Bad Cat

I have whined repeatedly about the poor germination of my very expensive impatiens seeds and how I have only four viable seedlings from this $3.50 pack of seeds.

I believe I mentioned that I set out the four seedlings this week, and that I was hoping they'd take root and do well.

Today, as I was coming downstairs, Roy reported that The Scamp had started excavations near the coleus and I probably would want to plant another coleus there to discourage them.

Yikes! That's where I planted the impatiens -- did The Scamp dig up any of those? Roy looked at me blankly. He gets coleus, plants with colorful leaves. He gets impatiens, plants with colorful flowers in shady places. But two-inch seedlings? Not so much.

So I scampered out and to my relief the Scamp had only dug up one, hadn't hurt it, and the deed was still so recent that it hadn't dried out. So back in the ground it went. Now I have put down a "mulch" of bricks around those plants so that he won't be so eager to excavate there. Once plants grow to about 6" he seems to get the idea that there will be no digging there and I'll be able to remove the bricks. Which are not pretty.

There's a whole big area full of cedar bark mulch where The Scamp can dig to his heart's content. Bad cat!

Rainy afternoon

After a morning of oppressive heat and humidity it started to rain with a brief thunderstorm a few hours ago and now it is raining in earnest. Once again I have escaped watering except for the bits that are under the overhangs.

It took me an awfully long time to make one batch of strawberry preserves. I had squirreled away some pectin, lids, and rings several years ago and it took me awhile to find them -- oddly enough, in a box marked "canning supplies" in great big letters, down in the basement. Who'd have thought it?

Then there was the matter of hulling and slicing four pounds of strawberries. It is a boring task and it's just too easy to wander the ten feet back to my office and the computer. But it's done and I have hopes that I will have preserves, not syrup.

Roy called on his way to Norfolk, cruising down the eastern shore of Virginia and looking at little houses for sale. I was able to look at them on realtor.com and say there were some tasty ones. But then I looked at the eastern shore and it looks like a place I would not like to be in a hurricane. Ain't technology grand, though? -- he'd read me the address more or less and I'd find pictures and be able to tell him how big the kitchen is, how big a lot, and how the place is heated. It sure would be nice to have a back yard that isn't smaller than my living room!

I was looking at Roy Orbison's dates and realized that he was born a little less than two years before Roy, so they were pretty much of an age -- and he shares a birthday with William Shakespeare and my late brother. How about that...