I am crashing this afternoon, so it's on the couch for me, curled up under a few blankets (even though it's already in the 90°s outside ~ springs cool breezes are well and truly over), a couple of candles lit, surrounded with cats and books. Charlotte is on the counter rustling around suspiciously... I'm not sure if she is trying to quietly unpack the basket of plastic grocery bags or trying to be covert about her plans to get into the cabinets and break glasses until I lose the battle of will's and give her dinner early.
(It turned out to actually be both: I found the bundled up grocery bags scattered around the counter when I had to go fish her out of the high kitchen cabinets after the glass clinking became concerning.)
All the other cats are dozing, and giving the whole house a quiet sleepy feel. Beatrice has found a pile of newly folded towels, because of course she has, and has somehow managed to sprawl herself over all of them at once. George has taken refuge from Charlotte's bullying on his favorite perch on thr back of the couch. How a large orange tom can be so badly bullied by a little imp of a tortoise shell barely half his size I'll never know!
At least James is above it all, curled up in my nest of books. He's that lovely sort of cat who gives a hum when you pet them, as if they are curious why you interrupted their nap, but are still happy that it's you. He's quite old now, at least seventeen, but still doing well. I'm still hoping he'll make it to twenty ♡
A part of me finds it funny, thinking of seventeen as old, when I am surrounded by such long lived creatures as my box turtles. Some of them might already be as old as eighty, and many of my younger ones will probably end up outliving me.
We were lucky enough to find enough wood put out for heavy trash a few weeks ago to build another turtle pen. I plan on planting it with hardy garden palnts, with plenty of places to dig and hide along with steping stones for me that double as basking spots. This will be for the healthy adult turtle~ladies. Once we mend and plant the original pen, that will be for the healthy adult gentleman, leaving the heavy duty covered pen to be devided into two ~ one for disabled turtles Georgiana, Walter, Milly, and Daphne, and the other half for the small young turtles until they are old enough to join one of the adult pens.
For a couple years now I have been wanting to try growing a turtle vegetable garden. They don't seem to mind eating the greens from our gardens that we find too bitter or tough, and have been loving the two huge wild lettuce plants that popped up in our garden this year from who knows where. One of the wild lettuce plants is nearly as tall as I am and about to bloom, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed I can gather the seeds and start more growing right away around the edges of the new turtle pens, along with dandelions, kale, parsley, wild arugula, and whatever lettuce, spinich, collard, or other leafy greens I find can stand to grow in our summer heat the longest. If you have any ideas of green vegetables that can grow in up to 100°F heat, I would love more ideas!
I've been in a reading mood lately, and have ended up reading about eight different ones at once, as I always seem to. I am reading the corresponding chapter of Stillmeadow Calender by Gladys Taber each month, and it is a beautiful look at living in the Connecticut countryside ~ a world nearly as fantastic to a Texas city girl as fairyland. April was so busy for us that I am having to catch up and read the chapters on April and May now.
I have also begun to read Dracula for the second time after I ran into an article pointing out that since the novel is written in the form of dated diary entries and letters, you can read it as a sort of real time experience if you begin on May 3rd, ending on, I believe, November 6th. It is the first time I have read it since university, and I have been finding it so much more interesting this time, filling it with many more notes then I did the first time around. It is so much nicer to read a book when you dont have papers and tests weighing on your mind! And it will be interesting to see if I can keep this up all the way through to November.
Last night when I ended up with an especially nasty bout of insomnia I began reading Kristin Kimball's memoir The Dirty Life. My mom gave it to me years ago after she read it, and I just kept forgetting to pick it up ~ I'm trying to get better about working through my TBR pile this year! The sort of farm she and her husband run is not the sort I dream of (mine involves many more bees and flowers, wool bearing sheep and goats and llamas, along with as many rescued animals as I can afford 😂), but I am really enjoying reading about the more nitty gritty aspects of the day to day wildness that is living off the land. I am nearly half way through it, and I believe the author wrote a follow up memoir a few years ago. I'm quite interested to see how their farm grew and changed after their first year that is covered in The Dirty Life.
The sun is beginning to set, and Beatrice has moved from her throne of towls on the counter to my lap, and Charlotte has finally calmed down enough to curl up next to me, which James has taken to mean he needs to wash her throughly. Four years since we got the girls as kittens and they are still James' babies ♡
I hope you are all having a beautiful May.
All my love,
Lucia
