How is it that I - who consider myself to be a fairly educated gardener - have gone this long believing that hollyhocks are a perineal plant?? How is it so that I have paid $35 and more for these lovely spiking towers of flowers to learn, just this week, that alas, they will be gone the very next year. I have been robbed.
And how is it also so that every time I have bought a sour cherry tree, the nursery owner says, "oh, you should really have two trees....." and I bite, sucker that I am. Today, I learned ALL sour cherry trees are self pollinators. Who knew?? My friend Susie has one. On Sunday and with an invitation, I got the last of its cherries, gawking over the shiny red orbs, translucent in the afternoon light, beckoning to become a batch of amazing sour cherry jam or a coveted sour cherry pie. She kept saying that if I didn't take them, they were leaving them to the birds. The birds???? Sister, that is criminal. I came home with overflowing containers. Thank you, Susie. Your lone tree on the hill does a very good job of self-pollinating!!
And then there is Goldie. We were pretty sure we were out of cats here on the farm. Packs of coyotes howl nightly in the not-too-far distance. And as the voles are eating the roots of the very precious few hollyhocks I have - and now know won't even be come back (gasp!) - well, I decided we needed more cats.
About a year and a half ago, Mike got two gray cats from the Walton Ranch. All responsible measures were taken, they will fixed, we paid for that, and then released in the Old Barn. Food was provided and water (complete with a UL listed heater so we don't burn down said Old Barn). Racoons came along and ate up the goodies, provoking aggressive trapping measures usually resulting in a few less racoons. However, there has been little activity from the cats. We have a camera set up on the food, so we were pretty sure we could conclude, maybe one gray cat was still around.
Some friends - who coincidentally happen to be from the very Illinois neighborhood I grew up in! - have a litter of extremely cute kittens. Quite spontaneously, I grabbed one the other day. They were happy to see the kitten go down the road. His name was to be Smokey.
I'm pretty sure Smokey got found by an owl or a male cat on his very first night here. No sighting of Smokey has occurred since day one. When I finally confessed I had brought a kitten home to El Hefe (Michael!), he lectured me on how you never bring just one kitten home, you must bring two.
So, I grabbed another when I visited a week later!!
Her name is Goldie. And El Hefe fell in love with Goldie. She spent three nights in the barn and is now comfortably housed in the airplane hanger with food, water, and a litter box. She has a chance of making it!
Meanwhile, I have had my second shingles shot. It laid me down yesterday. Perfectly incapable of anything than feeling really awful and trying to sleep away the day to escape the pain. My hair hurt, it felt that bad. Tonight, I put up 137 bales of beautiful second cut hay. The weather forecast is good. Hot and dry. The sun is shining!!!
