The reason cats climb is so that they can look down on almost every other animal - it's also the reason they hate birds. ~K.C. Buffington

so, "gardening things" have been A LOT of weeding and getting sunburned(despite my constant application of sunblock)(yay! Team Paleforce!) and awaiting the arrival of no less than ONE ZILLION beans.(mom bought a "frencher," which is the only way i've ever liked to eat green beans. they taste better that way. it's probably something about the surface-area and the brine-y salty-ness.)

i have recovered about 5 pea pods,leading to the conclusion that if a person wants to do anything like-eat a serving of peas, instead of-add them to a stir-fry, that person needs to plant no less than 50 pea plants. our 15 or so, do not make for good eating. but the flowers are pretty, if nothing else

of the 6 pumpkin seeds planted, 5 came up and are growing and despite being outside of our garden-fencing, have not been eaten by deer. mom and Stan planted their entire former-alpaca-grazing-area with pumpkins and deer cleaned it out. oops!

been talking to some people a lot lately about elevation and how apparently vital it is to take into consideration. example:less than 2 miles away it can be fine,weather-wise and here, it will be blizzard-ing. this mostly only matters when, say, you're driving and all of a sudden the road turns to ice and you have to be pulled from a ditch...but! when you've been very careful to repeatedly check last-frost dates and want to preserve your lovely heirloom pepper and tomato plants that you very carefully started indoors,and then they are all frost-touched, less then 2 weeks later, it's annoying,to say the least.

that said,we have a very short growing season,here. one stupid reason that we a.)can't grow sweet poatatoes and b.)need a greenhouse. (anyone want to gift me w/a million dollars?)

using the ever-faithful fallback of google,i've concluded that the elevation of Cayuta,NY is about 1060-ish ft. who knows what part of Cayuta that measurement was taken,but it's approximate. compared, Elmira is at about 984ft.

deer,elevation,bugs,blight(whatever THAT is)-all factors to consider,when gardening. as well as rainfall,freak-wind storms that uproot entire rows of corn and cats (and neighborhood dogs)who ignore the fence and use parts of the garden as their litter box/personal lavatory.

the Dead Animal Count for this week is: one huge robin, 2 baby mice(still in wrinkly,fetal-position!), and two adult mice. my favorite being the fetal mice, one being dropped in the middle of our bed and one being batted underneath the couch. Stan's building us a bat house(at my request b/c i'll do anything to stop the onslaught of mosquitoes) and i just hope that we can find a place out-of-the-way enough so that Euronymous doesn't catch ANYMORE bats...