Jo Edgett

Just when I was getting started poking about in the yard, it snows. But even a late March snowstorm can’t dampen the fact that Spring is in the air. It certainly doesn’t smell like winter out there, and even a cloak of snow can’t hide the leaf buds and all of the green things busting through the soil. So now I’m somewhat feverishly planning my first ever serious attempt at vegetable gardening. Collecting seed packets takes up a lot of time because I have strict requirements for my veggie seeds: they have to be sown in situ because I’m too lazy to start seedlings indoors, they have to be ‘easy’ (reliable, slow to bolt, resistant to disease), and they have to be things we’ll actually eat.

It was a challenge to find some of these seeds, but I’m planting rocket (or ‘wild grazia’), mizuna, cress, and spicy mustard greens because those are the lettuces B loves. And I’ve got radishes, tiny globe carrots, sugar snap peas (the knee-high bush-type variety). I’m keeping things on the small side because our veggie garden will be made up of one raised bed in the front yard, one or two window-boxes, and various containers strewn about the property. So no corn. But I’m going to try to get some runner beans going up the garden arbor, and I’ve decided that instead of buying more perennials or annuals to fill the gaps in the sunny parts of the border, I’ll plant tomatoes (which I’ll buy from the nursery in May). The only other things I really want to grow but haven’t yet researched are shallots and blackberries. Last year B cut down a withering old lilac from the side of our house, which opened up the living room views into our neighbours’ fields, but also got me thinking about planting some blackberry bushes there. It gets a lot of sun in the summer, and Nova Scotia is woefully short on blackberries, so I should try to grow our own.

That’s all I’ve been up to, really. The ‘snoozing’ in the title refers to the cats, not me. Rooster spends his days on my desk, contentedly sleeping by my side. (Like a good shadow, he follows me to the kitchen when I make lunch.) He sleeps soundly, like a big cat lump, making it easy to get up close and personal with the camera. 

But Monkey, being a former stray, always keeps a peeper or two peeled, just in case.

And when he sees the camera, he starts singing, or making goofy faces (or yawning, as was the case here):

…which morphs quickly into picture-perfect posing. What a charming little fuzz-smile.

It has finally started to look like Spring will come again. Whew. Snowdrops are blooming! These little flowers are huddled against the foundation of our house, where it’s warmer. There should be more throughout the front garden, as I planted handfuls of tiny bulbs last fall, but I’ll have to wait for the foot of snow to melt before I get a chance to check on them.

This is Faux Rupert, supreme stray cat of upper Garden Street:

One of the many pet names we’ve given our big black & white cat Rooster is ‘Rupert’; it’s dignified, but cute and charming, much like the cat himself. When we were driving our Christmas tree home our first December here, we saw a big, fuzzy black and white cat run down our driveway and into the neighbour’s yard. We panicked, because Rupert is a thoroughly indoor creature with zero outside experience and a delicate disposition. He wouldn’t last a day in the wilds of Granville Ferry. I ran to the locked back door, wondering how the hell he had gotten out, while B. followed his outdoor trajectory to rescue him. I got inside, only to find him lazily sleeping by the fire. And that’s how we first laid eyes on the biggest, baddest stray cat in our new neighbourhood. I immediately christened him ‘Faux Rupert’ (a.k.a. ‘Rupert the False’ or ‘Rupert the Pretender’), for obvious reasons.

He really does look a lot like the Real Rupert, except for his shorter, fatter, completely dead tail (it just hangs there; I’ve never seen it operate properly in 4.5 years), and a heavily scarred mouth. He has a permanent sneer because of a badly healed injury, but it’s fitting, as he can’t abide the slightlest human attention, and in fact barely tolerates his shadow, Fiddles. This is Fiddles:

She’s a small, black female stray who adores Faux Rupert. She follows him everywhere and the day I took this photo I had just watched her do a playful little skippy-dance for him, as if trying to entice him to follow her just this once. He didn’t take the bait. I snapped the shot of him just as he truned away from her to leave. Of course, Fiddles a.k.a. ‘Prince Phillip’ (for always keeping 10 paces back from her ‘spouse’) dutifully followed.