Not Another One!

But sadly, yes, there is another one in my garden.
Another stray kitty
thin as a rake
extremely hungry
but such a sweet little boy
who loves to be hugged and petted
and who wants to come inside ...............
very much so.

But he can't. I already have 8 cats to look after and then there is my kitty-rescue-in-progress Macavity, so that makes 9 in all.

I've named him Jeeves (for obvious reasons) and he came to me about 2 weeks ago. Although he was wary and frightened he did come when I called him and said come! He turned out to be very friendly and cuddly so I think at one time he was living with people. Perhaps he temporarily mislaid his people and they are desperate to find him? I have contacted Amivedi (an organisation that helps to find lost pets and reunite them with their owners again) and I'm keeping my fingers crossed that there are people out there desperately looking for their lost little boy. I do so hope that this one has a family to go to as he can't come and live with me. Even though he wants to, so very much. It's breaking my heart.
copyright 2008 Y.E.W. Heuzen

In plants, as in people, the strongest candidate for survival is often the 'volunteer'. Anonymous

Happy Hour at Bliss

Dear customer,

If you want to experience the full effects of happy hour, please click on the video bar on the right. The first option starts a bit rude, the rest not so much.

Thank you,

The Bliss Management

It's happy hour at Bliss and the newly opened Nectar Bar in the new border is buzzing with happy costumers.
There's bees everywhere.
Some of them drinking in a private room and hard to find.
Bees are not the only customers of course, in the 5 minutes that I took these pics I spotted 7 butterflies enjoying themselves in the Nectar Bar. It may have opened only recently but it is already a ginormous success.
Believe it or not, but there are 3 butterflies on this Verbena bonariensis. Do you see them?
We already have a big clientele of various species so we do not only serve nectar but much, much more, like
bread crumbs
bird seeds
peanuts and
clear, cool water. Hey Mr Blackbird, get out of the water supply, it's for drinking not bathing! Really, some customers like it so much here that they make themselves quite at home. Which is fine of course, but there are limits.
What the .....? Didn't I just say that there are limits? Slugs, who needs them?
Excuse I, did you say slugs? Where can I find them?
Let me at them, let me at them, ladies first!

And while Mr Frog and Mrs Hedgehog took care of the slug problem for me, so kind of them really, I was serving a few other hungry customers.
Although some seem to believe in self service. Here's Delia munching away for queen and country on a bit of grass.
Mrs Pointytail, who's looking kind of not amused, feels it's taking too long before she gets what she ordered. But I have only two hands, you know, and there are sooooo many customers today.
Like Macavity and Surprise, who are patiently waiting their turn to order.
Macavity to Surprise: hello pet, do you come here often?
Surprise to Macavity: duh, I live here!
Also patiently waiting are Jeeves (l) and Sibber while some other kitties are happily chewing their extra rare steaks on the lawn.
Hang on, this can't be right. Not In My Garden, you don't. Make yourselves scarce!
Sibber: waitress, can I have another extra large saucer of double cream, slightly stirred not shaken, hold the olive?
Yes sir, as soon as I've finished with this customer,
Macavity happily munching away on a cheese mouseburger with a side order of roasted Housemartins.
Service with a smile, that's what you get at Bliss. Do come again!

In the making of this post no animals where harmed although the waitress got ever so slightly mauled when she chased away the big kitties.

copyright 2008: Y.E.W. Heuzen

Snowballs in Summer

After reading the title of this post you're either thinking that the weather over here has turned bad, really really bad, (and you would not be far wrong )
or that there is as much of a chance of a snowball in Summer as there is of a snowball's chance of survival in hell. The latter being not very likely to happen, to put it mildly. But you would be wrong, there is such a thing as a snowball in Summer. Well, there is here at Bliss. Curious? I thought you might be so without further ado take a good look at this surprising occurrence of a snowball in Summer at Bliss.
Yes, it is a rose, how very astute! ;-) She's called Boule de Neige which is french for ball of snow.
What's that you say? What an odd name for a reddish pinkish rose? I'll let my pretty snowball herself explain how she got her name.
And here she is in all her manifestations if not to say glory:
This lovely snowball was born in 1867 and is a member of the Bourbon rose family. When fully grown she will be around 1.5 to 2 meters high and she has (what else did you expect at Bliss?) a wonderful scent. Next Autumn she will be put in my front garden to replace one of my Guirlande d'Amour roses as that one has become slightly too big for its breeches.
Guirlande d'Amour who is either too big or her bed is too small. Or both! :-)

copyright 2008 Y.E.W. Heuzen

Isn't that what a businessman is? A gardener? A person that makes flinty soil productive with the labor of his own hands, who waters it with sweat from his own brow, and who creates a place of value for his family and community? Jerzy Kosinski, Being There

Colour Impact

It's quiet in garden blogging land; many a blog has a blog break at the mo and I quite understand that as I'm very busy too. So busy in fact that I hardly have time to blog, let alone visit other blogs. And commenting? Well, not so much!

What I've been doing lately? Well, there is the making of the new border of course but I've also been busy with something else. Remember that old shed of mine that I revamped last year with a lick of paint and turned it from a
humble shed
into a lovely garden cottage.

It's amazing what a lick of paint will do, isn't it?

This year I've been trying something similar with my house. I live in a rather unprepossessing bungalow and I'm trying my best to make it look better, both inside and out.
This is how the bungalow looked when I bought it. Not the stuff that dreams are made of, is it? But it had, to coin a phrase, potential. ;-)

Slowly but surely over the years the house and garden were transformed. The ugly concrete patio was demolished, the windows replaced by either new double glazed windows or french doors. The woodwork was painted white, ochre yellow and dark blue and a new wooden deck was made.
The new decking and the new windows of the living room.

But oh that brown, everything was brown both inside and out. I've nothing against brown but this was simply too much, way too much of a muchness, something had to be done and it was.
White garden furniture and accessories were added and things were looking much more cheerful. In my neck of the woods we have dull grey weather for most of the year so one has to do something to brighten the place up a bit.

This is why I haven't been blogging much lately:
Before
After

Let there be colour! And there was and it was good. Then, for fun, a bit of jazzing up and hey presto, finished!
I'm very happy with the way my house is looking now, gone is all that dull brick and brown-y browness.
Before
After

Yellow is such a sunny colour and we need it here with the non-summer we've been having this year (rain, rain, rain). I had to buy the paint in Denmark as they do not sell it in my country. So to Denmark I went (last year) where they have tons of the stuff as they like it so very much. If you want to know why they like yellow so much in Denmark, take a good look at the next pick, it will explain everything.
Here, in the Netherlands, most houses are brick coloured or, if the house owners are real dare devils, then the house could be a trail blazing and very in your face (not!) magnolia. :-)
So my house in ochre yellow comes as rather a shock to many a Dutch person. It's the only house in my village that has this colour. Yay me!

And if you are thinking that I've gone yellow mad you are probably right cause lookee here;
even Tweety, the canary, is a lovely ochre yellow, a perfect match with its birdcage. What can I say? I just love colour coordination, and I love yellow, .... and painting. Now where are the kittycats? Here, kitty, kitty............... ;-)


NB No animals were harmed in the making of this post. Tweety is not a real bird and of course I would never dream of painting my cats yellow, ochre or otherwise, as that would be soooooooo wrong!

copyright 2008: Y.E.W. Heuzen

A perfect summer day is when the sun is shining, the breeze is blowing, the birds are singing, and the lawn mower is broken.
James Dent, Gardens Illustrated, August 2006