A WALK AROUND THE GARDEN

Yet again I didn't blog for millenia! I have been too busy knitting, doing laundry, giving the cat his medication......and gardening(again) It has been a day of several weather types, it's like they are all trying to compete for some sort of award. This morning, Snow even put in an appearance, then Rain showed its ugly face, but Blue Skies finally chased them both away. Nevertheless I still ended up with boots so absolutely caked with thick loamy mud that I could barely lift my feet!!

Anyway...I've had a fairly good week considering my friend Seasonally Affective Disorder has come to stay (uninvited as per usual) However, this year I have a Secret Weapon at my disposal, thanks to Fiona who is researching S.A.D. as part of her PhD. AROINT THEE, you SAD knave!! (Notice how I have immediately made S.A.D. male in gender? Funny, that....)

So...the garden....I suppose you have to be a glutton for punishment and not to mention pretty mad to choose to work outdoors in November. But the fact is, as soon as you are through that gate you enter some kind of parallel universe where everyone is really lovely,it is impossible to be in a bad mood and the sun always shines! Well, two out of three ain't bad, but it sure feels like the sun always shining and like the sky is always a perfect shade of blue. The garden is hidden behind a set of gates along the little road to the side of the house. When you enter, you have a big wall to the left and a stone building to the right, so there is no hint of what's to come. As you get to the end of the wall to your right there is an archway and suddenly you are at the top of a short set of steps.To either side of the steps are stone-walled flower beds which have been carefully planned so that there are always flowering plants, as well as lavender and heathers, and several small varieties of fruit bush. These stone walls continue along the length of the garden on one side of a stone path which leads all the way up to the top of the garden. On the other side of the wall, down the steps, is the bottom part of the garden. It has two polythene tunnels (usuallyknown as 'polytunnels') running the width of the garden. At the very far side are some compost bins and a storage area with huts and a shed. Between those and the path, running along parallel to the road,with its back wall forming the boundary that the gates sit in, is a small building which houses a lounge,small kitchen and a shower room. Between the building and the sheds are several vegetable patches with Things Growing in them.

At this time of year there really isn't much going on - the polytunnels are almost empty; in one, we removed the last of the beans a few weeks ago and took down the frames. There is nothing in there apart from some black polythene from the timber yard,put down over the soil to deter weeds and keep the little creatures who live in the soil from freezing. In the next polytunnel there are still a few courgettes and beetroot but they are 'finished' pretty much. That polytunnel also serves as a kind of shed; there is a workbench where the vegetables have been weighed and boxed for transport during the growing season, and where the hens' food is mixed. The hens themselves are housed behind the polytunnel; there are eight of them altogether. They are as free range as it is possible to allow them, given that there are foxes around. They have a rather natty wooden he house,which has a space underneath for them to shelter, a kind of ramp leading to their front 'door', and the inside is warm and dry with straw that is later removed and made into compost. Round the back of the hen house is a long hinged cover at about chest height. Lift this lid and you will find a long box divided into sections and lined with straw...if you are really lucky you might even find freshly laid - and still warm! - eggs, and these are taken out and placed in a box to be collected later by whoever has asked for eggs that week. The hens live a fairly carefree existence, pottering about in their enclosure, sitting in the hen house and clucking. They are fed on a mix of pellets, carrot scrapings and chopped up greens etc. Yes, hens do eat vegetables!

Walking around the side of the polytunel, past the henhouse, back towards the stone path, is a long single-storey wooden building. This is a self-build project completed couple of years ago, known as the Garden Rooms. It houses four small one-roomed bedsit style 'studios', a conference room with kitchen, and the offices of the Horticulture Project (Known as NE4 VEG) The studios are lived in by homeless men: recovering alcoholics and/or drug addicts. These small rooms have their own front doors leading out onto shared verandah which overlooks the garden. It's a kind of half-way house, as is the main house normally but at the minute the main house is undergoing major renovation work, so only the Garden rooms are currently occupied. Men can stay here for up to two years with support to gain qualifications and training, before moving out, hopefully to a more long-term accommodation.

