Full of sorrow

Our good, sweet cat Nehemiah passed away Wednesday. He had been battling diabetes since July of 2009 and we had been treating it as best we could with twice daily insulin, pills and the ocassional subcutanious fluids.
Tuesday we could tell he was winding down.

Wednesday Timmy made a choice to take him to the vet. I think he was grasping at any shread of hope. They started to give him fluids and he coded. Timmy feels enormously guilty and I understand that, but he was doing what he thought was right and he was trying to help. Still, he's heartbroken. I've never seen him this distraught.

We had a service Thursday morning and buried him in the herb garden under the catnip. Our friend came to the service and took us to lunch. Neither of us have been eating much, neither of us ate Wednesday night. It was nice to finally have a meal.

I know this will get better and I won't cry at the drop of a hat. For now, we're both grieving. We still have Lenny, but Lenny is pretty aloof compared to Nehemiah and he really is my cat. Tim really misses his buddy. I wish I could make everything better.

I believe Nehemiah came to us when we needed him, and when he needed us, and a new cat will come to us when the time is right.

 
Until we meet again good friend. I will comfort myself by thinking of the crusty warriors passing you around for cuddles and scritches in Freya's hall, you drowing out their laughter with your purr and begging for scraps from their plates.

So how's that produce?

I love this time of the year, the garden provides me with lunch and dinner every day.  Fantastic!  With the weeding mostly manageable, it's sit back and bathe in the beauty of fresh veggies and fruit. Yum.

Main garden bed on the west side of the garage.  We're thinking about expanding it with a lower tier. I think the lilac bush will need to go away completely if we do this, and not just hacked into oblivion.

 Early girl tomato in the herb bed.

When I pulled out the pear tomato with blight I replaced it with a cherry tomato plant and it's starting to produce fruit.  The tomatoes are taking forever to ripen....

 Chives.

 Italian mild peppers.  I started this from seed, and it's the only one of 12 plants that survived the ravages of the cat.  It is doing really well!

Summer squash! 

The zucchini plants became infested with a grub that killed the plant.  So far no sign on the squash.  I pulled all the zucchini and re-planted.  I may have enough of a growing season left to get a second crop.

 Our peas started off slow, but they are going well now.

 We've about tripled our raspberry plants with the addition of our neighbor's plants and we had a great crop this year.  Can't wait until next!

My first time growing eggplant (another plant that I started from seed).  It's doing really well and I've harvested 3 medium sized oval eggplants.  I made a spicy eggplant dip with 2 and eggplant pizza with the other.  The pizza was good, but the dip is heaven!!!

My first time growing cauliflower.  I should end up with 4 heads total.  I've picked 2 so far and they were good.  I started the plants from seeds so I'm pretty happy.

 Bush beans

 Burpless cucumber

 Our apple tree is doing much better this year. Harelsons!

Melons have started and I should be able to pick my first one this week!  The are similar to cantaloupe, and are roughly the size of softballs.  There was one on Saturday where the rind had started to turn from smooth green to a knobby beige.  Yay!