Second Harvest

Around the first of August we celebrate the second harvest. Wiccans call it Lammas or Lughnasadh (pronounced 'Lu-ness-a'), in honor of the Irish god Lugh. It's the height of summer, the crops are coming in, and it's time to celebrate the bounty of the growing season. 

My tomatoes started ripening a couple of weeks ago. From here until first frost, I'll have some nearly every day. I grew almost all bite-sized tomatoes this year - grape, tiny orange, yellow pear, and cherry. I think I like the orange cherries the best; they have such a delicious sweetness. But I especially love how colorful it all is in the basket. 

And a single, minuscule green pepper. Peppers don't seem to love my garden.

I have three pepper plants this year: jalapeno, banana pepper, and green. The green pepper has given me only the one sad little specimen you see in the photo. I've tried to grow them three years straight and this is, sadly, the best I've done. 

However, the jalapenos are doing well, and I've already picked a number of banana peppers. I've never grown them before and I rarely even eat them outside of Subway sandwiches, so the first time I chopped some raw into a salad I was dismayed at how weird and bitter they tasted. Then I found a recipe for pickled banana peppers, and all has been right with the world. 

I grow zucchini every year. This year and last, I mixed it up with a yellow crookneck squash plant as well. A couple of years ago a friend asked, "How do you grow zucchini?" and I could only reply in amazement, "You plant it in the ground." I am inundated with squash every year. Zucchini omelettes, zucchini brownies, zucchini cake, zucchini quiche, zucchini casserole, a gajillion versions of zucchini bread both savory and sweet. Zucchini shredded and frozen for the indeterminate point in mid-winter when I'm ready to eat something with it again. 

This year, though, I haven't seen much from my famously prolific squash plants. Hopefully they'll start to give me more as the month wears on. It is definitely still summer: a couple of beautifully cooler days over the weekend gave way today to the sunny 90s. 

I'm glad of it, really. I am not a fan of the summer heat and autumn has always been my favorite season, in large part because of the relief it brings with crispy nights and cooler days. But in the last couple of years, the crushing drought and heat seems to have tempered back into the summers I remember from my youth: hot, yes, but not the oppressive Arizona-desert, get-thyself-indoors hot we had for what seems like fifteen or twenty years running.  And because it's been warm but not horrible, I find myself sad to realize that summer is coming to an end. 

Not yet, though! For now, the veggies are bursting and the sun is shining and the grass is...well... dead. But it's quite obvious, now, that the days are shortening and the seasons are turning. Autumn is coming. 

(Fair warning: I started watching Game of Thrones. I'll try not to quote it excessively.)

And now, this picture of kittens. 

Cuteness overload!

New Beginnings

In recent weeks I started thinking about adopting a new kitty. I feel guilty for even wanting to, as we have two still in the house - the sister and father of my Peanut. Two cats is really enough, in terms of space and upkeep required. But I miss the special relationship I had with Peanut. Gordon and Snuggins have Jesse as their human. They like and tolerate me, but it's not the same.

I'm not sure how I got to thinking about a pair instead of one. I guess if two is already enough, why not double it? Makes perfect sense, really. But once the idea was planted I couldn't get it out. A pair from the same litter, built-in friends.

As it happens, the Dumb Friends League is on the way home from work. Literally I drive right past it. So I stopped in last Thursday just to see the adoptable kitties, and there they were! A pair of brothers, five months old, captured from a feral colony in Denver.

They are so beautiful! A tiny panther and a mini ocelot.

Verdict's still out on their names. They came as Brad and Chad, but they're not attached to them, and they don't seem particularly suited. So far, Felix and Oscar are front runners. Oscar the ocelot, and Felix the panther. I love giving a black cat, subject of so many superstitions of bad luck, a name that means Lucky.

Also up for consideration: Toothless.

I'm not committing to it yet. We'll see if it sticks. So far, the names seem fitting.

I adore them already, and yet I'm kind of terrified. Four cats in the house! What have I done? I listened to them tearing around in my room last night and realized it's been fifteen years since I had a kitten. They're going to destroy everything! It's what they do!

His markings! He looks like an ocelot.

Totally worth it. I mean, look at those faces.