Marcel is the Reincarnation of Floyd

Folks, we have a problem child. Our tuxedo cat Marcel, is 2-1/2 years old and is already our $600 free cat. If you recall, the first $400 was when he went missing the first time and a neighbor on the other side of a busy road 6 blocks away found him in her kitchen and took it upon herself to have him neutered, chipped and vaccinated at Cats Expensive before we got him back.

The next vet bill came when he went for a ride on top of Roland's van before bailing and splitting his lip open on landing. That was $200.

This next exploit didn't cost us money, but Marcel went missing for three days, only for Roland to discover him howling, locked inside of the neighbor's detached storage shed. He got grabbed and carried home across the street to get food and water.

The other week, he came home with a plastic bag tied around his neck with a note in it. The person who wrote it wondered if he belonged to anyone and if not, they would like to keep him. It turned out that the note writer is the neighbor behind us who adopted Goki when the neighbor to the south moved away. Goki passed away and they were looking for another cat. Roland, in so many words told them to take a number.

There's a long line of neighbors who would love to adopt Marcel. He visits everyone, especially when there's kids and cat treats involved. He has specific spots he likes to hang out in so he can ambush Mamah, Furbert and Snorky on tootsie walks around the block. He also stays out in all sorts of nasty weather, only to show up soaking wet, which he doesn't seem to mind given the thickness of his coat.

I found this cartoon posted on my Facebook wall which pretty much sums up his life. The only difference is that the sofa may change day to day.

There's A New Cat On the Block

As you probably could tell, I haven't been adding any posts for the past several months. It's not for a lack of ideas, but for a lack of time. I got a new day job at a local nursery - Christianson's Nursery - up in Mount Vernon, closer to my Arlington home than to Ballard. I'm actually earning a few bucks doing stuff like this, but for someone else. I haven't been down at Mog Cottage to work in the veg garden, much less write about it. I didn't get the garlic and fava beans planted this fall. It's all looking rather weedy and dead. The last time I was down there, I discovered a beautiful purple cauliflower that had turned to mush in our big fall freeze. Such a shame. I do have kale; such a reliable food crop. I got the cold frame ready for winter lettuce, but I didn't plant any seeds. The garden is not on Roland's radar, so he doesn't think to check on things so much. He does keep the orchids and houseplants watered, upon penalty of death. I'm hoping that I can make it down more often and keep it going. Working from home several days per week with the office laptop is a goal that I'm striving for. That change along with longer daylight will make things easier, I think. I hope.

Geoffrey with the scab on his nose.

It seems at some point, no matter where I'm at, a new mog makes itself present, sooner or later. There is a resident cat at Christianson's; a big fluffy black cat named Bamboo. At some point in November, he got into a hellacious fight with an interloper and ended up at the vet getting stitches. A large pile of mostly black cat fir was found behind one of the greenhouses. Now, John Christianson wasn't going to put up with that, so he set out the trap he uses to trap other live vermin. Several days later, a very large gray and white cat fell for it. He also was rather beat up, with a big, bloody gash on his nose. The staff was rather concerned with his fate and didn't really want to take him to the Humane Society for fear he would get euthanized. But no one at our nursery could take him....except.....for me. I'm such a sucker for a fur face in need.

"Oh, why not," said I, making up excuses to myself. "All the mogs and the dog are down south, so I can fill the empty space in my house with this one." 

I told the staff that I would take him in a couple of days, so he got stashed in the potting shed with a cat box, food and water. Now being a potting shed, there was ample soil about, so the litter box stayed unsurprisingly clean. When you're used to using the ground, then kitty litter doesn't seem so nice compared to lovely, clean potting soil. Even when you have to dig your own hole in just the right spot. It's like choosing Charmin tissue over news print.

Now, anyone who's ever dealt with a stray cat knows that they tend to be strays for a reason. The consensus was that he got dumped. Apparently, the nursery is a favorite dumping ground because the perception is that they will be taken care of with all of the other animals housed there. Who knows why he appeared. He has a notch in his ear like he's been caught, neutered and released. You would think that he was very timid and wild, but this cat turned out very different indeed. 

