Cindy’s Blog

See what the bunnies are doing to the basil? They’re turning it into basil trees. They’re nuts. They’re attacking everything, even the garlic, onions and mint they’re supposed to hate. It’s not like they don’t receive huge and varied amounts of food from me. Not good enough, apparently.

Behind this you can see the start of a fence that now surrounds the red clover field. There’s no other way to keep them out of it.

Here they are enjoying the clover field before it was fenced off. Do they look underfed to you?

Ed comes in for a snuggle with Lucy while Fred relaxes.

Aren’t they cute…

…as little buttons?

These photos were all taken through a window, thus the poor quality. If I had gone outside they would have moved.

Socks
Here are the latest finished socks. They were made using a random cable pattern. I created an excel spreadsheet with the cell’s height and width adjusted so that each cell was square. Then I copied a random number generating formula into each cell so it displayed a random number between 1 and 4. 1 - cable front. 2 - cable behind. 3 and 4 - knit two stiches straight. This is a a cable with two stitches crossing over another two.

Here they are in action. Nothing makes calves and ankles look bigger than socks photographed at this angle.

And here’s a closeup.

On October 8 Garrison’s applications to Chico State, Sonoma State and Humboldt were submitted where he’s applying as a pre-Nursing major. All immediately sent acknowledgement emails. Humboldt quickly sent a thick envelope.

Garrison opened it while practicing his reaction when thick envelopes arrive later.


Garrison thought that it was an acceptance letter since it contained an application for housing. I enlightened him about the college application process, telling him that when an acceptance letter arrives it will be unambiguous.

Two days later a thick envelope arrived from Chico. This time the camera stayed in it’s bag as G opened it. He began reading “Congratulations! On behalf of the California State University, Chico it is a pleasure to inform you of your admission for the fall 2007.”

“Good job faking Garrison. That’s exactly what acceptance letters sound like.” I told him. I was sure he was faking, mimicking the examples I gave him a few days before.

“That’s what it says.”

And so it does. We’re so happy! The letter is dated October 12.

What better way to celebrate than to carve pumpkins. Here’s our inspiration.

This comes from Ray’s pumpkin carving tutorial. Here’s my attempt. It looks shocked and confused. The mouth is the result of a complete mistake. You can’t give your pumpkin a good expression when the mouth is bungled.

And here’s Garrison’s. Look at those gorgeous teeth.

Did we miss our calling as sculptors?

The 2006 pumpkin harvest.

Ten pumpkins. All medium to small. The green one was accidentally relieved of it’s vine, a victim of overly enthusiastic removal of the dying vines from the other pumpkins. It can be hard to keep the vines straight. I was just trying to get rid of everything attacked by powdery mildew.

The pumpkin in the upper right is Garrison’s. It was planted in horrible, unamended soil as a test. It didn’t suffer in size. The plant grew as fast and as well as the others. But notice the odd bumps it has in several places…

… and the frustrating holes on it’s bottom.

A future autopsy may reveal what’s underneath those odd bumps. I wrote to the Garden Detective, a group of master gardeners that post answers to gardening questions in the home and garden supplement of the paper, but they haven’t chosen to respond. I can’t be the only one with this problem. My best guess is earwigs, but they’re supposed to leave ‘irregular holes’ which these aren’t and I doubt they could eat their way through a pumpkin rind.

Ever since I removed the pumpkin vines the rabbits have been a terror. They’ve started eating melon leaves and have destroyed the morning glories and eggplants. They’re not even supposed to like melons. It’s almost as though they’re angry about the loss of their pumpkin patch, although I doubt they can think that deeply and the pumpkins are one plant they completely left alone. Here are the cantelopes they prematurely liberated from their leaves and vines.

You can see how small they are using the cantelope seeds, which are only a little smaller than supermarket cantelope seeds, for comparison. They also even ate the powdery mildew covered santa claus melon leaves and vines, leaving only a sad, unripe melon behind.

It was still growing. I doubt it will ripen successfully now. I’m so tired of fighting the rabbits. Next year we’re just going to fence off everything they might eat, no matter what the garden looks like. Liquid Fence works great but all you have to do is relax your guard once, leaving plants unsprayed a few days too long and you’ll lose your entire crop.

They’re 7 1/2 years old now. They’re supposed to live 9 years, but they’re so healthy, no doubt from the rich variety of food available to them, inlcuding fresh lettuce and carrots daily, plus hay and pellets. They may outlive all expectations. Years from now people will ask us how we managed to keep them alive and healthy so long. Perhaps we should introduce them to some bad habits.

Please note I’m not serious! They also serve as our year-round fertilization service, generously spreading their brand of black gold throughout the garden.

Of the dozens of cosmos plants that came up, only two survived to have leaves too tall for rabbits to reach. Finally they’ve started blooming.

There are many flower buds waiting to open.