Going along past the Garden rooms and back onto the stone path, you walk past the door to the conference room, then up onto a lawn. To the right is a small wooden decking area leading to the door of the Project's offices. Past that, over by the far wall, is a wild area and a small pond. at the very end of the garden is a long greenhouse - this has a heating system - and in between are two long vegetable patches and - separated from that by a stone wall with flower beds - a wooden seating area.

The main thing that strikes you, walking around, is that you could almost be in the middle of the countryside. It's very peaceful, with no traffic sounds or loud radios etc. Everywhere you look there are signs of Nature doing her work, just going about her business. Even when it's raining it doesn't seem to dampen anyone's spirits. It's like: it's raining - so what? It's only water and the sky will brighten again; it always does.

The only thing I feel sad about is that the hostel is men-only and so homeless women cannot benefit from the project. As I piled whole woody cauliflower plants on the ground and hacked them to pieces with my spade it occurred to me exactly why these guys find it all so therapeutic! and the food - cooked by the resident chef - isn't bad either!

HAPPY!

What a happy day!
Apart from having a good night's sleep for the first time in a week, I am also feeling really cheerful. Thomas is much much better, so I am really hoping that when he goes back to the Vet tomorrow she will give him the all-clear.


Thomas slept all night on and in my bed, and this morning has eaten and had a long drink, and has also had no trouble wee-ing. He just seems a lot brighter, more like his normal self; he has been playing and running about and hopefully he can now get back to normal and not have to endure examinations and injections and having pills chucked down his throat any longer.


He is also back to his normal devious and trouble-making self where the other two are concerned. As I write, he has pinched Pete's space on the futon (marked by the Navajo blanket which Pete claimed the day we got it) Pete has returned from the kitchen to find his space taken and has jumped up on the other end of the futon. Thom is lying with his back to Pete, pretending to be asleep, but he is half looking around over his shoulder - with ears flattened -to see what Pete will do - if anything. Pete has sniffed Thomas from about a metre away, but then turned round and is now sitting right on the edge of the futon, facing the window with his back to Thomas and his ears flattened slightly (i.e in a bit of huff) Having reassured himself that Pete will not actually challenge him and has settled down on another part of the futon, Thomas has now turned round to face the fire and is now relaxing because he knows his space is safe. Pete is sulking. There is a three foot gap between them!


I love watching the cats interacting and their funny little mind games etc. Before we got Thomas, Spangle was the undisputed Queen of the house. Everything in it belongs to her, and she has to know what is going on at all times. She knows where everything is and never forgets where we put things (e.g a couple of weeks ago I looked around for - and found - all the ping-pong balls which had gone behind various bookcases and underneath sofas and so forth. I found about eight, and put all but one into one of the little IKEA chest of drawers next to the bookcase, which is where we keep occasionally-used but important stuff that has to be located easily. I promptly forgot about these other balls. However, the other day I was on the futon watching TV and I heard a scratchy-scrabbling noise behind me. There was Spangle pulling open the drawer, and as I watched she casually extracted a ping pong ball and started playing with it. HOW did she remember where they were, and how did she remember which drawer, out of a possible twelve, they were in? See what I mean?

Back in August 08, when Thomas arrived, a very boisterous 4 month old kitten, Spangle was incredulous! What an insult! Allowing this youngster to enter her home and go on the rampage, disturbing her peace and disrupting the household routine! Without her permission!! She was, to say the very least, highly offended. For about two weeks she sulked, looking daggers at me every time I had Thomas on my lap. Then, she tried another, more direct, approach: slapping him for absolutely no apparent reason every now and again. He started getting to know Pete, and Pete actually really likes him. They would lick each other's faces, and lie on the bed or sofa together.