Having trapped him inside, wondering to myself if this was such a great idea, I listened to constant yowling for 3 days. He spent a majority of his time pacing, trying to figure out how to get out. I didn't want him to wander off in search of his old territory. I planned to keep him inside until he decided that this was a good place for him to be. After an initial night of zero sleep, I turned on the fan and shut my bedroom door to drown him out as best I could, but he could get quite loud at times. I started letting him out into the garage just so he could go out some door. During that period, I came up with the name, Geoffrey (after Geoffrey Chaucer, the father of English Literature, of course). He just looks like a Geoffrey to me.

At around a week, I finally relented and opened up the door to the great outdoors. He spent the entire day outside, no where to be seen. Hoping that I didn't do something stupid, I periodically opened the door and called for him. No Geoffrey. Finally around 9 pm that night when I was thinking of climbing under the covers for the night, I opened the front door one last time and there he was, sitting on the door mat. He came in and went straight away to the food trough. After eating, he jumped on the bed and started to purr. The big, ugly scab on his nose had fallen off, revealing the soft, white fuzz of returning fur.

When I first brought him home,  all I had was Kitten Chow, leftover from Marcel's kitten days, and dog food.  I figured he probably hadn't had a good meal in a long time, so the extra calories wouldn't hurt. I would finish up the bag. That didn't take long because he's a pig. He hoses down his food like a big shop vac, a sign of an animal who didn't know where his next meal was coming from and when. In fact, Geoffrey gets very agitated when his kibble dish is empty. No matter where I am in the house, he cries at me and leads me to an empty dish. Not wanting him to get fat, I changed to a crunchy-granola brand of adult cat food. I learned how much an adult male cat can eat after he woke me up at 1 am, hurling what seemed like a gallon of Terracotta colored liquid all over my duvet cover. After another hurl on the carpet the next day, I put him back on Kitten Chow. He's been doing fine on that ever since. His fur is very soft, fine and he gives himself a daily bath.

Geoffrey turned out to be a big blob who loves attention, slobbers like a St. Bernard when getting head scratches and does cute kitty poses when I try to ignore him. My furniture and person is constantly being covered in cat spit and he's a bit of a retard with the claws. He's very polite, asking permission to jump on my lap and on the bed and best of all, he doesn't spray! He has also decided that being indoors is a pretty good deal. He goes out just long enough to fight with the neighbor's cats. The neighbor's cats sit on my arbor over my front porch and while rubber necking, spy down through a window into the living room, looking for the interloper. Peeping Toms. But increasingly, Geoffrey spends 90% of his time inside, asleep on the down throw on the sofa or on my side of the bed.  I think he's decided to stick around and I'm glad he did.

Mystery Mushrooms

Mystery mushrooms

What a surprise to come out into the garden one morning and discover that all those arborist chips laid out in the pathways around the planting beds harbored a crop of their own. With all the recent rain, mushrooms are now popping up everywhere. Since arborist chips are made up of decaying plant materials ground up from removing or pruning out trees, this recent discovery actually makes some sense. Sometimes I wish I had the time and expertise to know my mushrooms beyond Chanterelles and Morels. Mushrooms are expensive to buy in the store. Having a potential bonanza in one's yard is a plus. A neighbor actually had several Morel's popping up out of his chips surrounding his blueberry bushes. No such luck here.

The underside

There is a concern that mushrooms can harm happless pets that dine on them. I don't think our mob would bother. Besides being over fed, our cats act psycho pretty much year around, regardless when mushrooms appear. Our dog stays inside other than being on a leash outside. Don't know about these guys, but some mushrooms make good dye materials, giving off unusual, hard to get colors of purples and blues.

But, since I'm no expert and really don't have time to research all of this, I'll just enjoy these gems as a curiosity and remember that many mushroom fruiting bodies represent root rot in trees.

Potatoes in a Can: Some Harvest!

Potatoes dumped out in the shape of the can.

