A Day in the Garden

What a lovely day!  We spent most of the day outside.  So did the keeper. She was determined to work in the yard all day.  She did. She really did.  She filled dumpsters and bags full of weeds and leaves and pine needles which she had used as mulch all winter.  We watched in horror as she emptied the compost maker she had been filling since last summer.  It was full of rich dirt and tons of worms! She spread the new compost all over the side beds.  We suggested she shoot a photo but she didn't think that people would appreciate the beauty of worm filled soil. she found that plants which she had declared DEAD last fall had sprung back to life, with tender shoots. She planted new things, and chased us. She came inside covered in dirt and mud, and was very happy.  We came in exhausted from watching her work so hard. It was a great day!  We hear she has to go back to her work tomorrow.  Too bad.  We could use more days like this one.  We hope we are still alive when she retires.

National Hairball Awareness Day

Yes, we know all about the Octave of Easter, but we would like to draw your attention to a day which is an important one on feline calendars.  National Hairball Awareness Day happens to be today.  We realize that our keeper is concerned about this issue, and she is aware that we swallow 2/3 of the fur we clean.  And she has helped us deal with this condition by brushing us and cleaning up after us.  We are grateful.

Cookies Fit for a Royal Wedding

Our keeper has been taking a vacation this week.  She didn't really go anywhere far away. But  she is too busy to write our blog for us. Mostly she has been reading, or she is in the yard when it is not  hailing or snowing.  She has been at the garden stores and the gym and got new glasses.
She took me, Alice, to see Dr. Smalley, the vet, for a 90 day checkup to see if my radiation therapy worked.  It did.  My thyroid is perfect now. I also came home with new allergy meds.

But more important than anything right now is the royal wedding.  We refuse to wear hats. We doubt she will actually get up tomorrow am at 3, but one never knows.  We will sleep through it.  At the Hilltop Bakery she found special wedding cookies. She bought them and a pain au chocolat.  We prefer the lemon custard ice cream she also brought home.

Easter Sunday

The keeper moved our food bowls to another room, the clear sign that company was coming.  They came and brought delicious food.  The keeper cooked a pork which was taken from W's grandmother.  They did not share.  But we ignored them mostly, and waited for our food.  It was delivered, without candles or fancy china, but we were grateful. Then everyone left and everything got back to normal.  We are now listening to the happy cantering of the dishwasher.
Happy Easter!

Holy Saturday

 It was sunny.  It was warm.  We all hit the deck.  And took the sun.  It was lovely.  Then the keeper went inside to make two pound cakes.  We stayed outside.  She was supposed to clean the house for her guests on Easter Sunday, but she went back outside to work in the yard.  Then she went for a walk  through the neighborhood.  The smell of the freshly cut lawns was everywhere.
Everyone smiled.  The neighbors had a craw fish boil.  They had 50 # of craw fish shipped up from Louisiana that morning. But she didn't leave us for craw fish, she left for the cathedral and got home at 1 AM.  The service lasted 3 and 1/2 hours!  But it was beautiful in every way.  She felt she was Eastered by the time it was all over.  We were happy to see her come home because she always gives us treats when she stays out late.

The Good Friday Passion Presentation

 The Young Adults which the keeper accompanies are in charge of the telling of the Passion of Christ every Good Friday.  They practice for months.  They carefully select the characters, especially Jesus and Mary and John.  Every year the costumes are better. A young man name Josue makes most of them.  They memorize all the lines.  Last year a theater director helped them with their staging. It's very dramatic, more Mel Gibson than what the keeper is used to.

But they tell the old story with such devotion and energy, it's hard not to be caught up in it.

 And she knows that many in that community are bearing very heavy loads of pain and suffering.  One woman will be deported to El Salvador next week with her baby and young son.  They are not deporting her husband who has asylum.  But her family who will receive her has received death threats and have had to move several weeks ago.  No one could help her, not even the senators. So these young people are really telling the contemporary story of the community whose faith is unbreakable in the face of loss, rejection, injustice.

The Friday Which is Good

Holy is God!

Holy and strong!

Holy immortal One,

have mercy on us!

