Tag Archives: cat

My early May garden – and a bit of June

Posted on by

pergola ,sink ,summer house

It’s ages since I posted any photos of my garden, these photos were all taken in early May. It was such a slow, late spring and it seemed that the place would never green up, but it did eventually as you can see.

But now nearly three months since then the garden is looking much fuller, although after the very hot dry weather we’ve been having it’s only the clover in the grass that is keeping it looking green as the actual grass is yellow/brown. Below is heather, a type of sorbus, a small rhus and a silver birch. I must admit that I’ve planted a lot of things too closely together in my impatience to have something that looks like a garden quickly. I’ll have to move some things before much longer.

heather,sorbus, silver birch
The metal archway in the photo below has blown down several times in the strong winds that we get and Storm Hector turned up a couple of weeks after the photo was taken and flattened a lot of the garden as well as wrecking the arch completely, so we’ve since erected a much stronger wooden one. The garden is so different now though as the hot weather made everything explode into growth.
Scottish garden
The photo below was taken from the guest bedroom window.
path + summer house
The photo below is of an ornamental quince, I have two others, one white and the other apricot. The ‘bug hotel’ in the photo has been completely ignored by all bugs as far as I can see.
ornamental quince
The Princess Irene tulips lasted quite a long time, I presume they were named after a Dutch princess given that they’re a gorgeous vibrant shade of orange – the Dutch royal colour.
Princess Irene tulips

Princess Irene tulips

The rockery below is even more congested looking now. my hope is for most of the garden to be covered with plants, hoping that there will be fewer weeds to deal with if there’s no bare soil for them to get a hold in.
rockery
Below is a photo which I took in mid June and the warmer weather has worked wonders for the growth of everything. The cat seems to have adopted our garden – mainly to snooze in. The raised bed on the left has a lot of strawberry plants in it and we’ve had a real glut this year. I never thought I’d get fed up with strawberries – but I did and I ended up making jam with some of them.
pergola +cat
He’s known as Big Hairy Cat to us, but he lives in a house not far from us, although I suspect he’s trying to move to a home which has no dogs and children to contend with! I’m not encouraging him though.
lupins + cat

McNulty the cat

Posted on by

McNulty + cushion

I’m not in any hurry to become a granny, as some women often are, which is just as well because McNulty the cat which belongs to my youngest son and his partner is as close as we get to having a grandchild!

I’m not really a cat person myself and McNulty isn’t really a people person, he won’t sit on your lap, you have to feel honoured if he sits beside you on a sofa.

Anyway, when the large cat cushion appeared on his sofa McNulty had a staring contest with it, that’s one he was never going to win, but at some point McN decided that that cat was no threat to him and he’s now quite happy to sit beside the cushion.

We have no idea what McN had been up to while we went out to visit a garden centre, but he came back with very muddy paws and was absolutely shattered. He didn’t even get up to see us out as he normally does, in a very gentlemanly way. Mind you I think he is just making sure that we do indeed leave the premises and he doesn’t have to put up with those interlopers any more!

Mixter, maxter

Posted on by

It’s all mixter maxter was a favourite phrase of my mother’s, it means it’s all mixed up, or something is in a bit of a mess. Anyway, it describes this post as it’s a mixture of unrelated things which I meant to put on Pining at some point, but didn’t get around to.

Back at Christmastime I think I did mention that I don’t like those newfangled led lights which decorate our high streets nowadays, so cold compared with the bright warmth of the big coloured light bulbs of the past. No doubt the new ones are a lot more ecological and I suppose to the wee ones who haven’t witnessed the old ones there’ll still be something magical about the lights. This is what Kirkcaldy High Street looked like at Christmas 2013.

Back to the summer, and 2013 was a rare good one for us. These cacti are on one of my kitchen window sills. I think you either love or hate cacti and I’ve always loved them, the photo below is of a couple from my collection, it always amazes me that they bloom so beautifully.

Meet McNulty the cat, the most recent member of our extended family. I must admit that I’m more of a dog person, mainly I suppose because I’ve never had any dealings with cats but Gordon and Laura got McNulty from the Cat Protection League and he is settling in with them very well. In fact I think it’s safe to say that McNulty, named after a character in The Wire, has fallen on his paws as he is king of the castle now.

And he has a fine choice of chairs to laze on. McNulty is a bit of a mystery cat as nothing is known about him at all, he was taken to the cat protection people by a woman who said he kept trying to get into her house, but he wasn’t her cat. He is however quite overweight so someone had been feeding him. The vet has put him on a diet and he miaows pitifully for about an hour before dinner, but Gordon is firm and won’t give in to him, it’s for his own good.

In fact Laura says that McNulty reminds her of Six Dinner Sid, which is a book written by Inga Moore about a cat who gets meals from lots of different people. If like me you haven’t even heard of the book you can listen to the story on you tube below.