Now that the growing season is starting to wind down, the potatoes were ready to harvest. Excited to see the yield, I dumped the can over onto a tarp. I immediately saw several large potatoes and a lot of roots around the perimeter of the molded soil. What I ended up with was less than exciting though; only 8.5 pounds of the spuds, total. That will last us a couple of months at most.

The idea of this experiment was to grow potatoes in a way that you don't end up damaging them during the digging out process. Plus, I didn't want to use other traditional stacking methods such as old tires which contain all sorts of nasty chemicals or wood which is heavier to move and not as convenient. So, with that said, I've decided to give it a whirl next season with a few adjustments.

The yield doesn't look promising.

First, I'm going to plant a little earlier, add more compost and still fertilize with some bone meal. Second, when I add more soil to keep up with the growth, I'm going to add a few more seed potatoes to the mix, to maximize the number of plants I can squeeze into the can.

I have to admit, it was a slick system for harvest. After picking out all the potatoes, I simply discarded the greens into the compost and then scooped the soil back into the can and put the lid on. Nice and neat. We need all the help we can get in that department. I figure I can get another use out of the potting soil mix which was an investment. And I might get some more potatoes out of it, as many of the roots and perhaps some microscopic seeds remain.

Not as much as I had hoped.

In the mean time, there's an explosion of tomatoes, another nightshade family crop. I'll be freezing some sauce and drying skins for concentrated tomato seasoning. You can read about that technique here.

Weeding With A Flame Thrower

Doing in the weeds while trying not to torch the Lavenders.

Sometimes you just have to get out the big guns. The minute my back is turned, the weeds know and burst forth in abundance. Now, I'm not one to advocate nasty chemicals. One solution would be to use salt. Another, vinegar. I've tried them all. I've mulched and pulled and planted out, but there are times when you just can't win.

Not liking the idea of contributing to Ortho or Bayer, I tried one last trick in the book. Fighting Fireweed with well,  fire. Instead of supporting Bayer, I was about to run off to the garden center and get one of those propane torches designed to target weeds. You simply blast them with 1500 degrees of fire that cooks their little roots. Then Roland proclaimed out of the blue that he had a torch. After he dug through his work van for a while, he brought out what I would describe more as a flame thrower. Not the cute little tip that heats an area the size of a quarter. No, this thing could take out a large shrub!

No, I'm not burning my toes off!

So, I set up the hose in order to grab it and spray out any unnecessary fires that developed and got to work. The whole apparatus consists of a 3 inch torch end connected by a hose to a large tank; the kind that usually gets attached to gas barbeques. You squeeze a handle on the torch like you would a watering wand. Upon my first blast, a napalm size flame shot out and took out the weed, head to toe. It also took out some of the lavender, which is highly flammable due to its essential oils. So, I decided I'd better wet down the areas first where I wanted to torch these invasive opportunists. That worked better. I only took out several lower lavender branches when I got too close.

It worked really well on most everything except of course, creeping buttercup. If hell has a weed, it's creeping buttercup. A week later it was baaaaaack.

I'll have to admit, I had a distinct feeling of power and satisfaction while setting the weeds on fire. "Take that you #%!&#! weeds!"

By the way, the torch also works well starting charcoal to barbeque. A few seconds of blasting flame and the charcoal is lit.

Stubby the Squirrel Gets In On the Act

Corn feeding apparatus.

It's that time of year when the first harvest is just starting to come in and planting for a fall crop is in place. In trying to keep some semblance of control with the whole thing, I've found that there's been an interloper getting in on the act.

We've been putting out dried ears of corn on the squirrel bungee cord hanging on the front porch for our resident squirrel, Stubby (click here for the scoop on that story). We were wondering how one squirrel can go through so much corn. She's the only squirrel we've seen on the cob, and it gets replaced every couple of days with a fresh ear. Well, this spring came the answer, when corn plants started growing all over the planting beds, especially in the parking strip.We also have pumpkins growing everywhere and they look like sugar pumpkins which is fine with me. 

The three sisters, courtesy of Stubby.

