Day 10, Alive. Much to the chagrin of WC and BC, Butterfly is now the FIRST being to which I attend upon arrival in the kitchen. Get out the stool, climb up on the counter, check (1) is there water in the saucer? and (2) is the butterfly in sight? Negative and affirmative. Add water to saucer to see if the butterfly reacts. Yes. Verify that there is fruit available. Yes. Add a little more pomegranate molasses (closest thing I have to nectar.) Next up: Chez Cat responsibilities. 🙂
To my great surprise the butterfly is still with us. No, I have not named him. Yes, I did indeed go out and buy a bouquet of flowers for his enjoyment. It’s considered “enriching the environment”. It did not occur to me until after I strewed them about that they were going to die because they wouldn’t have water. I’ll either need to accept that fact and do nothing about it, accept it and clean up the dead flowers, or go buy more live flowers for the butterfly. I’ll let you guess which option is the most likely to occur. I’m definitely rethinking my former love of butterflies.
No surprise, WC is still with us as well. We had a day where we were sure that “this was it”. We’ve had many of those days. Yet again WC has rebounded, yowling to be fed if I don’t move quickly enough upon a demure meow. She’s still jumping up on furniture, cruising the downstairs. Checking out the humidifier is of great interest to both WC and BC. WC also likes to let me know when the litter pads need changing. WC likes to keep the staff alert and responsive. She has my husband completely under her paw. I suggested he and I might watch TV together. He looked distinctly uncomfortable and said that there was no room for me on the couch with him and WC, and that besides the couch was messy from her “issues”, and that really I wouldn’t enjoy being next to her. I have been displaced. And you all wonder why I am so cranky so much of the time.
I’m very disappointed in my readership, I must confess. NOT ONE of you posted to let me know how long I might anticipate sharing my kitchen with the butterfly. Do you not realize that I need to climb up on the counter in order to see it? To refresh the water in the saucer? To make sure there is still food rotting in case it deigns to eat? Do you not realize that at this close proximity it is much more like a BUG than a butterfly??? I had to turn to the internet for hope – and you know how dangerous THAT can be. “For example, a swallowtail butterfly generally lives from six to 14 days while a monarch butterfly can live from seven to nine months.” Day 6. (and counting)
I have NEVER wanted to be a veterinarian. NEVER. I don’t really have a problem with elderly sick human beings, but sick animals sends my stress-o-meter to outer space (because “sky-high” was insufficiently indicative). And yet, here I am.
The butterfly cannot fly. My son and I learned on one of my Arizona excursions, when we went to Butterfly Wonderland, that emerging from a cocoon is a precarious experience for butterflies. Although it’s “natural”, it’s not necessarily without complications and problems. My butterfly appears to have had a bit of an issue with his emergence. And I am pretty sure that he is a “he” given the source material on the internet. 🙂 And my sister (the true source). His left wing is damaged and he cannot fly. I figured this out yesterday because I kept finding him lower and lower within the kitchen, even when I’d moved him back up higher.
When he landed in the kitchen sink, my husband wanted to “put him out of his misery”. I’m not sure butterflies have misery or existential despair. I rejected the proposal and told my husband to get the butterfly up onto one of the succulents in the bay window. Note that *I* wasn’t going to touch it. Eeew. It’s still all and all a bug. So the butterfly was deposited on the one non-succulent – a bromeliad that flowered beautifully last year but has done zilch since then. However that bay window overlooks both the sink and the dish drainer and I did NOT want to deal with another incidence of sink butterfly. I got out my aluminum foil and lined the edge of the window, making a barrier/landing zone for when (note: when, not if) the butterfly falls out of a plant again. He appears able to walk, and walk UP things, but the flying is not going to happen. Please – someone – how long do butterflies live??? I’m really NOT loving the aluminum foil. I’m really REALLY not loving the anxiety and stress of trying to find him when he is not visible. I went to take a picture of the lovely aluminum foil arrangement and I CAN’T FIND HIM.
And there is WC. Sigh. WC is old and sick. But NOT miserable enough for us to assist her on her way to her next incarnation. We are miserable enough that I personally am ready to leave her and my husband and see what my next life will be, but BC has nixed that. WC is very arthritic. Deaf. Weak. Wobbly. Starving to death (literally – her thyroid is burning food as fast, if not faster, than she ingests it. Yet she’s also extremely picky about the food as in – “yeah, I ate that flavor 30 minutes ago, what else do you have?” I’m grateful that she is still heading for the litter box, and remembering basic training, but her success rate is diminishing. We blame all the digestive upheavals on her, not BC, but I concede that might be unfair.
