On November 18, I finally found a foster for Famke’s kittens. This was a great blessing for them, I know, but it was hard for me to say goodbye. The yard is so quiet and still now, without them here. Famke’s gone too. My mom, …
On Sunday morning, at about 11, I was weeding the meadow and Rob was loading the weedeater with some new string when we saw Famke leading her kittens out of the garage, their cozy, messy (temporary) home. We knew she was taking them on one …
In my last blog post, I mentioned that my sweet stray-cat friend Famke had had kittens and that she’d hidden them somewhere in our yard. At that time, about a month ago now, I was wishing that Famke would trust me enough to show her kittens to me, and, well, shortly after I published my post, my wish came true. The next morning I was sitting on the back steps when Famke came running up with a kitten in her mouth! She deposited this kitten just a few feet away from me, behind a tea olive, near the foundation of the house, under the shelter of the breezeway’s awning. Then she disappeared for a few minutes and returned with another kitten! And then another! For several days, Famke cared for her three kittens behind the tea olive. The newborn kittens were unbelievably small and resembled little moles with their velvet-like fur and their closed eyes.
Soon Famke moved the kittens into our garage, and we started feeding her (a ton) in there. Our garage is spectacularly messy and cluttered, jam-packed with junk and full of great hiding places, and Famke found a safe, cozy (but dirty!) spot for her babies behind a rusty trellis and my car’s old cargo cover. The kittens spent several weeks snuggling and wiggling in this weird little starter home. Then Famke moved them to a new spot, under the gross old couch that resides in the garage—and that’s where they cuddled and played and stayed perfectly dry as Hurricane Helene drenched the garage’s tin roof with eight inches of rain. We were lucky; we made it through the storm all right.
In their first few weeks of life, the kittens were drowsy and snuggly and mostly lay about looking like mini burritos, but now, at five weeks old, they’re showing so much personality. Two of the kittens are boys and one’s a girl, and we named them Kermit, Hermie, and Hattie. They’re very entertaining! It’s delightful to sit in our disgusting garage and watch them peek through the slats of a wooden pallet or try to scale the side of the couch like it’s a filthy mountain.
Yesterday Rob and I were sitting in the garage, watching the kitten show, and I said, “This is the most un-baby-proofed place in the entire world!”
“It’s a rich environment though,” Rob said. “It’s probably very stimulating to a kitten’s mind. There’s so much to explore!”
Well, I guess that’s true.
Hermie, who is chubby and very babyish, likes to play on our old, broken vacuum. He has the dumbest ideas for fun. Often he will try to copy Hattie, who is the bravest and most adventurous of the kittens, and end up in a bit of a pickle—stuck halfway up the side of the couch, for example. He’ll cry in his teeny, tiny, high-pitched voice, and I’ll come and rescue him.
Hattie is a real spitfire. She likes to wrestle her brothers when they’re sleepy and attempting to nap. She also enjoys batting at and pouncing on her mother’s tail. Another cute thing Hattie does is gaze at you with her small head slightly cocked as if she finds you very curious and fascinating.
Kermit likes to play when Famke is giving him his bath. The other day he was lying on his back as she licked his round tummy, and he was trying to wrestle her and kick her gently in the face with his dainty, soft, ineffectual little feet. The scene was just too cute, and Famke dealt with her son’s behavior patiently but firmly.
The kittens are becoming bolder and more inquisitive each day. When they’re not sleeping, they’re “going bananas,” as Rob says. Today when I came into the garage after work, little Hattie was climbing on our pitch fork, there was a huge dead frog in the middle of the floor (I believe Famke introduced the poor frog for training purposes), and the kittens’ bed had been used (multiple times, apparently) as a litter box.
I wish I could keep these crazy kids, but I have six elderly indoor cats who would be extremely upset if I made any new additions. I’m working on finding the kittens (and Famke) a forever home. I know they’ll make some lucky person or people deliriously happy.
