We’ve had so much rain the last two weeks that I’ve yet to get the soil (a.k.a. mud) into my raised beds. These little peas were grown in a pot on the patio and are an absolute treat; fresh and tasty of themselves, and heralds of future food production.

Plus their shape is perfect – I’m sure there’s a jewelry design in there if I could just figure out how to make that structure out of beads…

Lucy died. Not too much more to say really. I’ve been doing some sobbing and a bunch of healthy-cat-hugging.

Her remaining two kittens are looking healthy so I’m continuing to cross my fingers and hope that’s how it stays.

Ugh. It’s a tough world.

Two weeks ago a little cat showed up late at night in my driveway. I was taking out the recycling and saw green reflective eyes at the end of the path, and when I came back out with a dish of food she gobbled it up and let me pet her. I called my cat-sitter and local rescue expert and we came up with the plan to put her in the barn overnight and figure things out in the morning.

By morning I was calling the cat Lucy (where do names come from?) and planning to introduce her into the family. But it turned out that she already had a family – five kittens stashed in a shed across the street, which I followed her to when we let her out and she aimed for the road.

Over the next couple of days the kittens were trapped and four were taken with Lucy to a foster home; a temporary place for them to stay while they weaned and got used to people. It was looking like a great tale of rescue and happy endings.

Then on Monday of this week they started to get sick and by Tuesday one of the kittens had died. It was diagnosed as distemper, a horrible illness only seen in cats that haven’t been immunized.

They’re at the vet now, getting the best care possible, but we’ve lost two more kittens in two days. Lucy has a fever but is hanging in there. It’s strange to be attached to a creature I’ve barely met, but I am; she’s my cat. Please send healthy thoughts in the direction of this little mama and her sick baby.

Kitten number five seems to have avoided the virus, and is doing well. Thank goodness for small mercies.

Sometimes beauty finds you during the most mundane moments.

Hmmm… days and days and no blogging? What’s up with that?!

I’ve been building my raised bed mandala of insanity. I have the blisters, sunburn, and hammer-bruise to prove it. Turns out it was way easier to draw on graph paper than to build. Figures.

But it is almost complete – M has hammered in the stakes (at great cost to his physical well-being), I’ve mulched the beds with cardboard and dried leaves, and I’m waiting for delivery of topsoil (delayed by truck woes) and chomping at the bit as June slips on and still no veggies in the ground.

Don’t tell me that filling the beds with soil and building the fence will be hard work; I’m not listening. Lalalalalalala!