Welcome to the Enchanted Garden

In a land far, far away, there is a garden where magical creatures live. Somtimes, if you are very lucky, doubting Thomas, you'll find a sign that those magical creatures truly do exist, like this:

And from time to time they even leave more tangible evidence of their existence in this enchanted garden.

 Of course the garden is enchanted, where else do you suppose magical creatures live? The garden, which is called Bliss for obvious reasons, sometimes changes during the night into a mystical, magical winter world.

Showered with pearls and dusted with diamonds it stands patiently waiting with bated breath for the magical creatures to appear.

Oooh look, there goes one of them. Isn't she gorgeous, this winter prinses all decked out in soft blue and silvery fur?

And have you noticed the transformation of what was once an ordinary marigold into this glorious diamanté jewel? It is amazing, isn't it, gentle reader? Come let's explore some more.

Isn't it wonderful, this magical mystery tour in this enchanted garden? Have you noticed that everything in the Bliss garden is connected? You haven't? Well, look closer, closer still. See?

Those silvery threads look so fragile but in reality are very, very strong indeed and are everywhere in the Bliss garden. They connect every part of the garden with everything else; shrubs with trees, flowers with the earth, the potager with the long border, the gardener with the garden, the garden with the magical creatures and if you pay really, really close attention, gentle reader, you will find that those silvery threads also connect Bliss to you.

 copyright 2010 Y.E.W. Heuzen

Autumnal Bliss

Chestnuts roasting on an open fire ..... Don't worry Christmas isn't upon us. Yet! Just trying to capture that image that says Autumn like nothing else. Roasted chestnuts is one of those images and so is this

and this.

Autumn is such a cliché, isn't it? One hoary old err chestnut after another, but fun though and pretty spectacular colourwise.

And fun was had by all. Recently yours truly went on a much deserved break and took the Ickle Pup and the odd kittycat or two with her. We stayed in the former coach house of a friend of mine, as we've done many times before. It's situated smack in the middle of a huge forest.

This time Autumn was a rather magnificent affair as there had been hardly any wind to speak of so the trees were in full regalia. Magenta, gold, copper, purple, green, silver, burgundy, orange all vied for our attention. The Ickle Pup aka Tara went beserk with it all and ran around like a demented chestnut.

Wish I had a huge forest in my back garden so that widdle Tara could run around to her heart's content. Unfortunately she has to make do with this, a back garden of more modest proportions and with just the odd tree here and there.

A garden she has to share with others as well. On the garden path are Macavity (red&white) and Jeeves (black&white) enjoying a balmy autumn afternoon. Lately we've been enjoying days of 15 C which is rather warm for the time of year. Since last weekend we are back to our usual schedule of temperatures around 6 to 8 C. Brrr, high time to bung the wooly hats and gloves on.

But before I do just that, I have a few bulbs to plant, a mere 1600 of them. Yes, I'll wait until you've recovered from the shock. Don't know what this hullabaloo is all about, a piffling 1600 bulbs is nothing to get worked up about. You really should go out more and visit the Keukenhof in Dutchland were they plant millions of bulbs every year.

I, on the other hand, had much much less to plant so I simply rolled up the grass carpet, scattered the bulbs and planted them were they fell. Then I rolled back the carpet and that was pretty much that. Can't wait to see them in flower though!

I leave you with this new addition of scroungers chez Bliss. After feeding pretty much every stray kittycat within 10 miles of Bliss for years and years, and a vast amount of the bird population as well, now I have another hungry widdle mouth to feed.

Speaking of food, excuse me while I burn my fingers trying to peel the roasted chestnuts. Ouch,  mmm yummy! Autumn is Bliss!

copyright 2010 Y.E.W. Heuzen

The Stumpery

I'm nuts about ferns as they are so frilly and have such a fab green colour. I love watching fern fronds unfurl in Spring. And because I love ferns so much I decided to make a stumpery in a shady part of the Bliss garden.

For a stumpery you need, no surprises there, stumps and quite a lot of them. But where to do you get your hot little hands on them?  Fortunately, as we are now in the process of removing the horrendously ugly Leylandii hedge that has been a visual pest from day one, I have a plethora of stumps.

This is 5 meter of bug ugly hedge bordering the front garden.

And this is what it looks like now that the first 5 meters are gone. Only 25 meters more to do. Argh! As you can see the Leylandii hedge is/was both ugly and ginormous. There is so much more space in my front garden now that the hedge is gone. But enough hedging, lets return to the latest addition to the Bliss garden: the stumpery.