Spangle continued to ignore Thom other than to whack him every time he got too close. As Thomas started getting older, he started fighting back. He is a big cat, and the other two - not having had a very good start in life before they were 'rescued' - are very small; Spangle in particular is very petite under all that fur. As soon as he was old enough he began trying to take over. He started actively seeking Spangle out to attack her, and these attacks were rather vicious. He was still young though and he didn't do any damage. When he was 6 months old he was neutered and this actually calmed him down. But he wanted to be the boss and Spangle continued - and still does - to defend her position! She has a hard job. Sometimes Thomas can be a real nuisance. And he is jealous!! If Spangle is being tickled or being shown any affection, Thomas will pounce on her and start fighting her. He cannot bear to see her getting attention! Spangle bears grudges and will often wait until he least expects it before getting him back. For example, if he walks past her she will casually whack him right across the face. Then chase him and do it again. If cats were humans they would be diagnosed with schizophrenia and locked up.

Last night I made two delicious Crumbles: one with apple and cinammon and the other with all manner of berries from the freezer, plus the remaining apple pieces. Josh declared the berry one to be slightly too 'cats' bum'(i.e sour - think about it) yet his plate was almost clean nevertheless. Rob had his apple and cinnamon crumble with Ben and Jerry's Belgian Chocolate Brownie (or is it Chocolate Fudge Brownie?) I had hardly eaten last week and so I had both types and a big chunk of B & J's too. Plenty left for today's brunch - ha ha!! It is almost a rule in this house that there has to be enough crumble for the next day. Josh swears by it as a pre-College breakfast.

On a totally different subject, I found this fantastic website the other week, called Colour Lovers. This site is the visual answer to Prozac for people like me who get their pleasure not from material things but from natural things, particualrly becaue of what their colours do to the brain. I look at the sky on a cloudless, crisp Winter's morning and that particular shade of blue, and also the way it fades from an almost lilac-blue higher up to the palest true Sky blue, create some kind of chemical reaction in the pleasure-feeling section of my brain. I cannot see the sky that colour and feel depressed or sad. The colours which really have a positive effect seem really difficult to reproduce, for instance it is hard to create them on a omputer screen,or rather if you do manage almost to create the right shade, it just doesn'tlook right or have the same effect. I have to see these colours in real life, in their natural state, on the right object. The colour which has the most positive effecton me is a pale-ish pale-but-bright purpley blue. I call this colour Sky North.


My other created colours are here. Mostly blues/purples, and combinations thereof! The site is great for messing about, trying to find your favourite and perfect colours. I'm sure there must be a more serious use for it, but i use it as a form of Therapy!

OUT OF THE WOODS

Wow! I didn't blog since Tuesday. This is because I haven't had time and also due to being really stressed and anxious about little Thom, who didn't actually come home until yesterday! What ought to have been a one night stay went on longer because as they were about to remove his catheter on Wednesday morning, they found he had actually chewed it half out himself (Yes, as we all know, Thomas LOVE nothing better than to gnaw on things....a large stick, stray pieces of Playmobil from Sara's Christmas games, the toggles from his play tunnel, the lock knobs on his carrier...all bear his trademark teethmarks, as do many of my books. And he makes an incredibly fierce-cute snarling sound as he chews!!) So, they had to do a minor procedure to remove the other half, which was stuck, and they replaced it and kept him in overnight again. On Thursday night they removed it and on Friday afternoon the vet rang and said they wanted to see if he would now be able to pee on his own, but they thought he was getting stressed and many animals will not pee in a strange place (plus fussy Thom is very particular about which brand of cat litter he will use when he has to wee indoors) They said they would send him home and asked me to monitor him closely to see if he was urinating. However when I arrived to collect him the vet said not long after she rang me he had done a wee anyway, and after checking his bladder she said it was empty. She gave him antibiotic and painkilling injections and then said bring him back first thing in the morning just to check again. When we got home he was so obviously 100 times better than when he first went in; he immediately started greeting Spangle and Pete and rubbing his cheek against all the furniture; also against our legs. He sat in front of the fire and had a full wash. He had several wees. At dinnertime he had some turkey and some tuna. Then he settled down in front of the fire again and went to sleep.


