Cat in the sun

Our cat Annie is fond of sitting on our fence watching the world go by. She’s intrigued by birds and other animals, but has no chance of ever being a hunter: the domineering Noisy Miner birds definitely control the local territory. (Don’t they control most areas now?)

Annie manages to strike a pose while sleeping

Despite her embarrassingly un-feline lack of hunting prowess, lately we’ve had to be more careful about letting Annie out because the local council is very strict about cats. Several neighbours have been very upfront about their dislike of cats.

I respect the reasoning behind the restrictions, but it has taken some adjustment for Annie – very much an outdoors girl – to stay inside most of the day. We got her from the RSPCA and have no idea what kind of life she had before she went there, but I’m sure she spent a lot of time out in the sun and fresh air. Possibly being dive-bombed by Noisy Miners.

Recently I put her outside on a sunny day, and after a while I noticed she’d found a new spot to doze.

Yep, on top of the baby spinach

Although I was a bit sad to see the baby spinach squashed, I wasn’t about to begrudge Annie this small luxury. I have a whole packet of the seeds left anyway.

She’s since moved on from the baby spinach container, to more standard sun spot fare.

Oh, to be a cat in the sun!

Garden Impostors

Doing my morning rounds of the vegie containers two days ago, I was stunned to see strangely large leaves sticking up in my herb and lettuce box. They hadn’t been there the day before.

Note the healthy-looking round leaves poking up in the top left corner…

An impostor! Or rather, two impostors!

How did this happen? I planted only herbs and lettuce and a couple of marigolds in this container. And then I go out and find these leaves growing robustly among my somewhat spindly seedlings. I shook my head in bewilderment.

‘It’s probably from the compost. You put some of the compost into this one didn’t you?’ said K beside me.

I stared at him and back at our unexpected seedlings. Of course! That’s what had happened. I’d dug in some compost the week before to try and give my struggling flora some nitrogenous support.

‘But…what is it?’

Indeed. What is it? We chuck any and all vegetable scraps into the compost, from apple cores to mushroom stems. It could be anything (although probably not mushrooms – my knowledge of vegetables has developed in recent months).

Identifying the impostors

So where do you go if you need answers? Online, of course. When I looked up images of pumpkin and zucchini seedlings, I went ‘Aha!’ The images matched my photos, but I am leaning towards pumpkin because the zucchini seedlings seem to have multiple shoots more frequently than pumpkin seedlings do. Really, though, I can’t be sure – at least until the seedlings grow and produce fruit! Which brings me to the next issue.

‘Is there gonna be enough space for this plant?’ As usual, K asked the practical question.

I bit my lip. ‘Probably not, if it’s a pumpkin.’ From my research, I now knew that “most varieties take up a lot of room” (According to the Gardenate website) and I also had memories of large leaves and stems rambling about when my parents grew vegetables.

‘More potting mix?’ said K, resignedly.

It will be funny if the pumpkin plant (if that’s what it is) grows better than the vegetables and herbs I’ve nurtured from seed. But then again, some of the best things in life are accidents.

On a side note: I’m looking forward to our compost turning into proper compost; if this experience is anything to go by, it looks like a fertile growing medium! Those black soldier fly maggots that I wrote about in an earlier post are doing their job well.