Entry the sixth: In which my feet get wet

From the couch I hear a soft but solid THUNK from the bedroom. In the hallway is Mirabelle, looking guilty. On the bed is Sylvie, looking interested. On the floor are: several carnations, my favorite vase, and a lot more water than I usually leave lying around the floor.

Sylvie is the troublemaker but Mirabelle is the carnation-eater so I don't know who the Bad Cat is. I do know, however, that I need to put my favorite vase back in the cupboard where it's been for the last year and a half, and wait at least another year an a half before putting it out again. You know, when the cats have learned to respect Other People's Things.

Snort.

Entry the fifth: In which I get help with the laundry

As most people who live with cats know, cats like to be in things. Mirabelle, who is relatively normal, likes to be in baskets (wicker and laundry), or boxes (shoe, packing, and already-filled-with-seemingly-no-room-for-a-cat-until-Mirabelle-finds--extra-space-I-did-not-know-was-there), or beds.

Sylvie, on the other hand, ends up in surprising places: The pantry that we're positive we only had open for 1.4 seconds and we would have noticed if a cat had jumped in it; the wardrobe; the bathtub (to be fair, both cats like the tub (unless the shower is on, and then it's Evil)); or (most annoying) the fridge.

I don't actually want a cat in the refrigerator with my food, thank you very much, so the last time she took the opportunity to jump onto the bottom shelf when the door was open, I closed the door with her inside. "This will show her," I foolishly thought, "and she'll be cold and sad when I relent and let her out." Wrong. I waited a minute and then opened the door... and Sylvie used the extra space to climb to a higher shelf.

(Mirabelle is the terrifying creature in the top picture; Sylvie is the enigmatic presence in the bottom picture. The irony is that Mirabelle is a sweetie and Sylvie is the least inscrutable cat I have ever known.)

Entry the fourth: In which my garden grows

It's begun. I have entered the period in my life (or at least in my life this summer) in which I must foist produce on friends and family or become overwhelmed. And the tomatoes aren't even ripe yet!

Here are the cucumber seedlings on May 11th. Aren't they adorable? So little. So innocent. Well that was then and this is now.

Or rather, this is June 18th, the day I took the most recent pictures.
From left to right you can see a just-about-perfect-for-picking pickling cucumber, another pickling cucumber, and finally what-I-thought-was-just-right-for-picking-but-boy-was-I-wrong-because-this-cuke-is-a-mere-infant Japanese cucumber. I realize I should have a picture of the entire plant(s) for scale, but I didn't take one. I'll take one tomorrow, I promise. But be warned: tomorrow's picture will feature a fully grown Japanese cucumber, and they are Large. I'd take one right now and add it to this post, but it's after 1:00 AM and I think taking flash pictures of outdoor plants in the dark would be Silly. So.

Here's one more June 18th picture, included because I think it's pretty.

Entry the third: In which I am nervous

It is downright unnerving to walk into the bedroom and find both cats crouched next to the wardrobe and starting attentively at the same spot just underneath. What are they so interested in? A dusty, sweater-munching moth? A shiny skittery roach from outside? A fly? A spider? Oh please, please let it be a spider. I don't have problems with spiders unless they show up in alarming places without warning me ahead of time. ("Dear large mammal who shares our space, I plan to hide behind the picture over your bed and then zip out and run madly across the wall as soon as you turn on the light. Just wanted to give you a heads-up so you won't shriek and embarrass yourself. This time. Cordially, the black wolf spider under the bed.")

I'm going to turn off the light so I won't be able to see the vigil anymore. The cats will still be able to see just fine. My hope is that by the time I wake up, they will have eaten whoever was seeking sanctuary under the wardrobe and I won't ever have to know what it was.

I don't have a picture of the cats hunting bugs in the bedroom so I am including one that shows their avid interest in the bugs outside.

Plus, no caterpillars (unlike the %&@$#* tomatoes)!

Before last summer, I thought cucumbers were largely pointless. They’re boring. Salad makers substitute them for Perfectly Good Vegetables That Actually Taste Like Something. They are often in large enough chunks that they hurt my too-sensitive teeth if they (the cucumbers, not my teeth) haven’t been out of the fridge long enough. They’re crunchy… but that isn’t sufficient. They are essentially cucumber-flavored-crunchy-water. Meh.

Except… now I love them. I started canning again a few years ago, and after my first batches of applesauce and raspberry sauce were met with approval, I wanted to make pickles. I loooooove dill pickles.

Unfortunately, it turns out the way to make decent dill pickles is to pickle the cukes no longer than 24 hours after they’ve been picked. And if you live in a big urban city, even a city with a fabulous farmer’s market, it’s not easy to find just-picked cucumbers.

So last summer I planted a pickling cucumber (that’s a variety as it turns out – who knew?) from a seedling. As anyone with more gardening experience than I have will tell you in a heartbeat, one plant does not equal a batch of pickles. The cucumbers are not all ready at one time and you can’t just pick one early and stash it until its siblings are ripe because of that 24-hour rule that got you gardening in the first place.

Once I realized the pickle plan was out, I tried eating one. My first reaction was “Wow, this peel is really tough.” I peeled it. Gingerly. Turns out right-off-the-vine cukes fight back: they’re covered with little spines.

Once it was defenseless, I tasted it again. What a revelation! Cucumbers are amazing! Sweet and crunchy and full of Genuine Summertime Vegetable taste! And when you pick them off the vine, they aren’t even tooth-chilllingly cold! I’m a convert.

This year I planted three seedlings. The Japanese cucumbers are mellow and have a mild peel that I can leave right on them thankyouverymuch, the pickling cucumbers are just as wonderful as they were last year, and the lemon cucumbers look good but I won’t be able to report on them until tomorrow or maybe the next day. It’s okay though – I can wait. I have high hopes.

Entry the First: In which I attempt to take on an old sweater and the sweater wins (with minor injuries).

Yeah, so, I don't have much to talk about right now. Mostly I just decided to create this on a whim so I could throw random stuff out into the whirling ether of the Internet and see if it sticks to anything. And so I could have a home address when I respond to other blogs.

Last night I unraveled several feet of a sweater I had started knitting in 1993. (I found a dated receipt for the yarn with the sweater.) Unraveling is fun... when it's just a panel. Flush with victory after this, my first deconstruction, I moved on to an *entire* sweater I knitted for myself in, oh, 1997? It is not a lovely object in the least. It was sloppily made with uneven stiches in some places and a droopy look overall. The yarn, however, is lovely and worth using for something else. It is light silvery green and very soft -- I'm going to guess some type of wool or angora twined together with velour. For all I know, this was sheared off a Muppet. Unlike my friends who have become knitting-obsessed in the last few months, or my mentor who grew up in Switzerland where knitting was part of the ciriculum in school, I am a very definite dilettante.

And that (the dilettante thing) is just one of the reasons this sweater is going to be a challenge to unravel. Not only did I knit it badly, but I then, unsurprisingly, sewed it together badly as well, using the same yarn. I cannot figure out where the knitting ends and the sewing begins. Last night I worked on it for close to two hours and was only able to remove and unravel one sleeve. At this rate, I think it's likely the sweater will take longer to take apart than it did to create it. Sigh. At least I can console myself by having something to do with my hands when I watch silly movies on TV.

This evening I am going to sneak up on the sweater from behind and hope that I have better luck using the element of surprise. "With cat-like tread, upon [my] prey [I] steal... "