We don’t have a greenhouse in our back garden. Well, that isn’t strictly true. We have the skeletal remains of a greenhouse. At some point in the past, the garden had one in the far left corner. The back corner, hidden away. When we moved it the greenhouse already stood in disrepair. One year, a few back, we tried to make repairs with plastic sheeting and duct tape, but it didn’t hold. After some bad weather, the sheeting ripped away. By next year, it fell into disrepair again.
Shame really. We spent a long time clearing weeds out to repair it. We have terrible Mare’s Tail in the back garden, a weed with a root that defies destruction. You pull a Tail up and any remnant left behind, however small, will mean another comes right on back to replace it. We had cleared everything away and sorted out pots for tomatoes and other vegetables. Now, the greenhouse lies abandoned again, the panes missing, the weeds growing thick across the floor.
So, my wife wanted to grow things. We couldn’t go through the same process with the greenhouse again. We had to find an alternative. We discovered a plastic affair in a local bargain store. The micro-greenhouse came flatpack with a plastic sheet that sheathed the frame. We had it down the side of the kitchen and grew herbs inside. However, last year a storm caught it and sent the whole thing crashing to the ground. While we tried to repair it, another storm earlier in the year tore the plastic sheet irreparably.
We had to find an alternative. While my wife grew vegetables in pots and flowerbeds, we needed something to shelter struggling seedlings. As luck would have it, the same store we got the other one stocked something larger. The bigger greenhouse could have held four of the old ones. It looked like a very small plastic shed with transparent walls, or maybe a small wardrobe. A frame inside supported four shelves. Between them the big greenhouse had room to fit the frame of the old one. It took a while to get it as the store kept selling out, running out of stock. In the end we had to drive into central Manchester to get one from another store several miles away.
Putting the greenhouse together took a while. The instructions filled a folded A4 sheet of paper, filled with little diagrams of Rod A, Rod B, Joint A3 and so on. It took a while to get the whole thing together, after a couple of false starts, then once complete you had to pull the plastic cover over the top. A zippered door allowed you to get in one side. Once we pulled the sheet over the frame it became clear that it had a slight rip in one corner. However, everything seemed to hang together. My wife moved all the plants inside, weighted the frame down with bricks and stored the bags of compost inside as well.
Today, the greenhouse fell over. A terrible wind must have whipped through the garden. The gust must have been sudden. We didn’t even hear anything. One moment fine, the next moment the whole thing collapsed. The plastic sheet torn. Some of the rods broken. A horrible mess. We could hardly believe it.
I have a couple of days off this week. I may see if I can fix it. Perhaps I can, but who knows. Once broken things never quite fit back together again. I will give it a go, but I’m not expecting miracles. I’ll see…
The vet says our cats are fat. Both Holly and Suki have increased in weight by several hundred grams, apparently. The vet admonished our handling of their diet and told us we should have them eating something low in calories. Obviously the vet recommended we feed them something we could buy from the shelf out in the waiting room. It needs to be administered in a controlled fashion; no filling the bowl and then walking away anymore, while the cats stuff themselves to capacity. We need to avoid giving them snacks and keep a balance between wet and dry feeding.
We suggested that winter meant the cats had put on weight. In all honesty, we have to stand in defence of our cats, our feeding habits, and the integrity of the entire household. We can’t have some upstart vet coming along and suggesting we’re irresponsible owners. Yes, I admit that Suki does demand a slice of processed ham on occasion and we might feed both cats tidbits from the dinner table. Yes, yes – I know. We might be vaguely responsible for a little of that weight increase. However, now that Spring has sprung and a wave of warmth followed, we can’t keep the cats inside. Last night, both Holly and Suki stayed out all night. I doubt we have any living rodents within a quarter mile. During the day, both cats walk in and out of the house constantly, demanding the doormen give them all the attention they deserve. Holly has taken to watch the ducks very closely.
In the greater scheme of things, we all have a resonsibility to maintain the good health of our pets. We cannot allow the pet to maintain itself, as we chose to attempt domestication. Yes, a feral cat might almost manage to look after itself, but even then they have a need to beg and begging leads to poor health and weight gain. A feral cat merely opens itself up to greater opportunity for disease, injury, infection and sudden death due to traffic accidents. The feral lifestyle doesn’t offer low calorie food. Indeed, a feral cat probably eats a lot more discarded and wasted food, meaning fatty remains, off-cuts and processed scraps.
