Mountain lions, mold, and snow storms

At last, an update. It's been far too long, I know, but this summer's monsoon and plague of mold on our tomatoes, potatoes and eggplants - along with everything else - was just too discouraging. Then, I had a lengthy business trip that took me out of state during a critical period at the garden when I would otherwise have tried planting for an optimistic fall crop. Such is life.

I'm working on setting up some window boxes for a potential winter crop, using the little white fairy lights - if, that is, my feline buddy allows it. As always - we'll see. Speaking of whom, we had an adventure last week that thoroughly messed up my holiday-card writing, among other things. As my cousin put it, it was a mountain lion attack. Sort of.

the story...
Yes, that's him. Drugged to the gills in that photo, by the way. But I'm getting ahead of myself. See the windowsill behind him? He was up there, with a (now moved to the floor) strawberry pot. He got into a hissing, poofy-tailed snit about a neighbor cat wandering by outdoors, and did the usual feline flip-out. I ignored him. A few minutes pass while I'm still sitting below the window, reading & knitting. Given that I had my back against that wall there, I didn't see what set off the next chain of events, but I think he was still hopping around, hissing at the leaves twitching in the gusty wind.

Normally, I ignore him when he gets twitchy.

He must have bumped into that clay pot, thought it was something attacking him, and whipped around to "attack" it - at any rate both of them tumbled out of the window, and onto me. In the process, he sunk his teeth & claws into my right hand & arm, probably trying to stop his fall, but clearly he had no idea what he was doing. He then retreated under the computer desk, hissing and yowling as if I had bitten him. In the mean time, I had to head to the ER: the punctures from his teeth were pretty deep (they hit tendons). Happily, I am fine, and after a week of antibiotics and a splint on my arm to protect further injury to my tendons/give them a chance to rest, I am newly appreciative of being able to use both hands. I don't do well as an obligate lefty, or so I learned.

George, on the other hand, is still healing from his part of the adventure: apparently he managed to break/twist one of his claws and part of another on the way down. At first, I thought the blood was mine, and he wouldn't let me near him for the rest of the day, and I was in no position to argue. Later, it was clear that it wasn't only my blood on his paw. To the vet we went, and what a pair we were. It shows how injured he was that he was even willing to walk into his pet-carrier without a fight. Surgery and drugs for him, a splint for me. Good times! We're both on the mend now, and I'm looking forward to planting and digging in the spring. I hope everyone's having a wonderful holiday season, and staying warm in spite of the snow. Just remember, the old farmer's almanack always used to call snow "poor man's fertilizer" - so hopefully our gardens will be a little less stressed out this spring. Expect some photo-posts once I get the little seedlings started in my windowboxes.

Now, I'm going to go listen to some carols ~