Barbarians in the Backyard

For the past year I've been trying to avoid buying produce from supermarkets. Instead, I frequent the ten bajillion famers markets that abound here on the Westside. The food tends to last longer, be fresher, and is cheaper than the store-bought stuff. I'm not big on organic as I am on just being local. As in, buying garlic from California as opposed to China...yeah, I found Chinese garlic at a local supermarket when it was in season here. I was digusted.

ANYWAYYYYYY...

I guess the Dear Husband got influenced in the "fresh food" department by planting hot peppers, basil and oregano last year in the backyard. As in, dug in the dirt and everything. He'd gotten little boxes to plant basil and peppers a few years back, but nothing serious.

This year a garden has been planted in earnest. Yeah, that scares me, too.

We have the aforementioned stuff along with red peppers, spinach and zucchini. Which meant we had to expand our little dirt plot in the backyard. Where I did the majority of work when it came to digging, breaking up dirt clods, and throwing patches of lawn across the yard into the bushes. The DH didn't sit idly by...he made the parameters of said dirt plot.

While I was attacking the earth with various sharp instruments, the outdoor cats would wander by and stop to gaze upon my activity as if to say, "Why the hell are you digging around in our litter box? Are you going to start using it, too? If so, bring more sand!" Yeah, our garden is near where the cats shit. Charming.

Speaking of cats and boxes, here's Blue relaxing in one of the boxes that was used to bring in our little plantlings. His ear infection seems to be clearing up a bit, and I think he's beginning to gain a little bit of weight. Isn't he cute?
















Wide view of our Very Serious Garden.

OK, it's not very serious. We basically just decided on a whim to plant stuff again this year, so we disregarded when we were actually supposed to plant stuff and just started hacking at the dirt willy-nilly. I now call this area Barbarian Gardens:
















Closer, lower view of Epic Barbarian Garden:
















Close up on the spinach and last year's oregano. Apparently the oregano was supposed to die off since its an annual-type of plant. But they forgot to tell the oregano, so here it is:
















And in further cat news...

I took the old collars off of Blue and Kitty. They're in my yard more than anyone else's, and the collars were superfluous. Poor Kitty had a blue collar covered in white and yellow flowers. That's hardly the collar a Rugged Individualist such as Kitty would wear. And the magnet on it kept collecting rusty screws and nails, which was so close to Kitty's throat it made me nervous.

I'm going to get Blue a new collar, since I spent almost $500 on the little furry bastard for his ears. Poor thing hates getting medication from me, but he likes not puking. So do I, so we all win on this.

And...the Kitty Korpse Kount for 2010 has started.

This afternoon I was getting the bicycle out to run errands when I noticed Kitty standing the middle of the back lawn, looking intently at the ground. Suddenly, he snatches something out of the grass and jovially trots to the patio and drops it on the cement and starts chewing on it. I run over and identify the chew toy as:
















A very baby bird.

I don't know if Kitty actually killed it or if he found it on the grass, dropped perhaps by a crow or some other predator. I searched around the lawn where Kitty picked up the birdie, and found no other birdies. Thankfully.

Of course Kitty was very proud of himself. Even though I called him a carnivorous bastard, his response was to happily purr at me.