Ancient acclamation for the Veneration of the Cross

This being Good Friday, there was some coming and going today.  The keeper headed back downtown for a Tre Horae Service at the cathedral.  She was so taken by the preacher, an Irish Dominican, that she didn't want it to end. He had the rare ability to weave short scripture passages, poetry, writings of the early church, contemporary writers, including those on death row, into homilies which spoke to the hearts of all in very accessible ways.  And the combination of the Haydn music for the Seven Last Words and the sun pouring through the oculus made for a profound afternoon. We have a feeling that she will soon be bringing home a CD of this so we can listen with her.

Sacred Triduum

And so we begin the sacred journey from death to life.  It's late this year.  The first full moon of spring is late this year. But for those of you who do not follow the keeper's faith tradition, and that includes Cecil, Triduum is a liminal space. We live time differently these three days.  We stop our ordinary tasks and join with the community of believers to be quiet, to pray, to ponder, to listen to old stories told for a new day.  We fast ( but not us cats), we live in a different time zone. 

The keeper says that for decades she prepared the Triduum services and, ironically, found it hard to keep the Feast.  But now others do the planning, the prep, the checking of lists, the trouble-shooting, and she keeps Triduum. And she is very grateful. And so are we.  Alice only spent one Triduum with the keeper while she was still in her preparing role, and Alice says she was gone for three days, only home to sleep for a few hours, and she was blissfully crazed for those days. Then she took a long vacation far far away.  Now she comes home at decent hours, and doesn't leave us after Easter.

Hummingbird Rescue

 It all started when the keeper came home from the office.  She had stopped off at the store to get all of her Easter dinner shopping completed prior to the start of the Triduum.  She let us out and Cecil bolted out the door and within minutes came right back in and dumped something on the dining room rug.  The keeper thought it was a leaf, but no, Cecil had caught an adolescent hummingbird whose wings weren't strong enough to keep him aloft for more than a few seconds. The keeper swiftly snatched the trembling little mass of iridescent feathers to warm it up and see if was alive.  It tried to fly out of her hand. 

 So then she got an eye dropper and some of the sugar water she keeps in the fridge for the hummingbird feeders and gave him some nectar.  His little beak sucked it up.  She called the Wild Birds store in Lake Forest Park who told her to take him back outside, put him on a low branch on a shrub so his mother could find him.  She did that, and he stayed put for awhile, and then she found him flopping on the ground with his little beak stuck in the dirt like a dart. So she put him on another branch.  This went on for a while and she needed to get to the cathedral for the beginning of Triduum.  So, she put a shoebox out by the bush with warm socks and paper in it, tipped up the cover, and waved him goodbye.

When she returned from the cathedral, it was rainy, and she was ready to bring him inside.  But she took flashlight to the box, and he was gone.  Our version of the story is that his mother came for him, and carried him safely to the nest. We cannot imagine the alternative telling.
His colors were so brilliant and the iridescent diamond feathers on his throat flashed red and orange like a little light or those lights on kids' sneakers. We wish him well. he is a fighter.

Balm

Balm for spirits rubbed raw by the grey chill.

A Warm Spot

While the keeper waited for her car, she walked to the Volunteer Park Conservatory.  She wanted to stay in the desert room.  It was hot in there. She would set up a tent in there if she could until the weather gets warmer outside.

Our Dear Hilltop Friends

Meet Mike.  He owns  Hilltop Service Station, a wonderful auto service place on Capitol Hill.  He has kept our keeper's cars running for almost two decades.  He and his incredible team keep all her firends' cars running. Today she had to go see them for an oil change and to get rid of the rattle which has been terrifying her. He identified the source of the rattle--an exhaust pipe which had been recently installed, but which was defective.  Of course he will replace it, and deal with the manufacturer of the part.  The keeper is so impressed with the quality of care she has always received there.  They notice every low tire, every burnt out parking light.  They keep her safe, so she can take care of us.  She was relieved that she will only have to pay for an oil change.  She didn't sleep well last night worrying about what the rattling noise could cost.

