The kittehs: due to extreme kitteh terrorism and the climbing ability of Shu-shu—if he had Seishi’s thumbs it would all be over—we have gotten very strict about 8 am feeding time…no budge in that hour.  Today they are smug. They think they won one.

The garden: most mornings the pond has been iced over. Now, quite suddenly, there’s a gentle rain falling. Ari appeared yesterday: I note that the algae has started growing on last year’s lily stems, and there’s a hint of pink on the buds of the quince that screens my window. I love quince. Its blooms look tropical, but it’s hardy; and it branches at a right angle, which makes its habit open rather than thickly leaved. I can always see out quite well past it, and in spring, it blooms all along its branches with apricot-colored flowers. My little crew of house sparrows lives there—they own the pond, just ask them. And I am going to have to get out there and resurrect the wisteria stake—a thick bamboo pole that collapsed when a windstorm blew a neighboring trellis down. The other trellis was only propped against the fence…my fault.

We have to do some carpentry out there: we decided to trade the moon gate for a rectangular arch with no swinging gate, in front of the garage door, so we disassembled the moon gate and moved the rectangular gate in the L to do that job, but the same windstorm blew it down and did some damage to it. It is now propped against the fence so it can’t tip again.

We will secure it when we set it in place, do some repair on it. Then we will assemble the moon gate where it will frame the short bit of the L: we have trees back there, including an espaliered apple against the fence, and we will one day stair-step the ground back there to make a little pond for lotus and a little recyclling stream running from the high part.

No fish in that one. Just a lotus. That little bit has quite a rise in it, back by the apple, so all we need to do is terrace it with a notch for the little stream…it’s only about 15 feet from the high part to the level where we will put the lotus pond. We won’t connect it to the big pond: the big pond sits in a berm we don’t want to mess with, and the waterfall is there, but it will provide a harmony for that problematic part of the yard. Right now it also contains our tool shed and lawn chemical storage, and we are going to screen those with trellis or flowering bushes that will meet the wing of the moon gate. Which will have its pretty gates closed more often. And it will be firmly anchored. We’ve discovered landscape stones, those with the trefoil design in cement, make real good anchors if you fill the open part of the design with gravel. The swing in the front yard would go over with every wind until we thought up that solution, and we are going to fix the gates in back so they are storm-proof.

But we are NOT obsessing, this year. We are going to do these things in a sane and occasional manner.