To create a stumpery you dig a big but shallow hole in the ground. Bung some tree stumps in, preferably in an artistic way, fill up the holes inbetween with 50% soil and 50 % leafmold. Plant ferns in the holes and stand back to admire the view.

In time the stumps will rot away but before that they will provide lots of insects, toads and hedgehogs with much needed shelter and not only that, but they offer ferns a wonderful place to grow in and provide such a nice setting too. Apart from ferns I've also bunged in some Lilies-of-the-Valley, blueberry shrubs and a hazelnut tree. More will follow such as snowdrops, primroses, foxgloves, hydrangeas etc.

Not bad eh, that I've turned a bunch of ugly stumps from a most revoltingly ugly hedge into a thing of beauty.

It's a thing, a Bliss thing!

copyright 2010 Y.E.W. Heuzen

The Lighter Side of Topiary

Granted I do indulge in the odd topiary ball or two and even have a few cone shapes as well, but that is where I draw the line topiary-wise. Not everybody feels that this is where the topiary thing should stop as is evidenced by this

and this.

They have simply gone ape-doo-doo with topiary. Fun but totally OTT.

To make matters worse, not everybody is content to clip their box, yew and goodness knows what other leafy thing into odd shapes, sometimes very odd shapes, but actually feel that they just have to take it one step further:

 Oh dear, and it gets worse, much, much worse.

There should be a law against that sort of thing, there really should and this kitty quite agrees with me, wouldn't you say?

Urinated off doesn't begin to describe its feelings, poor thing. But if you think it can't get much worse than this,  you must be living a very sheltered life coz look here.

I realise that after reading this post you'll never look at topiary quite the same way ever again.

copyright 2010 Y.E.W. Heuzen

The Feliary

Shortly after Vita's return (see previous post) we built the feliary. It's right next door to the conservatory so the cats can go into the feliary whenever they want. Which is often as they love it. And why shouldn't they, it's got all the mod cons any self respecting kittycat could hope for:

 the feliary is spacious,

has a fabulous view,

a great outdoor dining space,

 loads of green stuff for munching and rolling in such as grasses and catnip,

gorgeous scents wafting through the air,

a grape arbour that thoughtfully provides shade and lots of amusing little green balls to pick and play with,

and all the running water, complete with the sound of gently trickling water, any thoroughly spoiled kittycat might need. Entertainment has also been kindly provided in the shape of one small dog in case the kittycats get bored.

Utter outdoor Bliss!

copyright 2010 Y.E.W. Heuzen

MIA

Haven't blogged much lately but not for lack of material to write about. Last July, for instance, my worst nightmare came true when my oldest cat Vita disappeared from the Bliss garden.

Since I moved here I was in the habit of letting some of the cats play in the garden while I was working outside so I could keep an eye on them. My old garden had been cat proof; no cat could escape from it and no cat could enter it from outside. Making the Bliss garden 100% cat proof turned out to be impossible and as all my cats were so well behaved and would come running when I called them, I let it be. And then, one awful day last July, Vita was gone.

I searched for her everywhere; the garden, the house, the garden cottage, the garage and then further afield: my neighbours gardens, sheds, garages etc. but all to no avail. We even searched with an infra red
camera to see if Vita was hiding in the shrubbery but no, not a sign of her.

I made hundreds posters and put them up everywhere in the village, even in a nearby city where many fellow villagers go to shop. Posters were put up in and near supermarkets, parking spaces, daycare centres, at the vet's, the petshop, a flowershop, places where many people walked their dogs etc. I also designed & printed about 1200 flyers and put them in people's letterboxes. You had to be living in deep dark hole in my village not to be aware that Vita had gone AWOL.

I would search for Vita every morning between 5 and 7 AM and every evening between 10.30 and 1 PM as the chance of finding her would be bigger when it was quiet outside. I also searched for her via the phone and the internet. But however hard I searched, no Vita. 1 Week passed, then another but no sign of Vita at all. I was getting pretty desperate when suddenly one day I finally received a phone call from an old lady who said she'd seen her.  Went over to talk with her and to show her some pictures of Vita. She was adamant that that was the cat she'd seen. Vita is a Maine Coon and looks very different from your average moggy as she has long hair and her coat colour is also not that common; blue tortie and white/blue calico & white. After that initial phone call I got more phone calls from other people in that same area so I concentrated the search for Vita in that neighbourhood. But again no Vita. She'd been gone for almost 3 weeks and as Vita was not a young cat (almost 15yrs) she would not be able to stick it out for much longer. And then, at long last another phone call this time from a man who said he was actually looking at her while we were on the phone. He asked me to come straight away.

