Binary Cat

It's becoming apparent that Smitty the Kitty has two modes.

On the one hand, he's Sleeper Cat.  Don't you love that lean little body?  Clearly he has claimed this particular quilt as his own.

On the other hand, he is Killer Cat...snarling and vicious.  Really, really, really vicious.  You're terrified just looking at him, aren't you?  He did catch a mouse the other night, which he played with until it was all tuckered out and couldn't play any more.  I would take more pictures of him in Killer Cat mode, except that he is so quick that my pictures all turn out looking like this:

With a rare glimpse of this:

But then, in the blink of an eye, we're back to this:

Gracie still hates him.

Whenever she sees him, she says:  "I spit on the ground where you walk.  I hiss at your kittenish diversions.  I fart in your general direction."  So there.  You can lead a cat to water, but you can't force her to like her new colleague in cattery.

Yesterday, I finished binding the Home is Where the Heart Is quilt.  I love how this striped binding looks.

And I can't get over what a good job Erin did on the quilting.  I have a couple of quilters. One I trust to do pantographs only.  Erin, on the other hand, does the quilts that I want to be extra special and artistic.  She never disappoints me. 

I absolutely promise--cross my heart and hope to die--that I will show you an image of the whole quilt within the next day or two.  First I need Mike to help me with it so that the two of us can hold it up while I click the shutter on the camera remotely.  It's too large for one person alone to hold it up.  Honest.  It will be worth the wait.  I'm going to get things moved around and set up so that we can do it this evening when he gets home.

Somehow I thought if I grew tomatoes in my greenhouse, I could avoid the annual tomato angst.  Not a chance.  Tomatoes seem destined to have me gnashing my teeth waiting for them to ripen.  The indigo rose tomatoes...the ones that will be purple when they are ripe...are starting to turn.  Still, they've looked exactly like this for at least two weeks.

It's an interesting plant, and it still has lots of blossoms and lots of little tomatoes coming.  If you look closely at these images, you can see that its stems are purple also.

And then there are these beautiful brandywines, which I happen to think are among the most tasty of tomatoes.  I could eat them like apples with seeds and juice streaming down my chin onto my shirt.  And it would not embarrass me in the least because I would have my eyes closed and be completely lost in the ecstasy of it.  No one would be around.  These are private moments.  You understand, don't you?  Yes, the tomatoes and me, we have a special relationship.  But they are not ripe.  Sigh.  They are lightening in color--a good sign--but no signs of red yet.

And these lovely San Marzanos, which I am dying to make sauce from.  Dying...literally...my life depends on making tomato sauce from these beauties.  And they too are lighter in color, but not even a hint of red is showing yet.  Huge sigh.  I feel like a high school girl waiting for my latest heart throb to call on the phone.  Tomatoes.  Tomatoes.  Tomatoes.  Have I not been good to you?  Why do you torture me so?  (I think that's a line from Shakespeare, but I haven't Googled it yet.)

We're leaving on our trip one month from today.  If they don't ripen before we leave, I fear they will ripen during the time we're gone.  Wouldn't that just frost your nostrils?  Well. Enough said.

The little potted dahlias are doing so much better now that the squirrels aren't eating them at the first sign of a flower bud.  We did trim the squirrel herd significantly.  There will always be squirrels, but a few squirrels are not as voracious as thirty.  Yes, thirty.  And that is only the beginning.

I gave up trying to grow the petunias in the ground pots long ago because the squirrels ate them to the ground.  Now they are hanging.  And who says you have to buy those expensive pre-planted pots to have voluminous petunias?  I planted these in the spring from three tiny plants, and now they are cascading like the big pots.  I do loves me my petunias.

So just before writing this post I cleaned all the science experiments out of the refrigerator. Sheesh.  I'm surprised I could even close the door without something reaching out and grabbing me.  But no more.  Now it will be the garbage man's problem.  We did post appropriate warning labels on the garbage can.  That was the one major task I assigned myself for today.  

With the quilt binding done, I'm ready to work on my latest cat stitchery, and then do some sewing.  What's on your agenda for the day?

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