Equal parts neglect and ignorance; that's how plants die at my hands.
But to have found plants that thrive under these conditions...
... well, I'm gobsmacked and chuffed as nuts.
~ ~ ~
Back in late September, I'd taken some plants inside for the winter. To keep them from the maws & paws of cats, I'd closed them up inside the Nursery with the grow lights turned off. This was only meant to be temporary. I'd fully intended to repot them for their winter term.
And then I forgot about them.
Four months later:
Cleaned out the Nursery last Saturday.
The Namaqualand Daisies* had become brown and brittle. Its summer blooms, vivid and intense as pure pigment, had nearly convinced me that orange was a primary colour; but now it was just as vividly and intensely dead.
The leaves of the Pineapple-scented Geranium had withered away... but its woody main stalk still held stems that were a pale, pale barely~green...
I'd heard that geraniums/pelargoniums can be forced into dormancy, which is how some people choose to overwinter them. So just for a lark, I decided to allow it exposure to houselight, and gave it a good spring~like soaking.
And damned if it hasn't started sprouting leaves.
Utterpletely and Most Exquisitivively Flabbergastrordinary.
{Shameless plug: I got this plant from Holt's Geraniums. Go shopping. Go shopping now.}
~ ~ ~
While we're on the subject of resilient plants, I may as well mention Tradescantia Zebrina {aka Wandering Jew}:
Many moons ago, my mum gave me an array of plant cuttings. They were wrapped in wet paper towels and sealed in tupperware for their survival on the 11~hour trip home. When I finally got back to my apartment, I put them in a {good china} bowl of water to root, and put the {good china} bowl up on a high shelf inaccessible to cats.
And then I forgot about them. **
Went looking for the bowl when I realized I only had three out of a set of four good china bowls, and I couldn't figure out where on earth the fourth had gotten to. Tore my one~room apartment apart looking for it, muttering things like, Dag~NAB~bit! I live in 400 square feet of space! How in holy thunderation is it humanly possible to lose anything?
When I took the bowl down from the shelf, I found that not only had all the water evaporated, but that almost all the cuttings crumbled at the touch... almost all, that is, except for: the Wandering Jew.
It seemed quite unaffected by the drought. No hint of withering. No discolouration. It lay there, chock full o' life, looking for all the world as if it were sunning itself; the only thing it was missing was a beach towel. Dare I say it... it looked... relaxed.
That was the beginning of a long and happy plant relationship.
It grew well; in fact, at one point it grew so well that the weight of its own vines eventually tipped itself off the shelf in the window where it sat. Any other plant would've gone into shock and died after taking a tumble like that; but I just transplanted it, gave it a trim, and rooted the cuttings to make new plants. And it was fine.
Alas, I do not have that plant anymore. It moved to a sublet with me, and when I moved away, the roommates asked to have it; so I gave it to them. High praise for a plant, I think.
~ ~ ~
So, if you're like me, and you need plants that can survive despite without your care, then try something from the Tradescantia or Pelargonium families. Honestly, if I can't kill them, what makes you think you can?
= = = = =
* MacKenzie Seeds sells them as "Rain Daisies", which is odd, because they're not.
** See a pattern?
{Thanks to Thought & Memory without whom I'd've forgotten...}
Coyote has been on my mind for the last few weeks or so.
Couldn't figure out why; and now I wonder if Monkey didn't have something to do with it...
~ ~ ~
Thought perhaps a passing reference to Thomas King had reminded me of one of his Massey Lectures in which he tells a great Coyote story. Or maybe it was Neil Gaiman's eye~opening interpretation of The Big Bad Wolf {you know, BBW of Little Red Riding Hood fame}. But that's only enough reason for Coyote to come to mind once and then again twice...
Anyways, for the past few weeks I'd been musing on what fascinated me about Coyote's character. He is so unlike the usual suspects in the fairytales that I grew up with; and at the time, I couldn't think of any other characters who were like him.
Yet every day for the past few weeks I've been seeing references to the upcoming Year of the Monkey.
And I hadn't made the connection.
*Duh.*
~ ~ ~
I'd like to see a story in which Coyote & Monkey mix it up a little. Of course, showing up in each other's stories would mean breaking convention... but somehow, I'm sure neither of them would mind at all...
How can I not believe in reincarnation, when every day for the past two weeks there has been one and only one fruit fly hovering about my desk.
