Growing Things

The garden continues to turn into a rainforest jungle from all this rain.  The last set of pictures was posted  eleven days ago.  Check out the comparison.  Eleven days ago:

and today:

It's getting a titch ridiculous.  I'm afraid to walk down the length of the garden for fear something will reach out a tentacle and grab hold of me.  Here's the shady half of the perennial garden, in all its present glory:

I see why they call this "elephant ear" hosta:

Lots of things are blossoming or about to blossom or just finished blossoming.

Any guess as to what these are from?

Why, holly, of course! I missed the flowers in their peak because it was raining too dang hard to go take pictures of it.

Spirea, and Pippin posing in front of the spirea:

Soon there will be irises:

And this is what kale does when left to its own devices:

And suddenly, all at once, columbine:

What is also growing around our household, you might ask?  Er, Rocky's middle.

The cat has become downright porky in very short order.  I had to take all five cats into the vet in two days this week.  Initially it was supposed to be just three of the cats for vaccine updates, but the rest had to go too because the vet discovered an earmite infestation.  Yeeeeeeick.  All told, it cost $670 in two days.  And I think my soul will bear permanent scars from all the searing glares I got from all five of them.  Lordie, how they hate the vet.

In the course of that fun, though, the vet weighed Rocky, and gave me one of her "disapproving" looks.  They tend to last a long minute, while she decides what to say.  The upshot of her speech was that gaining more than 3 lbs in 2 months is insane, even for a guy who just came in off the streets, because he wasn't particularly skinny when he came in.  And now topping the scales at 16 lbs 4 oz, even with his large frame, Rocky officially falls into the category of "obese."  Apparently he skipped over just plain "overweight" within a couple of weeks. 

He's kind of like a dense little bowling ball on legs.

Oops.

He just loves food so much that it's a pleasure to feed him, so I've been overlooking the fat rolls a titch.  He IS a pig.  If you feed the cats soft cat food as a treat and you don't watch him carefully, he snarfs down his own portion in about two swallows, and quickly makes the rounds, kicking all the other cats out of their dishes to eat 2/3 of their portions too.  Being top cat, they let him.

Here's are some shots of the tiger convention, all begging for food at once.  Rocky's begging for food because he's always begging for food.  Sneakie and Pippin are probably begging for food because Rocky at ate it all.

So, it's a diet for our new buddy.  No soft cat food at all, and trying to encourage him to spend more time romping.  As anyone with a multiple cat household knows, it is extremely hard to put only one cat on a diet.  And we cannot restrict the kibble from the other cats because if Wednesday doesn't have constant uninterrupted access to food, all she does is gorge and projectile vomit as soon as she gets access.  Ah, the joys of taking in neurotic strays with food issues.