General Conference Kittens

    As I watched General Conference on Sunday I noticed the absence of Mrs Buzz Saw. I was pretty sure I hadn't let her outside. I did a quick check to make sure I hadn't left one of the bedroom doors open. One of my main goals during Linda's absence was to avoid the "kittens under the bed or worse yet "kittens on the bed" experience. Finally at about 7:00 pm Mrs Buzz Saw showed up to eat dinner, noticeably less rotund than she had been in the morning. I surveilled her for about 15 minutes and discovered the location of her kittens. She had turned her nose up at the feline maternity ward I had offered and had instead chosen to have her kittens in the book shelves behind the computer desk. Linda has a lot of material stored there so I'm sure she found a nice soft place for her kittens. her choice was  considerably more secluded than the location I had offered her. Maybe she was looking ahead to the next time the grandchildren visit. I haven't seen a kitten yet but I did hear one mewing last night.

   We have no kitten photos yet as I'm not about to crawl back under the computer desk to find them. I think we may have to wait a while for the kittens' first photo shoot.

    I am feeling a little drug out at the moment as I stayed up late doing Genealogy. I must confess, I am a binge genealogist. I went down to the bee store for about three hours as the internet is pretty speedy there and I'd rather not  mooch paper or printing supplies from Mom. When I came home and started to organize what I had done, there was always one more thing I wanted to look up.  The next thing I knew it was 1:00 am.

One super fancy worm bin

    I moved my worm bin back outside a few weeks ago.  They seem to have wintered well in the garage, at least judging by the healthy population of worms in two of the containers I emptied onto the compost pile. It is back in its usual place near the goat pen. This is a pretty fancy four container heavy duty plastic worm bin that I inherited from my daughter, Sarah. I think she gave it up because her husband complained about the smell. This coming form a man who eats kimchee on a regular basis. I have never noticed any unpleasant aroma and the goats have never complained about its close proximity to their pen. I put it in the garage in late October and bring it back outside in mid March. The worms make quick work of most stuff, but they don't seem to make much progress on egg shells and cantaloupe seeds. I guess in the future I will throw the egg shells directly into the compost bin.

I know it looks disgusting, but it is gold for the garden

Shredded newspapers make great bedding for the worm bin

    My daughter, Rachel, gave me some artichoke starts last year.  I don't think I put them in a good location. First of all I have sunnier spots and secondly it was next to the wood pile so its one of the few safe havens the slugs have where they can hide from the ducks. This morning I transplanted two of the artichokes starts to our garden area out front.  That area is relatively slug free and is as close to full sun as we have. Since it will take them a while to get to any great size I decided to surround the artichokes with a square of beets. Hopefully we will have harvested the beets long before the artichokes are big enough to encroach upon them.

    I received a wonderful birthday gift from the Romeros on Friday.  They sent me not one, but six different varieties of honey from Germany.  Acacia, Rape Flower (I believe its in the cabbage family), "Forest Honey', "Mountain Flower", Lime Flower (Linden, as in "Unter den Linden"), and "Golden Selection".  What they sell as acacia honey in France is actually from an American Black Locust Honey, introduced into France in the 1700s. That is one of my five favorite honeys so I'm hoping its the same thing in Germany. The rape flower honey was crystallized which doesn't surprise me since its in the cabbage family. Beekeepers who pollinate the cabbage seed crop in Skagit County just north of here have to extract immediately after they remove their hives from the cabbage fields. If they delay even a week or so the honey will crystallize in the comb. I tried some cabbage honey once and it was a wonderful mild flavored honey.

Better than winning the lottery. My kind of gold