04/02/2021 – Around Colehaus

Around Colehaus this April, flowers are celebrating the return of spring warmth. Daffodils are up and grape hyacinths are blooming, despite Mom trying to rid the yard of them. We have hundreds, down from thousands – they will take OVER! Seriously.

The star magnolia is bursting with flowers this year. It’s hard to believe this small tree almost didn’t make it just ten years ago. A row of white birches on one side and a grove of old cherry and plum trees on the other blocked virtually all direct sunlight from reaching it and it languished horribly for six years.

The birches were lost to birch borer insects; almost all white birches in our region have been lost to this, and the neighbor with the grove of non-producing fruit trees cut it down after a big wind storm damaged most of it. Finally, our star magnolia shines. A little messy, but we like it anyway, both when blooming or not.

The last of Dad’s Temple of Beauty tulips are showing color. Yes, Dad likes tulips. Is that odd? These are his favorites and this last batch of five have hung on for five or six years now, much longer than they should have.

Inside, you know it’s spring when Mom sets out her old bluebird. We don’t have bluebirds this far north, though they do live about about an hour and a half south of us. We do have Stellar jays and scrub jays. Not the same.

Back outside, the weather is finally turning nice and it’s time to take the winter cover off Geoffrey’s House. But wait! Someone was snoozing inside! Mom didn’t get a photo of the sleeping beauty but she did get one of him slinking away.

It’s neighbor cat W, who’s been passing through our yard often lately. We knew someone had been staying in Geoffrey’s House on and off throughout the cold, wet winter (as well as our heated feral shelters out back), because Mom checks inside a lot and always finds the straw nicely tamped down in back. Sometimes, it’s still warm!

Viola says Mom would know who’s likely outside in a shelter if she were only to ask. Viola says she sees all comings and goings from this spot in Tessa’s box up on the boo-fay which nicely looks out back through the glass door. She also says Tessa might need to find a new box in which to reside. We can hardly wait for that conversation to take place. NOT!

We’re still hanging in there. Dad got a small raise that puts his wage three cents over Mom’s near minimum wage, putting him back in the head of the household role. Mom still pays for all our benefits; Dad’s job doesn’t offer any and he’s still looking for that elusive better paying job.

What’s so frustrating is the acceptable practice of not letting people know whether or not their application was even received. The employment world is like a black hole. Everything that enters appears lost. And the timeline for hiring, thanks in part to Covid-19? We’re talking months down the road. We can only hope someday in the future, Dad will be swamped with twenty or thirty offers for interviews or maybe even a job or two. It could happen. Mom’s been crossing her fingers since August of 2018.

Next week, Mom gets her first Covid-19 vaccine shot, having finally, finally, become eligible (even though she’s old, has slight asthma, and must work within close proximity with lots of other people, she was denied up until now), Dad gets his second dose, and Quint goes in for his pre-dental anesthesia test.

We have someone coming to figure out why our fountain pump keeps shutting off, we’re finalizing our taxes, and hope to straighten out an elusive email shenanigan, and between all that and long work hours and free online Spanish classes (to hopefully help Mom at work) with somewhere in the neighborhood of three-to-five hours of sleep per night, Mom’s trying to whip our backyard into shape to catch up with all the spring flowers popping up all over.

So, we’re taking a sort of spring break from blogging and will be back on April 16th. Should anything interesting happen in the meantime, we’ll pop in here and on Facebook. Please send Quint good thoughts for his dental appointment on the 15th. We’re expecting he’ll lose a great number of teeth, perhaps all of them and we know we’ll all need to adjust to that change.

A big THANK YOU to everyone who’s sent Quint money via our Colehaus Cats Paypal account to help pay for his dental bill. And also to those who’ve sent us both cat and human food via our Amazon wish list. We would have had a very, very difficult time up until now if not for this amazing, wonderful, and compassionate community of pet lovers. THANK YOU so much for thinking of us!

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A Colehaus Cats flashback:

2020 – No post
2019 – No post
2018 – MultiCat Monday
2017 – No post
2016 – No post
2015 – No post
2014 – The Miss Newton Sandwich
2013 – Ruby Tuesdays
2012 – But, but, but…I’m a good sleeper too!