Best Cat Ever!

Look who is trying to get on Mama's good side!

While I don't advocate harming of animals in any way, I must say that I get a little bit of joy when my own Killer Kitty sees it fit to take care of the problem. She was quite proud of her catch. She kept trying to bring it inside, presumably to skin it and roast it with carrots and potatoes. That's only proper. If you want to know why I dislike squirrels so much, exhibit #1 is here, and exhibit #2 is here.

In The Weeds

Wow - This summer really got away from me! I woke up one morning and all of the sudden the pool garden looked like this:There truly is a garden path in there somewhere. My husband and I looked each other and said "Ahh, a frost will come eventually and take care of this sticky little problem for us." All those weeds are just too much to think about without the aid of a machete.

Fortunately, there are little bits of joy to be had around the garden lately, if you look for them. This week the weather finally cooled and Floridians seemed to come out of their long air-conditioned hibernation to spend some time outdoors. Everyone was outside mowing their lawns, taking walks (I took two! Wha? Wha?) and putting up Halloween decorations. I took the opportunity to do a little gardening, or more accurately, pull a weed or two and look for plants that didn't croak on me after a long summer of neglect.

Ahh, my gingers. A few survived the squirrels and one even bloomed, although I couldn't get a good picture of it. I still love the leaves, especially at this angle from the bottom looking up.
Some coleus, hiding under the gingers. Both were taken as clippings from my Mother's house.
The camellias are really budding this year, and a few have started to bloom. YAY!!


The last hold out blossom on the crepe myrtle bush. Note about crepe myrtle: You can dig up some of those really annoying seedlings that always come up in the spring and replant them! I keep them in a pot in a shady area for the first summer and then replant them where I want them the following spring. It is a slow process, but I've had success with it. Nothing like a free plant.

I thought for sure the that the Globba Ginger were goners after our deep freezes this year, but sure enough I now have about 10 plants and they are all blooming nicely. I wish they were taller, but other than that I totally love them.
Knockout Rose, knocking me out.

A single vinca, grown back from last years planting. This time last year, the vinca looked like hell and I took them all out. This year, the seedlings I let live are gorgeous. Go figure.

The mighty attack cat, hunting her prey. She always looks at me like I'm intruding on her world when I work in the garden. It is very much her's most of the week.

What has Lived

That seems to be the big question in my garden right now: What has lived? It was a weedy mess before, but after a week of hard freezes, and SNOW, everything pretty much loooks like this:

It is all enough to make you want to give up and start blogging about home decorating. In addition to being a mother with a full time job, computer issues, squrriels (bastards!), I'm going to throw the newest member of our family under the bus.

Kitty, (AKA Free-loader) was a neighborhood cat that hung out our house for a while. About six months ago we noticed that she was getting very skinny and we started feeding her. That was pretty much the end of it - we were adopted. She is incredibly sweet and tame and charmed her way into our decidedly "not-pet-people" family. While she is an angel in the house, she is all cat in the garden. She's made several exits holes in our fence and regularly poos in the sand box. Good thing she's cute.

I'm trying to focus on the positive and figure out what has lived. The amarylis from last year is coming back, along with many of the very sturdy crinum lilies.

I didn't get my winter annuals in the ground on time (October is ideal) but I did plant a few straggelers, and they are steadily pumping out some flowers. Good thing: I ALWAYS need this color in my life.

Cats

What is up with this? A family of cats has moved in under the shed. The babies are very cute, but Mama is kind of mean and I'm nervous about my daughter playing in the yard with a bunch of strays running around. If anyone has any ideas on how to get them to move out, I'd appreciate it.