Ew, ick.

The basil goes well.  It is not disgusting me.  Subjects for neither the dinner table nor the easily nauseated to follow.  Ew, ick.

Last night, Chutney the cat gobbled down her wet food in a microsecond, as per usual. Unusually, about 5 seconds later, she threw it up again.  I know that kitties aren't as disturbed by vomiting as a human is, but it's not nice (plus, precious wet food: wasted).  I was worried a bit about her until this morning when I found a chewed-up narcissus leaf.

Some time ago, we got Chutney some "cat grass". She chomped it down cheerfully, and spent then next week or so spurting nasty liquid from either end.  We took the cat grass away and the distressing spurting stopped.  We decided that her diet, as provided by pre-packaged wet food and dry food, is JUST PERFECT and we haven't messed with it since.  

I didn't take a photograph of the puddle of sick.  I cleaned it up.  When I was growing up, when one of our cats left a hairball around (oh, thank you, developments in hairball formula cat food!) what we children would do was to put a paper towel over it, so that it wasn't a hazard to people walking around in bare feet.  At some time later, my mum would clean it up.  Now that I am not a child and have cleaned up a little bit of cat sick, it is (yet another) bit of my childhood self of which I am deeply ashamed.  How could we not clean it up ourselves?  Couldn't we have taken that paper towel and wiped up the hairball? No, I'm not proud.

Back to gardening.

The chives are coming along nicely in their new spot on the kitchen windowsill.  They lean like crazy into the sun, so I have to be absolutely diligent about turning the pot regularly.  I am looking forward to having a little pot of cooking-ready chives waiting for harvest.  

The unfolding-thing of the chives continues to delight and fascinate me.  One of the leaves (blades? what is a chive, anyway?) has been struggling up with its seed still clamped on to its tip.  Given how spindly the stalk is and how big the seed is compared to the stalk, I feel very much like I should be taking the seed away and doing it a favour.  My gardening book is quite stern about it, though.  It says that the plant may still be drawing nutrients from the seed and I shouldn't disturb it.  Before I read that, I did remove the seed from one of the marigold plants.  You can tell which one it was because what the seed was surrounding was one of the leaves, which I neatly tore off when I removed the seed from the stalk.  So, I have learned my lesson. I will let this chive deal with its seed.

And, I will only keep plants in places Chutney really can't get to.  God only knows where those places are.  Sun-shiny real estate is at a premium in our house.