Refereeing Cats

In A New Earth, Eckhart Tolle says he's lived with many Zen Masters, all of them cats. Spit is a Zen Master, Cruiser is more of a Zen student. Cruiser is on a diet and very unhappy. Both cats used to share a small can of wet food for breakfast and dinner, but Cruiser was gobbling most of his half and then muscling his way through Spit's food and then going back and finishing his own. This means Spit eats more dry food and stays trim, while Cruiser stays really chubby. This week I reduced the canned food and stood between the cats keeping Cruiser from muscling Spit. Between the heat and the reduced canned food, Cruiser has been a whiney brat, howling as if he is starving to death, and I am tempted to let him prowl the neighborhood again, but that was unsuccessful last year. Instead, I try to model Spit, who just looks patiently at him or finds a quiet place to sleep.

It has been a week of temperatures over 100 degrees. Thursday's high was 108. Last weekend's thunderstorms set off fires all around Boise and this week's inversion layer kept the smoke trapped in the valley. Wednesday night I got up to open my bedroom window and was hit by a blast of smoke as strong as if I was camping and sitting next to a bonfire. After a hot hazy day yesterday, we finally got thunderstorms with rain late in the day and a double rainbow,

The broccoli is just showing it's ruffly crown and I am hoping that it hurries up and grows enough for me to harvest soon, since it is taking over my small planter. It is also getting aphids, which I washed off with soapy water a few times this week, until yesterday when I bought a marigold. I put the marigold in a pot and set it next to the broccoli. Marigolds are supposed to repel aphids, we will see how they work.

The tomato I did not mean to plant is taking over the other half of the planter. I am pruning it so that it will grow more up than out and so far I am rewarded with two plants covered with small green tomatoes. People here use these wire frames to hold in their tomatoes, but you have to place these when the plants are small, so I am reusing the tall bamboo stakes I used for the snow pea trellis. The broccoli is crowding the bush beans, but they still have flowers and budding beans. The tomato is also crowding the pod peas, so I am thinking of moving them to the broccoli spot when the broccoli is done.

The thunderstorm wind blew around the corn and I had to stake it. It seems to me no one usually has to stake corn, I see fields of it with no supports, so I wonder if corn does better in a large group, where the plants protect each other and create their own windbreak.

The basil, thyme, and oregano are doing so well that I am harvesting leaves and drying them. You do not want to let these shoot up and flower, like I let my cilantro do last year, cut off the flowing tops and you will get fuller plants with more leaves. Did you know that coriander comes from the flowers of the cilantro plant? I never did get the parsley or the dill to grow. I don't know if that is due to the seeds or due to the growing conditions in Idaho. I bought a parsley, but it is indoors and staying really small.

The lawn is recovering well from it's fungus treatment and I started to cut back on my watering. I am a bit nervous about the cost of all of this water, in addition to the cost of all of the air conditioning this week. I usually keep the house pretty warm with the windows open, but this last week it was still hot at 10 pm and I just couldn't sleep without air conditioning.

My training got much more intense this week and between that and the heat, I have been lazy and unmotivated. For the first time, I miss cable TV. I finally joined Netflix instead and am catching up on Mad Men. Might as well enjoy electronics while I can.