I'm sorry to hear about your cat gianna. 20 years is a good long life. Did you have him most of those 20 years? According to the chart I have he was a 96 year old in human years!
Yes, it is a long life. I think my previous eldest was 16 or 17. I don't really remember. I did have him his entire life - he was only weeks old when I got him from the Humane Society. He was tiny and very much like a little wind-up toy. He was a nice cat.
96 sounds about right. My father lived to 94 and, without being too disrespectful, there were similarities.
Coastal Southern California, zone 10, avocado belt, El Nino is coming!
desertwoman mentioned she had her first crocus open shortly ago...
This clump opened earlier this week... It's supposed to rain heavily for a little bit here...very shortly... I hope they hold up... They're just so cute and fresh...
This clump used to have yellow ones in there too...Those have disappeared over the years...
I garden ~~~ Therefore I am
OG Member since 2002 ~~~ Southeastern PA ~~~ Zone 7a
The pussy willows were at their peak yesterday...any longer and 'poof'...just like that, they're too late to pick... It was so warm yesterday that in the morning they looked entirely differently...each bud more-so compact at the base... Late in day when I picked them, they had opened to this...
They're quite full and plump this year...Especially nice near the tips of the branches... I find it interesting that each year produces slightly differently shaped buds...
Weird part is I am not normally picking these until much closer to Easter... Way too warm, way too fast for these parts...
They grew quite tall this season...Of course, there had to be a measurement... ;) Tallest cut were 14 1/2 feet...Would have measured even longer but since the tree matured so early, many of the bottom smaller branches along the long stems had not yet had their chance to develop... So I left them and we'll see what happens there...
Neat thing about this tree is that it comes from a tiny cutting from my old next door neighbor's backyard tree from many, many years ago... As a little girl, that was always one of my favorite trees... When the new neighbors moved in, they cut it down and that was the end of that... It lives on in my yard as well as in the yards of many others, as the many cuttings I rooted and potted up were big sellers at my plant sales...
I garden ~~~ Therefore I am
OG Member since 2002 ~~~ Southeastern PA ~~~ Zone 7a
This past week with very unseasonably warm temperatures we have cherry trees and forsythia blooming where I work and the daffodils are a good 6-8 inches out of the ground. As ahntjudy showed in her pretty photo, the crocuses are also blooming. More seasonably we have had winter aconite, hellebores, galanthus.
I drove west into brownrexx country on Saturday and the willow trees near where my parents live were starting to leaf out.
On my enclosed front porch, all winter I have had the 3 big pots of chives I took last season from my Brother's in Delaware, so as to save them from succumbing to the Allium Leaf Miner...
All 3 pots are putting out nice new growth...I'm going to let them get a little bigger and not as fragile, then repot them all...I know they need to be separated...
So it seems my front porch is now going to be the new 'Safe Home' for lots of pots of chives... I switch out the door and 3 big window panels for the screens from spring warm up until fall so they'll get air out there, just none of the bugs... :(
And these chives came from my garden to begin with...so they have made full circle... ;)
I garden ~~~ Therefore I am
OG Member since 2002 ~~~ Southeastern PA ~~~ Zone 7a
On Summer's and my walk just now, I found that the great big old, but formerly very healthy, White Pine, at the end of my block, lost many large limbs last night in the wind...I just couldn't believe the damage...But everything was/is coated pretty thickly with ice...Couldn't take the weight...
That tree has lived on my block longer than I have...my whole life... I'm so sad for that beautiful old tree... I was thinking to myself as I was walking up the street towards it, how horrible...wide open and barren that corner is going to look when it comes down...It's the only great big tree left on that corner... I'm so mushy sometimes...I love that tree...I used to collect pine cones from it for stuff in my younger days... After a windstorm, the ground would be littered with all the shed dry needles...it was beautiful...I'm bummed...
I garden ~~~ Therefore I am
OG Member since 2002 ~~~ Southeastern PA ~~~ Zone 7a