 So we did. Brought a flashlight as it was late in the evening and already dark. Much to my relief it turned out to be my darling girl. For the first time in almost three weeks I was able to see her with my very eyes. My relief was utter, I was so glad to see her and know for certain that she was alive and reasonably well. But how to catch her?

Because you'll never guess where she'd been hiding; in a kitchen garden next door to one of the local pubs. When we got there, Vita was running around in a poppy field, trying to get away from the flashlights that were pointed at her. The chap who'd found her had also brought a flashlight and he and his wife had been keeping an eye on Vita till we got there. So we had a party of 4  but however hard we tried, we couldn't catch her and in the end Vita hid in a pile of wood and we couldn't get at her.

Judging by the amount of fur that stuck to the wood, this had been Vita's hide-out for at least a week. As we could not get her out of there, I decided to let her stay there and come back the next morning. It was one of the hardest things I've ever had to do; leaving Vita and return home empty handed. I had brought some catfood along so I left food for her near the pile of wood and went home with a heavy heart.

After a mostly sleepless night we returned the next morning around 5 AM. The catfood near the woodpile was gone, the plate licked clean but I had put another plate of food next to a gate bordering on the poppy field and that wasn't empty. So where was she? To eat the food she had to leave her hidey-hole. As the other plate of food was untouched she had not gone into the field so she had to be close to the houses next to the kitchen garden and poppy field.

Off we went to comb the whole area with a fine tooth-comb. We had searched for about an hour when I suddenly heard a noise coming from under a shed I was quite close too. I went to have a butcher's and this is where I found my Vita.

She was right on top of that pile of rubble, her head almost touching the ceiling and with her back against the wall. How to get hold of her without her running off again into the back of beyond?

There were some plastic chairs there so I sat down and surveyed the situation. I'd sent the under-gardener off for a thermosflask of tea and some sandwiches as we hadn't eaten a thing since we'd left home.

I knew the minute that either one of us would come too close to Vita she'd be off like the proverbial bat out off hel. What to do? I could wait until the next day, Monday, and try to either beg, borrow, buy or steal a trap so we could catch her.  But frankly the thought alone made my heart sink. I wasn't going to wait for a whole day, or worse maybe even several days before I could finally hold Vita in my arms again.

So I came up with a cunning plan. After the under-gardener had returned with the tea and sandwiches I went home to get some netting & other stuff that we needed to close off the three gaps between the pillars (see pic above). It took us about 1 1/2 hours to close off all the gaps so that not even a mouse could escape. We checked and double checked that we had indeed sprung the trap. We had. Within 5 minutes Vita was safe in her carrier and after we had removed all the netting we returned home triumphantly.

As soon as we got home I popped Vita in the utility room and gave her a thorough check-up. Apart from being as thin as a rake (went from 3.8 to 2.6 kilo), ever so slightly dirty and sans her last 3 canines, Vita was fine, remarkably so. She had no ticks, fleas, earmites or other nasty beasties. Cleaned her up a bit and fed her. Then I stumbled into bed and slept for 4 solid hours, I was exhausted. At long last my darling Vita was safely home.

A lot of missing pets are never recovered simply because their owners gave up searching for them too soon. My Vita was found after 19 days. Another cat in my village, that went missing on the same day as Vita, was found after 30 days. If your pet is missing, DO NOT GIVE UP. Keep searching, your pet has NOT disappeared into thin air, it must be somewhere and somebody must have seen your pet. I got my Vita back because I'd put a flyer in the right letterbox, Dido (the other missing cat) was found because of an add in the local rag. Whatever you do when your pet has gone missing: do not give up!

I mentioned earlier that I searched via the internet as well for my Vita and here are some links to sites that I found that have been invaluable to me. If you have pets please bookmark this page so you can always find the info here if, Valen forbids, one of your pets goes missing.

http://www.catprofiler.com/profiles.html  cat profiler Jenne Mundy
http://www.katalbrecht.com/  pet detective Kat Albrecht
http://www.catsinthebag.org/ Cat's In the Bag - providing a huge amount of useful information
http://catsinthebag.yuku.com/  The Cat's In the Bag Forum where you'll find a lot of support and helpful suggestions

copyright 2010 Y.E.W. Heuzen