Kitten Diary #7

Which I'm just going to hijack for a moment to thank everyone for the thoughtful and lovely comments on my Digression post. Rather than try to make a decent reply in the cramped confines of the comment box I'm going to mull it over for a bit and do another post in about a week, but I'm really touched and grateful for your responses.




It was kitten weighing day yesterday which task I managed to complete before I hit the bottle (hence the youtube links) and I'm pleased to report all the beasts put on a useful amount of weight. They're still growing, yay!

Rook: 4.531 kg
Crow: 3.960 kg
Raven: 3.324 kg

They're still catching stuff too, although thankfully and fingers crossed no more birds since the last diary. I was horrified to find one of them had caught a grass snake and left it on the floor in my office. It looked really gruesome, I took a picture but I don't want anyone to be ill so only click here if you've a strong stomach and a ghoulish nature. The worst is yet to come, gingerly I picked the poor dead thing up by the tip of its tail to dispose of it and it came back to life!

It didn't look too well though. I put it into the long grass by the pond and it wriggled away, I hope it found a hiding place to die in or recover (they are remarkably hardy and I've seen some with tremendous scars) where the cats couldn't bother it. It's not come back in at any rate.



Such terrible terrible creatures who are so soft and warm and cuddly when they're in bed with me you couldn't believe they could be such callous killers.

They all have their preferred places to sleep on the bed. Crow likes to curl up near my head, ideally with his head or paws on my hands. Rook prefers to get into the bed and rest his head on my shoulder, often putting his paws around my neck. Raven rarely gets into the bed but sits on my chest, often flopping down so trustfully that she would roll right off again if I didn't catch her. They match this behaviour at my desk, Crow sleeps on the keyboard, Raven snuggles cosily on my lap and Rook tries to burrow his way into my neck and cleavage until he feels completely safe. Funny little things.

and another one

Jake Summers

It must be the hot weather...

Wordless

Houseleek flowers


First pods from the broad beans


A patch of purslane to be planted out


The first of the garlic harvest

Excuse me a moment while I digress

This blog is all about the growing, mostly, and although I have a place to emote into, that's never going to see the general public. Nor do I have any publishable political views, secret lives to document or amusing anecdotes about the celebrities that I regularly rub shoulders with. What I present to the world is pretty much so many chocolate box pictures with as little hard science as I feel I can get away with.

But, just recently I've been party to events elsewhere that have led me into musings about the parts of me this blog never reaches, except passive aggressively obliquely, I'd love to tell you but I'd have to kill you sort of stuff. Cringeworthy indulgent things that I can barely bring myself to tell my (non-existent) therapist let alone a largely disinterested search engine generated audience.

Anyway, on this occasion I've decided to cut loose just a little. I've always wanted to be a writer.

There, I've said it and I don't suppose for a minute anyone is a bit surprised. This is a textual medium after all. I am writing. I'm not knocking it but this isn't great literature and every one wants to be a greatly respected author, no?

It's just that for the last 30 years or so I've been blocked. Uh huh. Yeah, right. Someone somewhere made a quote along the lines of that's not block, it's lack of talent and you should get over yourself (I have a great memory but not for details) but I'm a reader too, and let me tell you, there are respected writers out there who are crap. Where they and I differ is not in the talent but in the application. So am I lazy? You betcha, and yet I don't think it's that even that stops me writing but a finely honed appreciation of the pointlessness of it all. That's what I need to get over.

However, on to the events that led me here. I'm subscribed to something over 200 blogs and amongst them is the rather compelling Bête de Jour which is the story of the sort of man I adore, insecure, intelligent and lonely, believing themselves to be fat and ugly. You just want to gather him up and give him a good hug.

He's written a book based on his blog, you can read about here or here or just go to the blog for a flavour of what's inside. And I've read it, and found myself tutting like a grumpy old school teacher. Because it's not great writing, or an original story or even terribly clever or coherent. On the other hand, it is eminently readable and accessible. It deserves to be, and probably will be, successful and Stan the author will be in the difficult situation of thinking up a second novel. Which will be passing hard, because the sort of chatty conversational style that works for a first book does not translate to 'proper' writing and the gimmick has now exhausted itself.