The fact that the squash and pumpkin were planted among some peas I have growing wasn't lost on me. Stubby inadvertently completed the three sisters, a traditional way of crop planting by Southeast Native-Americans, although the legumes used were beans, not peas. The corn loves the nitrogen fixed by the peas and the squash shade the roots and keep the peas cool and the moisture in. The corn stalks closest to the peas are the tallest. The peas can grow up the corn. This fall it'll be succotash time. And pumpkin pie time too. Hopefully the corn is a kind that is edible by humans and hopefully the coons won't discover it first. Corn is coon candy. Of course Stubby gets a share. After all, it was her handy work.

I have to keep on top of the squirrel planted pumpkins in the blueberry beds. The leaves of the squash are prickly, difficult to work around and shade out the ripening blueberries. They also shade out the cranberry bushes as well, so I've had to make sure that any errant leaves get pruned off.

New corn coming up in the Camelia sink!

I'm surprised the corn even germinated after being dried and bagged for squirrel use. I wonder how many neighbors are growing (or not growing) corn as well.

This morning we just discovered a new batch of corn sprouting in the Camellia sink!

Using Russian Comfrey for Compost Tea

Purple/blue flowers places Comfrey in the Borage family.

Out of all of my gardening resources, I've found more useful info from Prince Charle's book, Organic Gardening. One of the topics that I found most intriguing was his use of Russian Comfrey Bocking 14 hybrid (Symphytum x uplandicum) as a composting tea. His gardeners at Highgrove not only use it in the ornamental beds and kitchen garden, but also on house plants. So, of course I had to get some.

As it turns out, Bocking 14 Comfrey is a superior variety for composting tea. It is fast growing, very high in nutrients and does not set seed nor does it have a creeping root system that will take over your garden. Once established, its leaves can be cut three to four times a year, with the final harvest in the fall. I have it planted next to my cold frames.

Liquid Comfrey tea is made by steeping the cut, bruised leaves (whack ‘em on a tarp with a hoe or crush the leaves by hand if used in smaller quantities) in a container of water. As the leaves rot down, add more leaves with more water. The result is an extremely stinky, putrid brew (hold your nose, folks) rich in nitrogen and phosphorus and particularly high in potash. The leaves are also full of silica, calcium, iron, magnesium and other essential nutrients to help your fruiting plants thrive. If you want to go and get all detailie about it, here's an article about the many uses and plant nutrients in Comfrey. There are several videos on the subject on YouTube.

Usually ready within 2 weeks after the first cut, apply as a 10% solution, or roughly 1-2 cups per gallon of water. I have it fermenting in a 5 gallon bucket. If you have a lot of it, use a rain barrel with some chicken wire on the bottom to access the liquid without clogging the spigot with slime. Keeping the lid loose, lets air in to help with the process. Some folk may even advocate a small fish tank pump to oxygenate the solution, as research has shown that compost tea is more effective when air is circulated through, although most recipes do not call for aeration. Perhaps that would tamp down the odor some. Other than that, one simply adds more water when adding more Comfrey, which also adds more oxygen anyway.

Another method is to simply place cut up leaves in a bucket with a weight on them. The leaves decompose into a black goo that is diluted 15:1, water to goo. This reminds me of making sauerkraut but instead you could call it comfreykraut, I guess.

Bocking 14 fermenting away in a bucket.

I have to say that it does smell like something died. After applying it, the garden stank for awhile. And the liquid formed a white film on top: perhaps a yeast of some sort? It also attracts flies, so keep away from doors and windows. I also use the leaves as a mulch for my beds. I just harvested my fava beans, so after whacking in their roots to take advantage of the nitrogen, I put a layer of Comfrey leaves on the beds with some compost over that. Let the leaves wilt a little first so they don't per chance, sprout. The leaves will compost in, replenishing the beds with nutrients. I've applied the tea to my tomatoes, annual flower containers and broccoli. This is best as a fertilizer for flowers, fruiting vegetables, berries and fruit trees. Root crops may seed too fast and lettuce may bolt. So far, the annuals have really popped alive.

Just 3 starts has given me enough Comfrey to keep my garden going well. Being a tuberous perennial herb, these plants should last for many years. I found Bocking 14 Comfrey mail order at Horizon Herbs out of Oregon.