Every few days my husband and I say “I think she’s REALLY failing now.” We exchange sad glances, agree to wait 24 hours, and go on our way. The next day WC not only gets up on the couch, she gets up onto the BACK of the couch. She plays with the red laser dot. She yells at my husband to go sit on the couch and watch tv so she can snuggle up next to him. She is NOT ready to transition. I can’t transition her if she is still going about her daily routines, checking out events (when there is sufficient vibration or visual clue for her to know something is happening). Every day I run an analysis: am I being more cruel or more accepting? When is it abuse as opposed to loving and accepting a family member’s issues?
She might be “just a cat” to some people, but she’s our WC and we love her. That means I have to support her decision to not go gently into the night.
Isn’t that what you say when you cover your ears so you can’t hear what someone is saying to you? La la la la la la la. I do NOT have the energy today to deal with macro issues: return to school? presidential election? senatorial elections? college football? eating out? La la la la la la.
Unfortunately for me, my little micro concerns were also difficult this week. Sigh. So no cat pictures today – still a little bit too sad about GC for that. Which leaves me only the garden and yard for an escape. Oh – and food. There is always food, right?
Let’s do food first. My husband has been cooking. His new obsession is making pot stickers from scratch. I can assure that yes, you CAN get bored with eating pot stickers. The last two times he suggested it I vetoed the idea. That got me homemade pasta with sauce (oh yum yum yum) and a delicious flatbread pizza. I also got a crustless quiche. You can tell from the photo that he LOVES cooking tomatoes. I’m not as fond of cooked tomatoes as he is but at the moment they are still preferred over yet more pot stickers. The night he made the pasta he made a tandori sauce to go on it. Out of this world delicious. Remember Snuffles, the treat loving dog from Quick Draw McGraw? That describes the 4 of us having dinner. My brother-in-law is usually the bread baker, as I’ve told you. His breads are beyond compare. He was busy all day, however, so baking the challah fell to me. It was good, but it convinced me to get myself a bread thermometer. I worried about it being under-baked so I gave it more time than I thought it probably needed. I’d rather have it that way, even though over-baking means leftovers dry out faster.
The local news reported today that July was the hottest month on record for New Jersey. As everyone commented – tell us something we DIDN’T know. When I was a young lass, maybe all the way up to my 30s, NJ summers were my favorite weather. Hazy hot & humid did not faze me. Now that I am older, I have more empathy for those who complain about NJ summers. The humidity wipes me out. I learned in Arizona that temperatures above 100 are probably more heat than I enjoy, but I can go up into the 90s and have no problem if it is dry. I finally understand the phrase “it’s not the heat it’s the humidity”. Yes, it’s the humidity. And the dratted no-see-ums that are eating me alive every time I water the plants. My legs are covered with scratched bites and scabs. My legs look like the legs of a grade schooler (if there were still such a thing as grade school – oh wait – do NOT go there). My wonderful husband heard me moaning every night after watering the plants and bought me mosquito netting pants!!!! They do work! The problem, I think, for me is that I sweat so heavily from the humidity, that it is still attracting them through the pants. The number of bites is greatly reduced but I still got bitten the other night. I think I’ll try spraying the pants with insect repellent and see if that makes any difference. I could try to get up early when there are fewer bugs about but mostly I get up that early to make sandwiches.
I came home from making sandwiches yesterday and went to pull into my driveway. And I stopped. There was a man from the utility company walking out of my driveway and 5 orange cones IN my driveway. I rolled down my window and looked at him, and asked “What are you doing?” He explained that he had cleared it with the man in the house (*grin* I said – my husband, he said – I didn’t want to presume, I said – wise approach these days). The apron of the driveway was damaged when we got the new gas and electric to the house back in February or whenever it was. They are finally getting around to repairing it. He said we couldn’t drive on it for 3 or 4 days. That means no convertible – it is in the garage. Too bad, because the temperatures are only supposed to be in the 80s for the rest of this week. Of course, the humidity is also supposed to be in the 80s. It’s not the heat, it’s the humidity.
Last year I mentioned that I should plant lots and lots of canna lilies because the butterflies seemed to really enjoy them. I have only seen 2 butterflies this year so far. I showed you the monarch butterfly on the butterfly weed. There has also been a black swallowtail I’ve seen periodically. The swallowtail seems to check out everything but the things I planted specifically to make butterflies happy. It seems to really like the echinacea. I saw it today checking out the herbs, tomatoes and superbells, but it flitted away before landing anywhere. Camera-shy I guess.