This morning however he was licking at himself and going back and forth to the litter box for small wees. so when we went for his follow-up appointment the vet again checked his bladder and said it was only a tiny bit full, not even as full as it would be before a normal wee. To put this into perspective, it was the size of a tangerine. She said the reason he kept going back to the litter box might be because now that the painkiller is wearing off he might be a bit sore from the catheter. It must feel like cystitis (ouch!) Or, his urethra might be spasming a bit. so she said keep checking to see if he is peeing properly and give him some more of the painkiller this afternoon. If he is obviously worsening tomorrow ring the Heworth branch - the only one open on Sundays and only for emergencies - who might want to see him. In any case he has to go back to the normal one on Monday, and hopefully that will be that.

We are just going to have to keep our fingers crossed and hope.

I have started a scarf for Saartje, in Debbie Bliss Soho - pinks. The pattern is from the Frabjous Fibers recycled silk yarn free pattern pages. It looks really nice already - slightly richer/brighter colours than they appear in the photo - and it will definitely be Sara's style! She loves pink and it will go with her pink jacket.

Also on the needles is the blanket I am knitting for the cats in Patons Inca, with a Peruvian style bird design on Colinette Shimmer Five.
Chunky and warm, it is knitting up fast, and my intarsia skills are definitely improving. I have learned to wrap the not-in-use yarn between stitches so that there are no unsightly lines of yarn at the back. I guess this is the idea behind Scandinavian two colour knitting, so on the back there is a kind of reverse pattern, like a negative photo image. Again, the colours are more vibrant than in the photos. I am really pleased with the way the bird design has turned out!!!


Tonight I'm going to get on with my Cold Mountain scarf - I have ordered loads of seed beads in various shades of bluey-purple and purple, in two sizes, and a couple of really narrow crochet hooks with which to thread them. So I will be able to make some really gorgeous scarves etc!! I have an idea I will get totally sucked into the beading idea the way I have with lace!!

Thomas Is back At The Vet's

*SIGH*
Thomas went for his follow-up at the vet's today. when we got up this morning he seemedto have turned a corner, he was fairly lively and instead of just lying about sleeping he was up and about, eating a little and pestering us for attention as he normally would in the morning.

However, this afternoon at the vet's it transpired that his bladder seemed to be blocked again, which was puzzling since he has been weeing okay (and proved this by peeing all over the examining table!!) So, the vet said she would have another look and then monitor him over the next 24 hours. Poor little Thomas; he hasn't really had the best of luck, has he. It is so horrid when an animal is ill because they cannot tell you exactly how they feel and you cannot really explain anything to them. The house feels wrong with one less cat, and Spangley Spangle and Petit Pete are kind of pining for Thomas; Spangle has been looking for him and 'calling' and Petey has just curled up into a ball and slept all day. Amazing how cats become a unit, regardless of how well - or not - they get on with one another, and if part of that unit is missing then the others cannot function properly. Kind of a symbiosis thing.

But what can one do, other than wait to call the vet in the morning and find out what time to collect him? then we will have a better picture of what is going on.

I feel like my whole life - such as it is - is on hold; I can't make plans to do anything, can't think about eating,can't settle at all. And I am getting more and more exhausted because of the stress and especially because of all the to-ing and fro-ing. Even doing some shopping in town requires a couple of days' recovery afterwards normally, but haven't had time to rest after two or three journeys to the vet, with heavy cat/pet transporter in tow.

