Karen Biko is Jazzed!!

Today I’m ready to write.  It’s taken me over a week to sit down and write about Ripley.  After 19 years of fur and purrs, we put our little man down.  Ripley was a good cat, and was named after the movie Aliens (one of my favorite movies).

He had personality.  He liked being around people, and would often hang out in the bushes so that he could jump out at you as you walked by.  He had stealth, was curious, loved to frolic, and only tolerated the endless maulings we gave him.

His favorite place was the garden.  He loved to curl up in the bushes and sleep, or watch me as I messed around with plants.  A stick running through the grass was a great game.  It was always fun for him to eat his grass, and then yak it up later, and he taught himself to be a great mouser.

He wouldn’t come and curl up on your lap, but he may lay down near you, but just out of reach. Almost to say I want to be near you, just don’t maul me.  His favorite toys when he was a kitten were pom poms, we would play fetch with them.

We knew the time was coming as his kidneys slowly started shutting down, and he became more and more senile (yowling at night “where is everybody?”), and the arthritis that had started pushing his back legs out.  I cried when I took him to the vet.  I cried with him in the examination room, and I cried as I felt him relax in my arms with his final breath.  My little man is gone.

I walk in a room and I see him laying on the couch out of the corner of my eye, but it’s not him.  I hear a sound and I think its his little greeting croon, but it isn’t.  I yearn to bury my face in his fur and smell that wonderful cat smell, but it’s only a memory.

A letter came yesterday from the Vet.  A little card with a paw print, and a tuft of his hair tied with a bow.  I cried, what a thoughtful and nice thing to do.  The fur doesn’t smell like Ripley, but every day I get to pet him, and hold that little piece of him to my cheek.

We gave him a good life – 19 years – so I smile when I think of that and all the wonderful memories I have of him.  It will be lonely working in the garden without him this year…he’s always been there with me, my little man.

Last weekend I took Saturday and made it mine.  I felt that there were no pressing issues that I HAD to deal with and that I could take a day to do something.  It started out small with a hose hanger for the side of the house.  Right above where weeds were continually growing.

Katelin pitched in and although she didn’t want to get her hands into the dirt, she did clean off the front step.  Taking down the chairs, and hosing out all the cobwebs and stuff that collects in the corners.

Meanwhile I decided to build a little garden under that hose.  So I got out the tools and soon enough I was pulling out grass and weeds, and dealing with the mess.  I mixed up what dirt what there, with my own compost that had been cooking all last year and through the winter…  and now I had a little patch of dirt.

I decided to go shopping.  I had been reluctant to buy many plants because we are living thin, and I felt that it was an extravigance that I just shouldn’t do.  But I had a gift certificate, and some clear ideas of what I was looking for.

One of those was a rose that I had at our house in Riverbend…I dearly miss it.  But as I walked the greenhouse isles, finding all sorts of treasures, I didn’t find my rose.  So I bought a substitute.  An Adelaide Rose (which I feel was appropriate because Gramma’s sister was Adelaide).

I felt giddy as I came home with my plants.  I had forgotten how much I loved that feeling.  Another hour and everything was in place.  I took my lawn chair and sat at the side of my house and smiled.

I even started working on my new gardening journal (which I will go into more detail another time).  I was so energized that I went into the back yard and started working on the half completed back garden.

Once it was cleaned up I knew another trip to the greenhouse was in store.  So Sunday morning that is just what I did.  This time I went to another place and guess what I found!!??  My rose!  All these years I had thought it was called a Daphne Rose, but I found out that it is actually a Morden Hoodless Ruby!

I’m so pleased that I actually planted her in the back yard, because now when I sit out I can look at her and look at her.  She smells wonderful, and she makes me smile.  A part of me will always call her Daphne.

I’m pretty Jazzed about that…

For a couple of weeks I’ve been spying little bits of green showing up in my garden…mostly of course weeds, but little gifts coming out of the earth.  Today I took the time to look a bit closer, and was so excited as I did my spring walk in the garden.

So it’s official.  Spring is here in Calgary, and my favorite of the day???

Wooly Thyme

∞∞∞∞and that’s What Karen Biko is Jazzed about for This week of April 2010∞∞∞∞