Author: Pam

New England native, Florida resident. Blogging about boating, beach-combing, gardening, camping, and knitting. Work for Zazzle as a designer since 2008.

Cats and Winter Don’t Mix

cat in christmas tree
Skittle Enjoying the Tree

The days are filled with bored house cats chasing each other and fighting. The nights bring scampering and sliding through the halls chasing mice. Winter is here! With snow and cold, my two cats don’t go outside much anymore. Skittle loves to roll in the sand all summer, but now she must be wondering how all that white stuff got here and where did her sand go? She has to find something else to occupy her tiny brain, and that something usually includes disturbing me.

When I’m trying to work, she is walking across the desk trying to mess up my typing. I have tape on a nearby windowsill trying to keep out the cold – and she eats it. This year I have an added sideshow with my daughter and her cat living here too. My cats don’t like her old man cat, which is added entertainment. One hisses, one growls, pounce, bat and off they go.

We have the big, artificial Christmas tree set up, but this year it has no lights or decorations. Last year I discovered that it was useless to try and have a nice looking tree. I only set it up this year because the kids wanted to, but it doesn’t contain a single ornament. Before we even finished putting it together, Skittle was racing up the branches with a wild look in her eyes.

I am writing this at 3am because they woke me up chasing a mouse.  I’ll bet you are thinking, “Hey, at least they are good for catching mice.”  Not quite. They run, bang into things and have fun for about 10 minutes – long enough for me to be up and wide awake wondering where the heck that mouse is going- and then they lose the mouse. Lucky for me I ordered new mouse traps last week and they will arrive tomorrow. But I’ll probably be asleep when they arrive.

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Garden Vegetables I Enjoyed This Summer

(My New Hampshire garden.)

Throughout the summer my garden produced some delicious vegetables and herbs for my family to enjoy. I have been picking basil for months, and now that it’s October, I can still go out and grab a handful. This year I used the flowers from my zucchini in some stir fry and omelets.  I found a recipe for stuffed squash flowers, but never had the time to try it.

garden vegetables and herbs
Fresh Pickin’s From The Garden

I mostly grow radishes for fun, as they are not one of my favorite things to eat, and the peas were not very abundant so I ate them raw in salads.

Parsley is one of the best new plants that I enjoy all summer and it’s good for my kidneys too, so I eat it as much as I can.  Even now, it’s still sending off stalks for me to use, but I know the deer will be munching on it soon.

I even bought a dehydrator and dried some parsley and basil.  The basil took forever, but I may try some more parsley before it’s gone.  My local organic grocer has fresh parsley available year round, so I won’t have to do without.

Summer is a busy time.  Between getting the gardens ready to plant, weeding and picking and cooking, there is not enough time in my day for blogging.  Things are calming down, and all the pictures I have been taking for the past four months will now be added to my blogs.

I hope your gardening kept you busy this summer too, eating good, fresh food and enjoying beautiful flowers.

Hydrangeas at The End of Summer

pinky winky hydrangea
End of Summer Pinky Winky

It’s hard to believe that it is the end of summer now. I recently took some photos of the flowers remaining in bloom in the yard, and the Pinky Winky is one of the hydrangeas that still looks good.

Although the many deer that frequent my yard come to eat hydrangea buds and leaves, my Pinky Winky shrub still has flowers. They started white then began to show some light pink, and ended up dark pink with some white at the top. Some of the flowers are totally pink.

I think I will try to shape my hydrangeas better before they start blooming next year. This one could end up being a tall tree with the flowers standing upright out of the reach of deer maybe. Pruning will be an experiment, and hopefully I won’t mess up the plant so it won’t bloom. This year I let all my hydrangeas grow “wild” in any way they chose. It’s only their second year in my yard, so I didn’t want to mess with them too much. The Limelight plants are really long and droopy, but have loads of very pretty flowers. Those would do better if they were trimmed for next spring.

A Blue and A Lavender Flower

flowering hydrangea shrub
Endless Summer – Year 2

Last summer I planted this Endless Summer hydrangea variety in my front yard. This year it is larger and has bigger flowers. All flowers are blue except one which began as lavender and is now pink. You can see it in my photo here, on the right, lower side of the plant.

I guess my issue with this macrophylla type of plant is that the flowers are often hidden by the big leaves.  It’s also called a “big leaf” hydrangea.

The one with big white flowers is also hiding the beautiful blooms. I hope that in time, as the plants age and get stronger stems, that the flowers will show up better.

The plants are nice and healthy looking so I expect improvement each summer. This type will only be around 4 feet across. They don’t get really huge, to my knowledge.

The Big Leaf Hydrangea Variety

big hydrangea leaf blue flowers
Why It’s Named “Big Leaf”

The macrophylla hydrangea variety is also known as “big leaf” and I’m adding a photo here of my Endless Summer to show you the size of the leaves. This blue flowering plant is doing quite well.

The other macrophylla I have is Blushing Bride and it’s also blooming, but in white. It is also full of big, green leaves like this one. I’m hoping that as the plants mature, the flowers will show up better in stead of being hidden among the greenery.

The blue one has one big bloom on top which is slowing fading to lavender. And it has a small flower on the side which began as light lavender and is now changing to pink.

Go here to read more posts about the macrophylla hydrangea.

Pictures of My Backyard Raised Bed Tomato Garden

large fabric raised garden
The Bigger Fabric Garden

raised bed with tomatoes
The tomato bed as of mid-July

Here are two (before and after) pictures of my backyard gardens. I planted 4 tomatoes in this fabric raised bed back in June. I added a few basil plants and radishes around the edge. As you can see, by mid July they are growing like crazy. I haven’t eaten any tomatoes yet, they are still green. I have one red grape tomato that I will probably eat tomorrow and that means there will soon be more that are ripe. All my fabric raised beds are doing well except for the potatoes, but I don’t know if they are just ready to be dug.

The potato stalks look like they are dying, so I hope when I dig down into the bag I will find potatoes worth eating. Those little turd bugs got ahold of the leaves while I was away for 10 days.  My carrots don’t look too good either.  I haven’t grown carrots for many years because I never had much luck with them getting large enough to use.

My concrete block raised bed is also doing well.  I have zucchini in that along with a couple of grape tomato plants.  I just ate boiled zucchini for breakfast!