So, we will take an interest in our cats’ diet, but not get too prescriptive. I lost weight through a general good approach to diet and exercise, but didn’t stop myself from having the occasional treat. Over the period of good weather we (and every other pet owner) need to make sure the cats get out and work off some natural energy (and associated body fat) while they have the chance. Yes, by day they sleep, but by night they roam and hunt. In the balance I expect to see both cats lose weight before we next have a check-up and then we need to monitor their intake during the colder months.
No more excessive treats. No more processed foods. Simple. But, we should never cut out everything because what’s the point of being a cat if you can’t get an occasional spoiling?
The arrival of a single male duck spells the start of the next aspect of Spring – the rutting. We can expect tussles and noisy disagreements aplenty as single males try and exert their authority over existing pairs.
Last year we had at least two pairs and two or three lone males. This year only one pair and one loner so far. We’ll know the tussles have started when the quaking and splashing commences in earnest. Occasionally we have sought to intervene, but we can’t really expect to disrupt the natural course of things.
The cats, on the other hand, will happily take advantage of the confusion for their own nefarious ends.
The ducks have returned to the garden. Last year they appeared and took a while to get used to us. This time they seem to have settled in much faster. They even deal with the unwanted attentions of our cats, waddling away and quacking sharply.
For the moment, we have the opportunity to get quite close while feeding them. I consciously avoid getting too close, as I neither want to get them too comfortable with people (and therefore leave them open to abuse from idiots in the future) nor do I want to risk any nasty bruises from a sharp stab of the bill. I enjoy the experience of just watching them feed. The average duck possesses a complex quilt of beautiful feathers, even the apparently quite plain female. I find the leathery orange feet of the ducks especially interesting. The rough, almost scaled, skin seems almost like a ‘boot’, a protective covering. The distinctive orange meets the feathers, but you can’t quite tell where the brilliantly coloured flesh stops – and I have no interest or desire to see the corpse of a dead duck to find out!
For the moment, I find it just nice to have them around. They add some life and activity to the garden, waddling to and fro from the pond, pecking at the grass in the garden. When we don’t feed them they waddle over to where we have bird feeders and peck at the floor there instead, picking up fallen scraps. They root around the garden, presumably finding morsels left by squirrels burying unshelled nuts.
The male remains constantly vigilant, keen to protect his partner. Not only does he have humans and cats to consider, over the coming weeks he faces stiff competition from any ducks unlucky enough not to have found a partner yet. Last year we received visits from two single males. They returned time and time again, attempting to wrestle control of the female away – a process that more than likely distresses her more than anyone else involved in the noisy and violent tussles.
We got a Christmas tree in December. I could not convince my wife to opt for something simple. We couldn’t go small, plastic and manageable. Oh no. We needed something more. We needed something big. We needed something alive.
So, we trudged around a brick barn in the cold, out beyond a rented storage facility. You could feel the bite in the air. Cold wrapped around you and settled. I shivered, my body wrapped in three or four layers, along with scarf and gloves.
The barn had trees of all kinds. I seem to recall most claimed Norwegian heritage, though I’m sure they grew somewhere local. You don’t have to go to Norway for a Norwegian Pine.
As I said, the barn had many types of tree. Some short, some tall. Many trees already had a claim laid on them. A contraption on one side of the barn allowed an overworked youth to slide a tight net tube around trees. I recall mud on the floor. We paced around inside, the trudged around outside. Inside, the trees leaned against the walls, a few more impressive trees stood free in pots. Outside, you could see either potted trees or dead trees jammed into slices of tree stump.
My wife liked the look of the ones outside. She liked a couple inside, but the sanity of a small living room and an average sized car made them impractical. She hovered around the ones in pots. However, the potted ones looked a bit scrappy. Some leaned, while others sported only sparse branches. None fit the bill exactly. So my wife asked whether they had any more. The guy in charge responded, ‘Yes’. They had a bunch of trees previously on sale at another site on a van right now on their way back. If we wanted to wait, we could have a look at those.