I have been thinking about what sort of scarf and possibly also matching hat to knit for the little Uiterstegrachter! I have some Debbie Bliss Soho - 5 skeins - in multi pinks and am waiting for a skein of Colinette One Zero - in Alizarine a similar variegated pink colour but brighter and slightly darker - which I grabbed on eBay. These will make a lovely chunky scarf and hat set in multi shades of her favourite colour! I might actually knit the scarf in the Soho, and use the Colinette to make some I-Cord spirally flowers to stitch on and use the remainder for a fringe for the scarf and tassels for the end of the ear flaps on the hat. The scarf will probably be a simple ribbed pattern, but for the hat I have found a pattern called Jayne Beanie on Yarn Zombie

I am watching Breaking Bad, which I have already seen online last year, but it is actually on British TV now so I can watch it on the actual TV. Earlier I watched Later with Jools Holland, and it was a really great show with Corinne Bailey Ray, Big Pink, a duet with David Gray and nnie Lennox, plus chatter from Roger Queen Taylor and Vic Shooting Stars reeves showing off his new book,Vic Reeves' Vast book of Knowledge which I will be getting Offspring #1 for his birthday. I steer clear from most celebrity books but this is his take on a sort of illustrated encyclopaedia!

So...I ought to be making plans for Christmas, hoovering the floors,making the bed etc and reading decent literature, but it seems all I can do is watch trashy TV- American at that!! Hopefully, Thomas will be okay and I can get him home and get back into some semblance of normality.

Thom-Cat update

A quick update on Thomas while I have a minute, he - and consequently I - didn't have very good night, he came upstairs and slept on my bed as usual but he kept getting up and changing his position ...very restless but cheered up a bit earlier this morning. He is still having to be fed water through a syringe, which he actually doesn't mind so long as the water is not too cold. I could not get him to take his antibiotic this morning as he repeatedly hid it in his mouth then spat it out.I did get him to take the anti-spasmodic pill, so at least he will be a bit more comfortable.

I have to take him back to the vet (the normal one thank goodness, not the emergency one miles away) on Tuesday and then the vet will be able to order the correct prescription food for him, as apparently this depends on the results of the tests they took on Saturday.

I feel totally ungrounded and unable to settle into my normal daily routine. don't know what time it is; I haven't eaten or drunk today, so I am going to do that now.

Poor Thom-Cat

Poor Thomas had to be rushed to the vet yesterday. He ws absolutely fine - or appeared to be - in the morning, but then early after lunch he started being very weird, limping and sitting on the shoes next to the hallway radiator, but keeping his bottom up off them, then he started wailing. I carried him to the sofa to try to investigate (thinking maybe he had a sore back leg or something) and he lay there trying to keep his back leg up off his tummy. I rang the vet and they said he should come in immediately but the emergency vet is at Heworth (across the river and miles away) conveniently :-(

When we got there the vet said his bladder was very full and there was a gritty substance coming out when she investigated his nether regions. So she reckoned he might have FLUTD and his urethra might be blocked by crystals in his bladder, and she said they would do a small procedure to unblock and flush it out then keep him in overnight. Awwwwwww,poor little kitty!! But she also said it was a good thing I noticed immediately because this can kill cats if it is not treated; their bladders can rupture and they end up with fluid in their abdominal cavity, which leads to infection, shock etc. The thing is,it is so easy to notice when Thomas isn't himself, because he just lies there and forgets about terrorising the other cats and the home!

Well, he is back now and wearing a rather fetching transparent cone-shaped collar to prevent him licking his little winkie where they had a catheter. He does have FLUTD and the vet said his bladder was full of these stravite crystals and they had formed a plug, blocking the urethra, and so preventing him from peeing. He is now lying in front of the fire looking decidedly pissed off because instead of looking funky in his usual highly fashionable black and white skull and crossbones pirate design collar, he possibly knows he looks ridiculous in the veterinary collar. I have to take him to the vet on Tuesday to see how he is doing and to get some special type of cat food which is low in minerals (as normal dried cat food such as Iams actually has too much and this can be a major cause of crystals in the urine) I also have to give him more canned cat food. (The vet said to introduce him to it,but as he already has this sometimes it will be easy enough to switch over to that and the special dried stuff) It isn't just for cats with that condition and so it can be given to the other two too. At 7pm I have to give him a dose of this anti-spasmodic thing, which is because after having a catheter up his tiddler all night it will be a bit sore and the little muscles can spasm, which will make him think he needs to go to the litter box (which I notice he has been doing the past half hour or so.)