What makes it even more curious is that every day straight for the past two weeks, I have killed that fruit fly.
A rare breed of phoenix, indeed.
On Xmas & on New Year's, I figured that surely my mother would be besieged with phone calls from relatives; and I'd told myself that I didn't want to tire her out by making her talk to me as well.
I've just called home & found out my mother has had pneumonia since before Christmas. And, when I expressed dismay {thinking to myself, shame on me, I should have called her} she immediately apologized to me for not having called me on Christmas or New Year's.
That's Yer Dear Old Mum, sincerely humble to a fault.
{I don't mean that to read as sarcastic; we really do ~ amongst ourselves, you understand ~ occasionally refer to her mumship by her full regal title of Yer Dear Old Mum. And yes, she really is that self-effacing without guile.}
She said that she hasn't been hospitalized, that she was feeling better {see above notes re: Yer Dear Old Mum} and that she was expecting to get the results of her X~rays tomorrow.
After the phone call, I checked out the WebMD site to swot up on pneumonia. One of the indications for hospitalization was being over 65 yrs of age; thought to myself, well that's OK then, my mum's barely past 60... then did some quick calculations & realized my mum is going to be 70 in two weeks.
Still, it would be a huge shock to everyone if my mum actually succumbed to pneumonia. For one, she's always been meticulous about her health; and for two, well, um, frankly, we'd always expected Dear Old Dad would go first {come to think of it, he already has gone first}.*
Here's hoping that Dear Old Mum will recover fully.
And I'll call her again soon.
~ ~ ~
* Dad had been a smoker & drinker for most of his adult life, until double bypass surgery and clinical death on the operating table slowed him down a bit.
He once joked to my mum that, when he ultimately went, she ought to compost him and till him into her garden. She managed to sound both meekly apologetic for her answer yet completely appalled by his suggestion when she replied that she didn't think she wanted him in there given all the toxins his body had accumulated over all those years and that, in her opinion, the recent prescription medication wouldn't do her garden much good either.
*snort*
... sorry, I guess you'd have to know my Mum to understand why that was hysterically funny...
Then, for all that voo-doo that you do so well:
Remember, Valentine's Day is only 26 days away. And counting.
~ ~ ~
{Learn more about chocolate at the Exploratorium!}
Go to the Dollar Store.
Buy three quilted cloth placemats.
Cut one of the placemats lengthwise into four strips of equal width.
Sew the strips between the two remaining placemats to create a rectangular sack.
Stuff the sack with Buffalo Snow* {bought half~price after Xmas}.
Stitch up the end.
And voila ~ you have a teeny tiny kitty~cat~sized quilted mattress.
Now I just have to figure out how to make the box~spring.
~ ~ ~
* Always the Little Miss Cleverbottom, I says to my Boyfriend, shouldn't Buffalo Snow be yellow? I says, says I... Boyfriend is ever Mr. Tactful, and so he laughs obligingly but wisely says nothing.
Got the Richters 2004 seed catalogue a few weeks ago in December, which was even earlier than last year; have since been sweetening the winter bitter by planning future gardens...
{The CBC predicts an Extreme windchill of minus 41 for tonight. Yellowknife, by comparison, is predicted to have a windchill of minus 38 tomorrow. Brr!!!}
Might try roses again this year; have been browsing through Hortico's site, and using the EveryRose & HelpMeFind Roses sites to help make my decisions. I am quite taken by the Brother Cadfael rose, partially because it is pretty and partially because I find its namesake so entertaining.
At my family reunion last year, some of us visited the Mohawk Chapel; and during a walk around its grounds & on the nature trail nearby, I scrounged up a few seeds as souvenirs. They're currently overwintering in the fridge, and I hope to germinate them when I get the Nursery* set up.
The Nursery has been an interesting experiment. I didn't expect to have a problem with plants growing too well, but they did; so they got crowded because the Nursery was too small, and then they lost much of their vigour. Duh. I should have realized how unhealthy an environment that would be; a greenhouse needs good air circulation, or disease will breed...
Canadian Tire has a "greenhouse" for sale that might do the trick... seems sufficiently large & sturdy... and relatively inexpensive. The question is... will it withstand the onslaught of three curious cats?