I planted 2 gardenias this year – one in a hanging pot and one in a pot along the front walk. I believe that the one in the hanging pot was burned out by the hot weather, after managing to produce 2 flowers in the late spring. The one along the walk has produced one full bloom. It does smell heavenly.
Not only has it been humid, we’ve gotten a lot of rain. The fun part is when it rains in the evening so I don’t have to brave the no-see-ums and can skip watering the plants. Apparently it has been even wetter than I realized. This week my neighbor’s lawn has sprouted mushrooms. Every day they have gotten larger and larger. There must be a good story to write there but at the moment I only have the illustrations. 🙂 If they get much larger they are going to cross the line from impressive to creepy.
Then of course there are the canna lilies. The “rescued” cannas have been thriving in the pots along the walk. FINALLY one of the ones I planted has begun to bloom. I get very impatient in the spring. Even knowing things will grow, I don’t want a lot of empty space that needs weeding and looks neglected. I cram way too many plants into one area. I have this gorgeous stupendously tall canna right smack in the middle of the lawn garden. Beautiful. BUT – crammed in that spot are 2 Rose Mallows, perennials that are in the hibiscus family. One of them was doing quite well before the canna began shooting up. The other is nestled under a canna leaf. When I can brave the biting-bug-filled lawn to go there, I rearrange it to be in front of the leaf. But somehow it always resets to under and behind. I hope it is sufficiently rooted to survive.
I like so many flowers, and I’ve now got so many perennials. I want MORE rudbeckia laciniata hortensia, but I’m not sure where I can put them. I will have to pull out the firecrackers or chop down the variegated grass. Or pull out the rudbeckia laciniata (single bloom rudbeckia). That might work, except I also have the goose neck flowers there and I added the swamp milkweed as well. Sigh. Maybe I should put a border garden along the walk? That gets lots of sun.
Whatever it is that snuck into my planters now has flowers. I can’t wait to see what I’m growing. I thought that purple-edged leaf vine was a sweet pea vine – that’s what I was calling it in my head. But it’s not, according to my search. According to my search I have no idea what it is, other than beautiful. I also have no idea what to tell the lad who cuts my grass. I’m tired of moving pots and putting them back. I think I’ll tell him to just ignore the grass under the vines. *laughing* There isn’t really any grass, is there? My lawn is really nothing but weeds. 🙂
The weather is definitely cooling. It’s still summer, but we hear and sense Fall approaching. I know this because my husband and I are both back in the kitchen cooking. 🙂 He wokked two meals last week and I made another summer salad. Once the humidity dropped last week I felt energized sufficiently to tackle a new recipe. I decided to make the Mediterranean Cracked Wheat Salad. I’ve made tabouli before, usually from a box mix. I’ve also bought it pre-made from the store. I’ve never done anything fancy with it. As I mentioned in my Wheatberry Salad post, I have always shied away from “things” in my food. I also mentioned that I seem to be overcoming that attitude, thank goodness!
This cracked wheat salad is the last of the recipes I saved at the start of the summer, when I was searching for tasty, healthy food that wouldn’t require heating up the kitchen. This recipe called for boiling some water, but that was it for ‘cooking’. The rest was chopping and combining. I wasn’t able to pull anything from my garden for this salad. I’d already snacked on all of the grape tomatoes and I discovered that caterpillars were embedded in my parsley. Given all my support for butterflies, I abandoned my parsley to the caterpillars and used dried parsley. (If I identified the caterpillar correctly, it will be a black swallowtail, which makes sense.)
I had to substitute on the peppers as well, since I did not find pepperoncini peppers at the farmers’ market. I used jalapeno peppers. I’d like to try again with the pepperoncinis because jalapeno is still a bit hot for my taste. My husband, however, loved it. My other change was to ditch the olives. I don’t like olives. I knew I’d just pick them out of the salad, I wouldn’t eat them, and if I didn’t tell my husband that they were missing he’d never know. 🙂 No olives. I loved the taste and look of the julienned radishes. That’s something that would have never occurred to me. See – learning new things. I followed the instructions to only pour some of the dressing on the wheat/vegetable mixture. When I decided it need more dressing, rather than pouring or spooning it on, I used a fork. That way I was getting mostly the ingredients in the dressing and not much of the oil and lemon juice. That kept the mixture from becoming soggy yet it all got some of the dressing. Next time I will probably reduce the olive oil and juice.
This passed our taste test! We are both enjoying it, it’s going fast. It was easy to make, very clear directions which anticipated things such as liquid remaining after the wheat had been absorbing the directed amount. Definitely another keeper for the kitchen files!
Thanks again to Lisa at Garlic & Zest for sharing the recipe!
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