Nature Friday

The gardening starts in late March, when the flowers are still dormant. It is always discouraging because the idea that these plots of land, with skeletons of last year’s blooms shriveled and frozen, will be bursting with beauty seems futile. Almost nothing can grow in the barren wasteland.

Then, at first slowly, then rapidly, the flowers grow, the blooms burst open and your little garden has added beauty to the world. 

Mowing, weeding, mulching, and pruning take time but are rewarding. Mid-May is the best time for a gardener, before it gets hot and everything gets dry and burned.

The gardner keeps working and being rewarded as the roses burst open, the lilies bloom, and the white petals become colorful black eyed susans.

But it keeps getting hotter, and drier. The weeds multiply, and no amount of weeding or watering can up with them. And once the are our gardens in less than their full glory but a representation of resilience we can all learn from. 

Poetry Thursday

 

Our friend Teddy, who is One Spoiled Cat  

provided the following photo to inspire me on Poetry Thursday…

Garfield liked the weekend

Where he could sleep all day in bed

No one to please, no one to offend

No one to complain about what he said

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For Garfield weekends were much too short

Especially when you slept half the time

There was hardly time to cavort

To eat lasagna and drink the house wine

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On Monday Garfield didn’t go to work

And he would receive no check

He had a duty he could not shirk

He was on community service for treating Odie like a jerk

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He had hid Odie’s bowl

He had gutted the dog’s toys

Garfield chased him into a manhole

And performed an unauthorized operation removing Odie’s boys.

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This was not the first time Garfield had run afoul of the law

And the Judge threw the book at him hoping the cat would learn a lesson

He got sent to work in a dog shelter’s kitchen like a common scofflaw

It was a place Garfied found distress in

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Garfield chopped the beets and pounded the meat

He made the soup from scratch and a cookie batch

He put the bacon in the fryer and dirty bowls in the air dryer

Great meal chef the dogs said  before the left

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Garfield spent the day filled with rage

Praying for the time he could scamper away

Instead of being stuck in this kitchen cage

At least he finally had a reason to hate Mondays

Wordless Wednesday

 

Beat This Caption

 

George remembered having one final cat nip, two shots of tequila and the rest was a regrettable blur

Monday Question

Do you have a secret last name the your parents use when your given name is not enough?

Ruby's Answer: I am Ruby Rubenstien

I know, I don 't look Jewish

Ruby and the Wart Lady

On Saturday my mom and I go to work with my Dad, although he never actually stops anywhere long enough for it to be a place of work. 

In June, my Dad’s division of store sales was laid off en masse from General Mills. (To get revenge, I punched Pop from Rice Krispies in the face, then found out he works for Kellogg's. Regardless, the jerk had been getting hit because he was always popping.) Dad filed for unemployment and is still waiting for approval. Those social safety nets people talk about are only as good as the overworked or barely competent people who are holding the net. 

My Dad is almost 63, with tremors in his hands. If he were an NBA free agent, he would take a job where the only qualifications are having a license and not currently being in jail: DoorDash.

On Saturdays Mommy and I go with him to air out Mommy, and for me to keep her company. 

He usually works four hours, and was close to being done Saturday, when he got an assignment: To get wart cream.

There were drug stores close to her house, but the wart cream she wanted was ten miles and twenty minutes away. We were going to order pizza when Daddy was done and now we had to wait.

He drove to the store and went inside to find this one over the counter cream. And it had to be this one, not any wart removal would.

Frustrated, Daddy asked an associate where the wart removal cream was, and was asked where the wart was.

“It’s not for me,” Daddy said.

“Of course not sir,” the associate answered in a non-believing tone. He helped Daddy find the cream. On his way out of the store, the woman with the worrisome wart wanted to know where her cream was. Daddy told her it was on the way, and held his tongue that she would have had it by now if she didn’t want a bougee wart.

Driving back Daddy had to make another stop, and when he got to the wart lady’s house he left the wrong package and got an angry message from the wart lady, and had to return.

It took close to an hour to complete, and I got fed late, all because of a wart.

I am waiting for the day when someone asks him to get heavy-duty Depends. 

` 

Ruby Rose and the Hobo Code

 

I stay inside when it is hot out. My resting bitch face makes breathing thick air like trying to suck a hearty milkshake through a recycled paper straw.

By the end of the week the weather was comfortable and I emerged like a bear who hit the snooze alarm from May to August. The flowers were worse for wear. Flowers that sprout in April in the northwest are not supposed to survive a hundred degree heat.

I noticed some strange scratchings on the side of the house. My parents didn’t notice. They don’t have a dog’s memory. We memorize all we see, and if we see something different, we bark.

The scratches seemed to mean something, so when I returned back inside after a hearty five minutes enjoying the summer day I went on my I Paw and investigated.

I learned the scratches were based on the Hobo code, which was used by vagrants in the thirties to communicate which towns were safe, and not what Angel Hobo’s dad posts with lots of typos.

The code was written by dirty kitty, or most frequent under the porch resident,

The first scratchings symbolized that it was a safe place to sleep.Next to that was a fork, signalling that my house was a place you could get fed upon demand. Next to that was a man in a dress meaning if you asked the man who lives here for food he will give it to you right away. The drawing meant a man bitch lives here.

Next to that was a small drawing of a bed meaning there was a blanket under the porch for warmth and comfort.

Finally there was a picture of a dog’s face with a discoloration under the nose. It took me a lot of investigating to understand what this meant: The Little Dog who lives here thinks she is Hitler.

Damn Hobo cats. You open the space under the porch for them and they turn on you.