A Cat a Day: April 20

Mark in the golden evening light

November

If you’ve been following along, you might remember that October was unusually warm. Then came November. The first frost came on November 1. It was cold enough to begin to affect the plants. It warmed, then we went into a deep freeze of polar air and temperatures were in the teens with wind chills in the single digits. Then came snow. Then more warmth. Then cold.

All of these cycles altered my garden through the month of November. If you look through the photos below, you may recognize the same plants appearing repeatedly through the month. The green slowly bleaches away. The yellows descend from the trees onto the ground. Everything falls in on itself and flattens to the earth.

The changes are most evident among the hostas and variegated Solomon’s seal. I love the patterns and colors of the collapsing hosta leaves in particular. Their distress is beautiful. I also like the patterns in the oval scales of all the magnolia leaves on the ground as well as their mixture of greens and tans.

You can also see the progress of the ice and cold in my sweet potato bed. The first frost at the start of November did some damage, but the plants kept going until the deep freeze did them in. After things thawed again I decided to check for sweet potatoes and I was pleasantly surprised to find some. The plants had gone in late, so the potatoes weren’t large, but they look good. I’ll be eating them soon. They were an experiment, but they did so well in the limited time they had that I plan to grow them for real next year.

There’s always a week in fall when everything is the most beautiful, golden color, and this year that happened mid November. The snow came at the very end of this week, making gorgeous golden-white landscapes. I like fall snows because the colored foliage shines through the snow in interesting ways.

And, the cats.

I worried about the boys outside when the temperatures were set to plummet. There are plenty of places nearby for them to hide, and the guys who were outside last winter made it through a few Arctic blasts, but I decided to add more to their winter options. I bought two heated outdoor cat houses. Spike, the older gent with one tooth, moved into one immediately. I’d suspected as much. He now spends most of his day inside it.

He is always letting the other outdoor cats know he’s the boss, so he made sure he had the cat house to himself from the start. I hadn’t anticipated, however, that he would keep everyone else away from the second house. For a long time, they chose to sit ON it and not IN it. Or they slept in the more exposed cat bed in a box nearby. It wasn’t until December and over a month of this ridiculousness that I flipped open the second roof so it wasn’t so tightly enclosed and a couple of the other guys settled in.

Perry hasn’t gotten to go on walks very often now that it’s getting dark so early. We’re trying to keep him occupied with indoor play and clicker training. Overall, his behavior has improved dramatically in the 2+ years we’ve had him…but there’s so much further he needs to go.

The girls are perfectly lovely. Late November Lady Morgaine confirmed that winter is truly here–she started sitting on her heated cat bed on the window sill again. The girls also started sleeping curled up together at night to stay warmer. They’re super cute when they do, which is good because they take up half the bed.