So...an evening of knitting with Thom-Cat sleeping on my lap I think. I'm knackered - after failing to sleep last night,then having to go on the bus and Metro to collect him then bring him back (he weighs almost 6 kg, plus his carrier, which is an aircraft-safe heavy duty one, weighs a ton too)On a more positive note, I have ordered this gorgeous limited edition Botany Lace from Wild Fire, to replace the BFL in 'plum' which when I received it just wasn't right colour-wise; the customer service is fantastic and I plan to buy a lot more from Vikki in future, as the quality is brilliant and of course each skein is unique. I am going to ask Dad to buy that fab Arctic Lace book for my birthday and this fabulous yarn will become a lovely scarf either from the book or the 'Iceland' wrap from KnitLab.

What I'd love to do is design my own patterns, very geometric, like Cold Mountain and Iceland, but I know it can be frustrating. I think I'd like to design it first on squared paper then work out which stitches would work best. There are obvious 'rules' such as needing to have an increase stitch for every yarnover if you aren't reducing stitch numbers....and so forth.It never ceases to amaze me what can come out of such simple stitches.

5p.m: I have given Thomas his painkiller via a syringe (not with a needle though) into his mouth, and also used that very convenient method to make him drink some more water. The other two kitties are very wary of him; a) he smells weird - of the animal hospital - to me, so to them he must smell really odd - not like himself at all; b) he looks very scary with his collar contraption on! I'm going to have to get a bigger one at the vet's on Tuesday because when he tries to lick/pull at his bandage the edge of the collar is right next to and actually rubbing against the very area it is meant to stop him licking on the back of his front paw, and it has been bleeding again. I remember one of my childhood cats pulling her stitches out after she had just been spayed, despite a similar collar.

VALUABLE KNITTING TIME....

At last, got into the swing of Cold Mountain - it's amazing I had time after allowing Yahoo Avatars to suck away an hour of my valuable knitting time! I didn't get in from work till10 past 10p.m - very eventful shift it was too: two arguments/fights and a deliberate tit-for-tat flood in someone's room while they were banished for an hour to cool off (culprits caught on CCTV after having the face to stand in the back yard saying "I wonder what's causing that leak?") which resulted in water coming through the light fittings and the fire alarm refusing to shut off. The alarm engineer had to come out, he has switched off the noise and is going back tomorrow once it has dried out. The police had to come out because the two flood-starters were banished but one of them refused to leave the premises. But it was an okay evening, everyone else was fine and I have met some good people, some women who have lived long long lives despite being younger than me....

Anyway, this is my Cold Mountain scarf so far - note gorgeous variegated shades:


I received my new yarn from Wild Fire today, but am disappointed. I asked her if the yarn was as deep as shown in the photo,or darker, because the last lot i bought from her was deeper than it appeared in the photo and I was really happy with it. I assumed that it would be,and she even said she would overdye it again to make sure it was a relly deep plum.Butwhen it arrived it actually seemsto have lost the lovely rich plum colour and now seems slightly darker in tone but the shade itself seems light and it has lost its richness. In fact it looks greyish. It's no darker than the heathery shade of the Elvincraft yarn used for the scarf (above). This is the original shade, as shown in her Etsy shop...see what I mean?


I have found the book recommended by the designer of the Cold Mountain pattern it's called "Arctic Lace" Also found,"Knits from the North Sea"
I do love that sort of Shetland lace, almost - or actually - geometrical, and with diamonds and zigzags etc. And it has been really brilliant learning to knit it and realising I can do so easily. Favourite designer at the minute - and probably for a good while to come - is Kieran "KnitLab" Foley!