I’ve been eating a lot of baked oatmeal lately. It’s so satisfying and easy to make that I decided I’d share the recipe with you. Of course, this meant that I needed to get a blog-worthy picture of oatmeal, a tall order. I did the …
For the last month or so, I’ve been spending all my free time painting this picture of my teddy bear Lisa posing by the meadow garden. The whole process was so much fun! For two or three hours every day after work (and longer on …
After years of dreaming and planning, Rob and I recently had a new brick patio and paths installed in our backyard. The work was done by Mark Clark Construction and, boy, did Mark and his team do a great job! The patio and paths are quite grand—spacious and gracefully curving, made with eight and a half pallets of real, old-fashioned red clay bricks!
The installation took about three months and was completed in late March. In the weeks since, Rob and I have been working to integrate our new additions into the existing landscape—cleaning up construction debris, filling in any low spots in the neighboring beds with dirt, and mulching around everything with pine bark nuggets. We’ve also added a thick layer of pond pebbles under the sunroom windows (which look out over the patio) to help control erosion caused by runoff from the roof.
We have plans to surround the patio with native shrubs, along with some herbs and vegetables.
“We’ll plant some easy crops,” Rob said the other day, “like tomatoes and peppers.”
“Oh, and okra,” I said, “because it loves heat and has such pretty flowers.”
We’ve decorated the patio with our collection of old cast-iron benches and little table-and-chair sets. Blue-glazed terra-cotta pots filled with light pink SunPatiens for summer add a dash of color.
The patio is a great place to watch birds as they dart about in the surrounding trees. (Yesterday I saw a great-crested flycatcher!) If you enjoy box turtle antics, the patio is also a good place to be. I set out chunks of organic watermelon for the turtles (they’re wild turtles, not pets) under the nearby kumquat tree, and then we watch them feast.
Rob and I are talking about getting a fire pit so we can sit on the patio on winter nights and star gaze. But even if that never happens, even if we don’t make any more improvements at all, the patio is perfect as it is. We’ve only had it for about a month, and it’s already my favorite place to be in the whole entire world.
Last Friday I took the day off work and made blackberries and biscuits for breakfast. I whipped up the biscuits using this lovely recipe from Holy Cow Vegan, then topped them with a warm blackberry sauce containing no added sugar. The sauce got me feeling …
Last weekend I helped my yard wake up from its long winter’s nap. I swept thick layers of leaves off the paths, did hours of pruning, pulled up loads of winter weeds, and planted pink and white dianthus around my three stone birdbaths near the …
On Saturday morning, I baked some sugar-free vegan banana bread. It was so good—mildly, pleasantly sweet due solely to the bananas, and nice and hearty and filling because it was made with whole-wheat flour.
“It’s really good with butter on it,” Rob said.
“Yeah,” I said, “a little butter puts it over the top.” (I was talking about vegan butter, of course, ha ha.)
We ate like kings on Saturday. We had banana bread for breakfast, and then for lunch (an hour later) we had vegan quesadillas with black beans, guacamole, and sweet potato fries.
It was quite a delicious day!
1/4 cup unsweetened almond milk
1 teaspoon apple cider vinegar
2 cups mashed overripe bananas
1/4 cup coconut oil, melted
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 cups whole-wheat flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1 cup chopped walnuts
Mix the almond milk and apple cider vinegar together in a small bowl and set aside.
Mash the bananas well. In a large bowl, blend the mashed bananas, coconut oil, vanilla, and milk/vinegar mixture.
In another bowl, whisk together the flour, baking soda, salt, and cinnamon. Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients and gently combine. Be careful not to overmix. Fold in the chopped walnuts. If the batter seems too dry, add two tablespoons of unsweetened apple sauce.
Line a 9×5 loaf pan with parchment paper and pour in the batter. Bake at 350 degrees F for an hour or until you can test the bread with a knife and the knife comes out clean.
Let the banana bread cool for 10 minutes and then remove it from the pan and allow it to cool further on a wire rack.
