Thursday, January 26, 2012

fucking cats: year of the plagues round 2


Year of the plagues.  Round 2.

The squirrels finally figured out how to get onto the bird feeder.  When they finished eating all the seeds, they bit the feeder and shook it.  It hangs empty on the corner of Zelda's tiny house, battered and abandoned.  Possibly for the best: the cats were starting to stalk around there anyway.

We've been using the city's compost system since they implemented it at the beginning of November.  The ex worm bin is a muddy pit with bits of wood and metal poking out.

When the chickens got ate up, Jeff put the rest of their feed and a plastic-wrapped cube of cedar bedding up in the rafters of the garage.  Last week he pulled down what was left of the bag (it had been sprinkling the floor and our hair for a couple months) and dumped it under the swings, exposing a half dozen little mice and their nest full of pinkies.  Sweet, filthy little animals.  Who knows how many generations they raised in the garage, but there was shit on everything.  He ran the shop vac with his respirator on for a whole afternoon.


One half of the relatively neglected zone under the plastic must have gotten inoculated by moss at some point, because it is greener than green under there.  As Zelda would say, wee-owd.  The up-side is that the moss keeps the cats from shitting all over that half.


The other half of the bed at some point became the neighborhood cat-box.  I never really had a love for these beasts.  They are annoying, predatory toward all the wrong things, and self-satisfied.  But shitting in my arugula?  WTF!


Take a nice close look at the crazy mold that loves cat shit.

So.  Worse than last year?  Dunno.  Will I be beaten?  Dunno.  Can I ever eat food from the middle bed again?  Dunno.  Why is it ok to kill mice and rats and worms but not cats?  Because some people love cats.  Why?  Dunno.

Saturday, January 7, 2012

winter salad





- the crisp, pale center of a raggy head of escarole
- the small, floral leaves of parsley and salad burnett
- the first firm, dark cutting of winter arugula, grown at a snail's pace in a mossy bed and no less delicious for it 
- any sweet bits left in the lettuce patch

add a cucumber, grown in a greenhouse in Idaho and drug here in the bottom of a cooler, and the last bits of a jar of lemon pickled beets.  oil, salt, eat.

Tuesday, January 3, 2012

New Year

New Kitchen?


I have a special place where I keep my dreams about this space, but the truth is that no dream could stand up to the reality.  The food and friends and love and light and just plain hours that have gone into this room show on every surface.  Lane said: "I love what you've done to the place.  It's just so messed up."  and I have to agree.  Jeff hates to hear it, but this is an expression of how we live.


I'm starting to think that 2012 might be the year we grow up and stop pinning recipes to the wall and put some tile there instead.  If that's true, it will be a wonderful (easy to clean) thing.  But I will look back at this kitchen with great fondness.  I like to make a big deal out the choices we are trying to make for how the new kitchen will look and work, but really, I already have everything I need.  I cook here every day; it holds the people I love; and I can see my garden from here.