~ ~ ~
* Nursery. *snort* I realize that, what with all my infantilizing of kittykats, this anthropomorphizing of plants must make it seem as if I'm the only one who can't hear my biological clock banging away... But I come by it honestly. My own mum, who is surely beyond such an imperative by now, calls her plants her babies; and she refers to a plant which needs repotting as "needing a new pair of shoes" {should hope that's due to empty nest syndrome, not some previous life as a craps hustler}.
The cat formerly known as The Old Man has been beatified by Boyfriend as St. Farticus.
I like that. It means that, come the inevitable, I'll be able to justify the devotion of a tiny shrine to his memory; perhaps I'll manage to inter him in a wee reliquary {reliquarium?}, endow him with a brief hagiography, maybe ascribe a few small miracles...
* * *
A few weeks ago St. Farticus made it known, politely but firmly, that he could no longer willingly participate in the bi~daily pill ritual.
Up to that point, he had been patience itself. He would willingly walk into the bathroom when I beckoned, knowing full well what to expect. {And don't tell me he not smart enough to know what's coming. Last Sunday morning when I called him into the bathroom, he dove under the bed ~ because on Saturday morning when I called him in, he wasn't pilled at all; he was bunged straight into the carrier and carted off to the vet.}
When I had to pill him, he never bit me, he never clawed me, he never growled, he never hid, and he never held a grudge; afterwards he was quite content to allow me to pick him up & cuddle him, and carry him to his food. {Some mornings he would jump up and ride on my shoulders as if he were a Maharajah in his howdah, and I the elephant that supported the world.}
But every day he became progressively more and more closed~mouthed; and then he began to place a paw gently against my hand as I tried to pill him...
I've seen him more than once turn around and whap one of the other cats when he'd been pissed off; often wondered why he didn't just turn around a whup me upside the head during a pilling session.
Usually I take it for granted that he understands what's going on, insofar as he's capable; so I don't often try to see things from his unique kittykat perspective. I just credit him with having a great deal of human wisdom, and I'm sure that's true to a respectable extent... however...
Years ago I heard an interview in which Jane Goodall discussed the early days of her research with primates. She had been studying a band of apes and sending her notes to her peers for review. And {if I recall correctly} she said they advised her not to make observations that anthropomorphized the apes; in place of saying something like, "the ape was angry" she was instead to say "the ape behaved as if he were angry."
The idea behind this advice was to ensure first of all that her observations were not dismissed outright by those who firmly believed in the distinction between human and animal. But for those who just as firmly believed in the indistiction between human and animal, this was also an issue of objectivity; one must not project one's own perceptions onto the beings whom one observes.
What I took away from that interview was that we can learn more by interpreting animals in their own context than by imposing a human frame of reference on them; and that we shouldn't grade our respect for the dignity of animals on whether or not they have human qualities.
So while I'm happy to refer to St. Farticus as if he's a cat~shaped human, I understand it does him a disservice if I don't also try to see things from his particularly feline point of view.
And that's when I realize...
... this animal, who hasn't attended a single philosophy class in his life and has never been taught to "turn the other cheek" or that "patience is a virtue" because "the meek shall inherit"...
...this animal, who doesn't know his thyroid from his prostate and doesn't have the faintest idea what the heck a pill is for...
...this animal, who may or may not be able to surmise why the big hairless cats behave as they do...
...all this animal knows is that twice a day he was confined him to a room and had something bitter shoved down his throat. Every now and then he's caged up without breakfast and taken to where other big hairless cats poke cold thin noses right up his rear end, lick off a section his fur with an extremely sharp tongue, and stick a long thin claw under his skin. All this courtesy of yours truly.
And yet somehow it doesn't seem to have adversely affected his attitude towards me.
That just boggles my mind.
* * *
Because life~long medication is a possibility with feline hyperthyroid, there are companies who make pills in a tasty treat form. And when Old Man St. Farticus first began his medication, that was what I wanted to use.
For some reason, the vets at my clinic seemed to feel strongly that we ought to go with the normal pills first, and use the treats as a last resort. I don't know why. Perhaps they felt they were doing me a favour financially, as the tasty treat format is more expensive.
But they are worth every penny. Been using them for the last few weeks and nary a bad experience. I'm almost tempted to think that radiotherapy isn't really necessary now; we've hit the right dosage & he likes eating his pill/treats.
Still... I'll call up the DMV in February to find out where they're at with their Radiology program. And we shall see what we shall see.
And if we can cure it, I shall call St. Farticus the patron saint of radioactive felines. :)
