the kittens on purpose, and in fact, would do all he could to avoid it. Last year when there were 15 kittens in the barn, and if they all happened to be under his feet, he would stop and stand absolutely still until the kittens had moved away. Those kittens were older, though, when they were roaming around under the horse. The four-week old kittens are too young to even know what danger is.
Yesterday, the kittens crawled under the barn wall and were under the plum tree next to the barn, playing in the shade.
This morning when I came down to the barn, they were out playing underneath the tractor in the spot of sunshine coming in through the open door.
Momma Kitty is her normal hissing, spitting self. She stays by the kittens, and when they are out playing, she is there, too, waiting to let me know that she means business. The kittens, surprisingly enough, are not at all spooky and have only halfheartedly hissed at me once or twice. I have picked all of them up to put them by the food dish, and they are "okay" with that.
I am thinking that the kittens are not very spooky because their nest was about four feet from where I feed my horse and brush him and pick out his feet. I am certain they heard the sound of my voice all along, and that they are used to the sound of my voice and do not find it alarming. I am pleased to see the kittens are now starting to come to the sound of my voice because they know they will get some kitten formula and canned kitty food to eat.
I am keeping my fingers crossed that our progress continues this well until they are old enough to go to homes of their own.
LeAnn R. Ralph
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Tuesday, May 31, 2005, 16:54
Back to the Beginning
I planted my anemic tomato plants on Monday. I bought them in town. They were kept in one of those little greenhouse sheds, and, like the pots I have planted and put under my "garden window," the dirt in the pots was greenish looking from either moss or algae. So no wonder the tomato plants look anemic. How could they look otherwise? They haven't gotten nearly enough sun. The weather forecaster said Monday evening that this May was the cloudiest May we have had for 45 years.
I don't know if the seeds I planted in pots will ever come up. It's been several weeks now, and there's no sign of anything -- not the tomato plants, either the Romas or the cherry tomatoes, not the watermelon or the muskmelon, not the egg plant. We simply have not had enough sun and warmth to help the seeds germinate and sprout.
Monday, Memorial Day, actually turned out to be the sunniest day we have had in a long while, with lots of puffy white clouds and sunshine and a temperature of 75 degrees. I figured I had better put out my dozen Roma tomato plants while the going was good, so to speak. The poor little plants look all yellow and pale and not very strong. I am hoping we don't end up with a hard rain at any time soon because big raindrops could easily shred them to pieces. Usually I think of rain as a good thing, but not necessarily in this case.
On Monday, we also planted a couple of baskets of climbing peas and a couple of rows of sweet corn. I like the climbing peas because they don't take up very much room that way, and they are so good fresh, right off the vine. We plant them in the middle of woven-wire baskets that are about four feet high, and then we put rabbit wire around the bottom of the baskets, seeing as the rabbits like my climbing peas, too. Next week or the week after, we will plant more sweet corn so it doesn't all mature at the same time, and then that way, we can have sweet corn for a while. Unless, of course, we get an early frost, like we did last year on August 18.
The one thing that *is* coming up is the cucumber seeds I planted in a tub. They are supposed to be a "bush" cucumber, although we had some in the garden last year and the vines ran all over the place. Four seeds produced more cucumbers than we could possibly eat. The cucumber vines didn't look very "bushy" to me at all. I decided to plant them in a tub this year, just to see what would happen.
Still no sign of our pumpkins yet, either. Randy planted some Big Max pumpkin seeds in pots to get them started. The Jack-o-lantern pumpkins and the pie pumpkins seem to do all right started from seeds right in the garden. They don't get as big and don't need as much time to mature as the Big Max pumpkins. One year, Randy hand-pollinated his "biggest pumpkin" on July 4. We'll be lucky if we can even *see* the pumpkin plants on the Fourth of July this year, much less have any of them blossoming.
Can we go back to the beginning of April and start over again? That way, maybe we could reset everything so we would have two months with more sun. Somehow, I feel cheated. . .
LeAnn R. Ralph
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