She liked one of the van trees. A potted tree about three rows back. We waited in the cold as they hefted them off the back of the van and lowered them to the ground. She selected the perfect specimen and we paid £25 for it. Then we bundled into the passenger seat of the car and took it home.
It turned out quite well. The sparse branches and size meant we didn’t have the room for all the Christmas decorations. The decoration process normally takes hours and involved carefully unwrapping a hundred or more baubles. We seem to have something for every year we’ve been married or the kids have been at school. We have decorations with pictures and other with batteries that makes sounds. This year, we had less.
Now, in March, the potted Christmas tree stands in the garden. Correction, it stood in the garden, in the original pot jammed in the top of an ornamental chimney stack. In the past week I gazed out of the kitchen window at it and worried. A few branches browned noticeably. I raised concerns about the health of the plant and highlighted that we’d purchased a live tree for a reason – we might get a chance to reuse it next year.
Yesterday, I dug a hole. In a flower bed at the back of the house, I dug a hole about a foot cubed. I used a fork and a spade, using the latter to hack through roots hidden in the soil. I struggled a bit, the roots appearing again and again, stubborn and thick. The spade could handle them, but only when I put a lot of force behind it. I think I took a good 30 minutes to dig the hole and plant the tree. I planted it too deep. We shall see how it does over the next month. If it dies, we didn’t waste too much money on it. If it lives, we can worry about how we plan to extract it come December and reuse it…
Spring sprang in the last few days. Almost like clockwork, things changed.
It hit me quite suddenly just how much of a difference it seemed to make. I’m sure shifting from February to March doesn’t normally have this effect.
I looked out over the garden at the weekend and saw daffodils in the flower beds at the back. I can see a vague hint of green in the trees. For a moment, the temperature didn’t seem so bad. Where I might expect frost, we now have rain – although I don’t think we’ve seen the last of the frost.
I think we change clocks in the UK toward the end of this month, but I already greet the sun while having breakfast. I like a little light in my mornings, as I find it less of a struggle to get up. During the winter months, I always seem to struggle in the darkness and I rise in the morning with difficulty.
We had ducks in the garden at the weekend. We’d like to think they might be one of the couple who visited last year. However, I doubt we can categorically prove anything. One duck looks pretty much like another. We could pretend. The ducks stood by the pond for a while, then flew off. When they returned I went out and threw them some bird seed. They accepted the offer, then got spooked and flew off. I don’t think I spooked them, but I can’t account for what did. I suspect we’ll see more and more of them over the coming weeks.
When I went to feed the ducks, I noted frogspawn in the pond. I saw little clear bubbles just breaking the surface of the water. I suspect the ducks might have eaten a lot of the spawn last year, probably after hatching. I can’t prove anything. I don’t even know whether ducks care for frogs, tadpoles or frogspawn. They seem happy with seed and floating green bits.
If I had a camera to hand, I’d take a picture. As the garden comes back to life, it deserves the attention. I will see how things pan out over the weekend.
Admittedly, she isn’t evil. And the eyes have more to do with my camera flash then any daemonic presence. However, I think we have come to accept that Holly isn’t a well adjusted cat.
We have had Holly from kitten, but she did have a little bit of a life before we adopted her, and I can’t account for what might have happened during that period. I can’t account, either, for the way she may have reacted, on first introduction, to a house filled with unfamiliar cats. When she arrived we had Bill, a placid ginger tom, Suki, a hungry young girl, and Mogwog, a quiet, delicate elder. Holly needed to find a niche. I suspect something genetic kicks in when a cat faces potential competition, as in the wild scarcity of food means that you don’t play fair with anyone. You either stake your claim or you face the very real possibility of starvation.
Holly didn’t need to deal with Bill. Bill, as the only male, had his own niche. So, Suki and Mogwog became the potential competition. Mog didn’t prove an obstacle at all, as she has to have a least a dozen years over the kitten. Suki initially provided something of a mothering figure, but I suspect Holly had plans to turn the tables after the black cat fulfilled her short term purpose of ‘support.’
I have no idea how we, the owners, figure into the equation. We provide the food, the warmth and the shelter. I have the feeling we often fall short in all of these areas. I understand that cats like to come and go as they please, feeding when they want, sleeping where they like. In many ways a human being can stand in the way of all of these. If you don’t install a cat flap, the cat ends up needing to beg to come and go. If you don’t leave the bag or can out, the cat needs to beg or complain for food. If you want to keep your clothes free of hair, you probably interfere with the most comfortable sleeping arrangements mid-nap. The average owner provides nothing but irritation in the worsecase scenario. In the best case, something to tolerate.
