Frank and Zappa's Garden

Friday & yesterday the weather was feeling downright wintry, but today it warmed up to 8 degrees by evening. Not too bad, considering it is the 2nd of December.

We had a quiet Sunday at home – just the way I like it. I had some chores to do around the house of course, but it was still a pretty relaxed day.

I played with a new kitchen toy…

That would be a Petite Donut pan, for making baked donuts. I like to peruse food blogs, and I’ve been seeing recipes for baked donuts floating around out there for quite some time. I’ve thought I might like to try making some, so when I happened to see a donut pan while shopping last week, I went for it.

I used to enjoy cooking and baking. Lately, I’ll admit that I often don’t want to be bothered, even on the weekends. It’s nice to know that I can still enjoy puttering in the kitchen; I guess I just need something new to inspire me once in a while.

For my first attempt, I tried out the recipe that came with the pan. Cute little donuts, yes? Also tasty! Not something I’ll be doing every day, but it was a fun way to spend a Sunday morning in the kitchen.

This afternoon, I  finally got around to refilling the peanut feeder again. Within minutes, the jays were back.

We’ll see how long it takes them to empty the feeder this time.

I had a few leftover photos that I liked and thought I would post, but they are a few weeks old now. I was thinking they were all from October, but as it turns out, only one of them was taken in October, and on the 31st at that. Oh well, I still kind of like the post title I came up with and I don’t want to think of a new one. 🙂

October 31st: I tried to get a good shot of these baby deer during the summer when they still had their spots, but never managed. When the young ones are with them, the adults seem to keep them on the move.

Nov 1st: Is this a chickadee? Looks like one but I  never seem to hear them calling like I used to at home. Of course, just because I don’t hear doesn’t  mean they aren’t singing I suppose. I wanted to get a shot of this guy in the tree, because the colorful leaves made a nice backdrop. They don’t stay still for long though, which makes it hard to get a clear shot, so this is the best I could do (taken through the front window of course).

Nov 3rd: I took this from the front step. They don’t seem to mind you walking around in the area of the feeder, as long as you don’t get too close. We can’t keep the peanut feeder full. I filled it last weekend on Sunday, and when I got home from work on Tuesday I noticed it was empty.

This is often my view these days:

When the cooler weather rolls around, Zappa seems to think that my job is to provide a warm lap. He’s quite insistent in fact.

Yesterday we were out running around in the afternoon, and it was a balmy 11 degrees. I quite enjoyed it. It cooled off overnight, we actually saw snowflakes in the air today. The cats keep going back and forth between the patio door and their cat door in the basement as if they are looking for a magical doorway to warmer weather. They’ll adjust, of course, but it was rather a drastic difference.

I started a new song in my piano lessons last week. When I played it in this week’s lesson, my young piano teacher said the song sounded familiar, though she didn’t recognize the title. I replied that if she’s ever seen or heard anything about Hawaii, I’m sure she would have heard this song.

For my part, I had a flashback to elementary school. Some kind of show in the school library, where we had “grass skirts” made out of garbage bags and did a hula dance. No details other than that, but I remember the skirts.

I would rather it didn’t snow now. I think late December or even January is plenty early enough for snow. But our wood is finally stacked in the garage – I was seriously wondering if that was ever going to happen – so it won’t be a disaster if it snows now.

So, catching up on things…When last we blogged, it was mid-October.

October Tree

I was feeling a little overwhelmed what with Cory being ill and the washing machine being broken. At one point, in my agitated state, I stuck a bowl of grapes out on the deck because the fruit flies were driving me crazy; I forgot about it which led to…

Sad. 🙁

A raccoon stopped by to visit, ate the grapes, broke my solar light and left a pile of scat outside the patio door. I don’t begrudge him (or her) the grapes, but I really liked that light.

In other news, the peanut feeder was ignored all summer but now we can’t keep it full. The little birds land on it and peck away at it; the Jays extract whole peanuts and fly off with them.

More peanuts please!

The last weekend of October I  finally managed to get out and plant some garlic. While I was at it, I snipped a bunch of catnip to dry for the cats.

Cat Treats!

Every year I think I should dry some catnip before it dies off/gets buried by snow, but somehow I never get to it. So I finally did bring some in, the cats snitched some out of the basket, the rest I hung from the cat tree to dry and/or amuse the cats.

The first weekend in November Zappa was sick. We’d noticed toward the end of the week that he wasn’t acting like his usual self. By Saturday afternoon we realized he wasn’t  eating much, but it was too late to call the vet then. I spent a lot of the weekend in my chair, with my Kindle, letting Zappa sleep on my lap.

Monday we took Zappa to the vet, they did all kinds of test and could not find anything wrong, which was sort of good news because it eliminated a lot of things. Basically it seemed like Zappa might have the feline equivalent of the flu. But the vet said it was bad that he was not eating because that could lead to other problems (he’d already lost a pound and he had not had much excess fat to begin with). She said it was possible that he wasn’t eating because his stomach was upset, so we should buy some Pepcid AC, and give him 1/4 of a tablet once a day for a couple of days.

After two days, Zappa was eating again, though it took a bit longer than that for him to fully get back to normal. I found it fascinating, though, that a simple human medication could turn things around so quickly. Thank goodness for smart veterinarians!

Last weekend I finally got out on Sunday & Monday and cleaned up all my containers and stored things away in the garden shed. I still have to bring in the solar lights, but the hard work is done.

On Monday while I was finishing up the garden clean up, Cory moved last year’s wood to make room for the new wood. Then after lunch we went out and stacked the new wood in the garage. Cory lasted about half way through the pile (we only got  1 cord this year because we had a good amount left over) so he went in and I finished the rest. It was certainly a lot less painful than putting 2 cord away all by myself last year and it is a relief to have it done. I won’t say “let it snow”, but at least we are ready now if it does.

I need for it to stop raining. If we don’t get a good string of sunny days soon, I will lose my mind.

Cory has been on antibiotics since Saturday, and just had the first of 3 IV antibiotic treatments today, because of what the doctors say is a spider bite. My spider fear is not sounding so funny now, is it?

Let’s contemplate something more pleasant. This jay has recently been enjoying our peanut feeder.

How is your week going?

Taken September 24 @ 8:11 pm

Who knew you could point your camera up at the moon and take a decent photo?