So much for the literary criticism. It's a good read, buy it.

There's another issue that's emerged from all this though, and that is more to do with blogging than novelising. It's this, how truthful does one need to be on a blog? Is it fiction or is it a diary? Although I've had my doubts about the depictions of some of La Bête's exploits I have in my innocence accepted them as based on real events and his commentary as that of a real person. Which is perhaps naive but that's how I write my blog, because on my blog I'm not being a writer (or I'd never put finger to keyboard) I'm only being me. Should blogs come with a health warning or are they actually works of art? Are they tools for connectivity or a publishing medium? Should I have been more suspicious of total anonymity instead of dismissing it as a reasonable precaution? And these are the thoughts that are going to fill my day.

I now return you to your normal programming.

Lets talk about ... the weather

The longest day has been and gone. It's a terrifying thought, now we start the long slide back into winter and I've not even finished the planting yet. Still, the summer is most definitely here now and we've been enjoying day after day of warmth, mostly with wonderful sunshine.

Pity this means it's beginning to become necessary to water.

Today I planted out the last of the tomatoes. I hope it's in time. The early planting of Latah has been most disappointing. The plants have flowered but failed to fertilise and the spent blooms are just dropping off instead of making fruit. I can't see any obvious reason for it. The ground is moist and weedfree and the plants sturdy and well grown. Tomatoes don't usually need insects to pollinate them but even if they did, there have been plenty of bees on the adjacent broad beans. The Latah are still making flowers and will hopefully finally produce a crop but they're not going to be any quicker than the Salt Spring Sunrise that I planted out today, so they're not going to make the cut into my favourite essentials no matter how good the flavour is.



All the pumpkins were in by last week, still a bit late in my opinion but that shouldn't stop them cropping. Only five of about 15 Whangaparoa Crown germinated in the end but that will be enough to start selecting for a Normandy adapted strain that I can maintain. So far the plants are growing sturdily and are just starting to show signs of flower formation.



Pumpkin Moschata Muscade is widely available but I think the two plants I have here will produce seed that can be saved without losing too much genetic variability. By restricting my choice of cucurbits to one example from each of the groups maxima, moschata and pepo I can allow insect pollination and increase the chances of retaining the variety's intrinsic diversity because all seeds will be potential new plants, not just the seed from one or two hand pollinated fruit.



The courgette, Trieste White Cousa, probably isn't going to be worth saving seed from. There are two other plants beside this one but they are still pot bound, waiting for a patch of ground to get their feet into and may be stunted as a result. A pity, I like the white courges best of all but should be able to start again with more seed from Realseeds.

The potatoes are doing pretty well. One benefit of hot dry weather is that the chances of blight are much reduced because of the low humidity. Even so, I have sprayed a couple of times with mixture bordelaise and will probably do so again at the end of the week, just before a change in the weather is predicted. If you are worried about blight in the UK then this site, Fight against Blight 2009 will be helpful in identifying where problems may be starting.



We do have some potato problems though. The Vitelotte Noire, started from supermarket tubers that had been treated to stop sprouting, have made a slow start and show signs of virus disease and physiological disorders. Compared to their neighbours in the picture above, Sarpo Mira on the right and Pink Fir Apple on the left they look very poorly indeed.



If I was sensible I'd just have them out now and burn the lot but I'm going to keep them in the ground just a little bit longer and hope that I get a small crop. At some point in my life I'm really going to get to grips with micro-propagation and these would be prime candidates as a starting point.

Anniversaries

I noticed today that it's been five years since I was terminated in my last job because I'd become the scapegoat for an unpleasant and aggressive manager with his sights on the board. It's a long time to go without an income. Even now, not an experience that I'm able to look upon with any detachment, the bullying and abuse was something I was and am entirely unable to cope with. Still, that's not what this blog's about, it just came up because of something else and so I checked a calendar.

More importantly, this weekend sees a much happier anniversary, 12 years since Paul and I first got together. The elderflower champagne is fizzing and I'm hoping the sun will stay out so that we can celebrate in the warm glow of summer.

Just have to keep on moving forward.