Disordered Attachments at the Apple Store

The keeper left us on Monday afternoon for Bellevue for a retreat, but  made a stop at the Apple store.  She wants an I Pad, but we think this is a disordered attachment, as her Jesuit friends would say.  She had fun playing with the I Pad, and showed everyone in the store our blog.  But we are  grateful that her disordered attachment could not be satisfied.  People line up there at 3:30 in the morning to be able to buy them.  We know her distaste for early morning.  She will prefer her bed to the I Pad any day.  So we just have to deal with that Kindle.

Palm Sunday Flowers

The keeper came home from all of the Palm Sunday events where the crowd was double the regular Sunday, and decided to take her own procession through the neighborhood.  She tried to take Cecil with her in the harness and leash but he was only good for the back yard.  When he came back in he told me it was the wrong color--it was blue, instead of liturgical red.

St. James Saturday Night

Ready for the big procession in the morning.

Narcissus in the Morning

A Palm Sunday morning gift.

Cobras in the Back Yard

This morning both Alice and I headed out to explore the back yard.

One of our squirrels moved our tulip bulbs to the lawn.

Now it looks like we have a backyard full of cobras and hoods.

At least we have a little more grass now, although the

amount of moss is impressive.

We Saw the Sun on Monday

 We saw the sun on Monday.

Through the window. It was warm. 

It gave us hope.

But we still had to play inside. 

The keeper is too busy to take us out.

We think she needs to get a life. 

That car keeps taking her away

from us.

The only interesting smells she brings

back are of paper, cold coffee, and hurry.

Checking on the Eagles

We have a new hobby.  The keeper introduced us to the nest cam from Iowa that shows us a mother eagle and her eaglets.  We want to share it with you.  We can't stop watching.  Those little eaglets have an incredible mother who protects them and feeds them and watches 24/7 .
And now we can watch them too. We are not sure if this will really help her or not, but it sure gives us a better appreciation of the king/queen of the raptors.

Here is the link to the 24/7 nest cam.
http://www.raptorresource.org/falcon_cams/index.html
ENJOY!

Salmon Chowder for All

Our house smells very good tonight.  The keeper came home after work with a fresh salmon and chopped up part of it to make a chowder.  She used shallots and chives from our garden.  The only thing was missing was nutmeg. She didn't have any.  Why would she?  She is never home to cook.  But she threw in some Vino Santo from Italia. But we aren't really complaining. We got to test the little leftover salmon bits and approved. 

An Evening Stroll for One of Us

When she came home from her office today, the keeper let us go out for ten minutes, and then made us stay in so she could go out walking before it got dark.

She came back all happy because she smelled the daphne and jasmine and the rain soaked earth and saw great explosions of color all over the neighborhood.

We waited inside.  We were hungry.

The Box

 I don't know why I don't get to keep this box which the keeper brought home from Costco

last week.  The keeper gives us all kinds of toys but she doesn't understand how much we like simple treasures like this box that we can claw to pieces. We are sure that it will go into the recycling bin this weekend so we are ripping it to shreds.

An Hour of Sun

The weather is getting us a bit down here.  We saw some sunshine for an hour the other day.
Unfortunately the keeper was away so we only observed it from our perches. The cherry trees
are finally starting to blossom here.  But we are waiting for it to warm up so we can go outside.
Todd might come over this weekend to start building the little roof over our bricked patio so we can sit outside and stay dry. The keeper will be able to work at her potting bench come rain or shine.

More Flowers

They may have been slow in showing their faces and colors but at long last the flowers are arriving.  We should probably be grateful that we are not being snowed in like the east coast is experiencing.  The keeper did her first real weeding for an hour when she came home from her work today.  She was supposed to be cleaning our cat box, but heard the worms calling her name.  She did clean our  kitty litter room, eventually.

Daphne

There is nothing quite like the experience of walking out on the deck into a new batch of rain and catching ribbons of daphne fragrance floating in the chilly air.  It makes us almost forget about the rain.

Cabrini Graduation

The keeper was late returning home last night.  It was Cabrini graduation night at the cathedral so all she brought us were the photos but we did get chicken as a consolation prize.

At the Office

 The camellias are out in all their glory but they looked like soggy flowers on a hat after the wind and rain. Still, the keeper says she catches her breath upon beholding them.