So, Holly lies sleeping. She probably doesn’t appreciate the attention. I take a picture and she glowers at me with those eyes, the light flaring in their surface. For a moment I disturb her, but then she’ll forget me. When I get in the way or bother her enough, she’ll lash out. She does that, and she does it well. Holly’s claw remain razor sharp and prone to cause a stinging bleed.
Maybe a little fragment of evil lies somewhere deep within afterall…
From my desk I can see a wasteland. I doubt you could farm anything on it, whether arable or pasture-wise. The expanse seems scrubby and half dead. Grass grows green, yellow and brown, short and sickly. I might venture to use the term heathland, but I suspect you need to have grass with prospects – and here I don’t think it qualifies. You might venture to graze animals here, but you couldn’t maintain them for very long. The grass looks unwell.
I don’t know much about the land. It lies amidst retail construction, commercial ventures and recreation. Easily big enough for a sports ground, if not a whole football stadium. Bound on all sides by tall fencing, bearing warning signs about the open canal that cuts through one side. At some point development might have made the area useful; vital might even be an appropriate word. In a way, the ground looks like a construction side grown wild. The surface dips and rises, scrubby hillocks at the north end smoothing out slightly into rough grass that then falls away into the canal. Dark brown, leafless hedge growth bounds the eastern side. Most of the area simply looks like a patchwork, a natural surge of recovery following some past devastation.
Occasionally wildlife emerges. In the summer, rabbits bound through the grass and I have heard hint of a fox. Magpies dart between the trees on the edges of the wasteland, diving into the grass when morsels present themselves. With the wealth of businesses nearby, the scavenger likely does well here. When the natural food supply runs short, or proves too determined to avoid capture, the fox or magpie can simply pick through the detritus of humanity, nicking food from bins or pavements.
On the north edge a old church and monastry looms with dark windows, a monument of centuries past. A squat, ugly, grey-orange B&Q warehouse sits to one side, while the backdrop on the other has tower blocks bursting up above the dead treeline.
I have an urge to explore, but the encrouching taint of humanity would make the experience far less interesting I’m certain. However, I’d willing give it a go, treading through the undergrowth in sturdy boots or resilient Wellingtons.
The chill brings to the garden a sense of distance. Despite the back garden sitting so very close you could almost touch it, the cold makes you stay behind closed doors. England experienced snow fall a week ago, and the sub-zero temperatures have allowed that snow to linger. Little lumps of white ice lurk innocuously on lawns or in odd corners of car parks. They serve as glancing reminders of why you really don’t want to go through the door unless you really, really have to.
On the other hand, the average domestic cat seems to lack any similar sense of the cold. I don’t know quite how warm those fur coats are, but I’m reasonably certain they’re not invulnerable to sub-zero temperatures. I can see the fluff as they saunter hither and yon, the puff of fur raised high. Not the height of the cat seeking to state dominance in face of a competitor, but the slight increase in volume that presumably lends some greater protection from the cold.
Why must a cat enter and exit a house so frequently during bad weather? In and out. In and out. One moment they sit on the inside, staring out like some lovelorn soul desperate to reach a loved one. You open the door for them and they slip out. Then, only moments later, they return. They sit at the back door and stare at you. A steady stare. A longing gaze. A forlorn look of near despair, perhaps suggestive that they do feel the cold after all. You give in and let them in. They disappear. You hear the crunch of biscuits, perhaps, or the lapping of water. Then nothing. Except suddenly, often without any appearance of travel, they appear at the door again. They materialise. Bam. I’m back again, they say, can you just let me out. I think I forgot something.
In and out. In and out. In and out.
You don’t want to keep getting up and letting the cold rush in, but if you don’t they pester you. They follow you around the house. They sit and stare, the gaze drilling into your mind. They have a presence that belies their size. You cannot ignore them. Cannot avoid them. You let them out.
While looking for information about Great Tits, I stumbled on this entertaining little article on h2g2 about who might be stealing the hazelnuts from our trees before they’re ready to eat…
