House sitting

As I revealed yesterday, I had a surprise or two waiting for me to return home. Partially due thanks to our House sitter, who has a hard life playing with our cats, watering our plants and keeping me posted via email when my yarn arrives. All of which he did with great enthusiasm and it shows.

Click all pictures to enlarge

Much like Laurie, I have ginormous cucumber plants, or cukes as my mother calls them. In the eight days I was gone my cukes went from 'meh,' to 'what the freak? Where the hell did these plants come from' It doesn't look all that fantastic in the very small picture, but I'm telling you the truth when I say some of those cuke leaves are wider than your hand span. There's only two plants there. One on each side of the tomato plant.

In fact, all my plants just seemed to get bigger in one way or another. The left side of the steps...


The right side of the steps...


My Red Ruffle Azalea put out two blooms way past it's season...


Even my hanging baskets got an addition...

A bird's nest! Y'all, I am so excited to have a bird's nest in my flowers. Secretly, I have been wanting a little bird to do this since I put them up. It's damaging to to flowers (eh, their annuals anyway) and not so attractive on the porch (just don't put a chair near by it, okay?), but there will be little baby birds later. And no snakes, or hawks or any other predators can get at them, unlike poor Katie's experiences.

That's not to say that I wasn't in constant email to our house sitter about the state of my plants and flowers. To tell you the truth I was a little worried that he wouldn't actually water them every day like I was doing. (Although, my impatiens and geraniums were a little wilted, they perked right back up when I watered them.) I guess it showed, because he played a nasty trick on me by emailing to say that my plants had all died. ARGH! I stopped breathing when I read that-we all know how hard I have been working at my green thumb. At that moment, I started plotting his slow and painful death.

I don't think Maya and Nigel would have approved though; They loved their playmate. Nigel specifically needs more than the average amount of attention than an regular cat. After only about an hour of human contact a day for the past eight days, he has become less my co-pilot and more of a barnacle-constantly attached to my side. He is demanding attention right now as he has jumped into my lap several times only to be shoved out again. Knocked my digital camera off the desk in an attempt to get back into my lap. Pawed at my hands as I was typing to get some pets. After finally being locked out of the room, he is now howling even second and digging at the carpet to be let back in.

I must attend to he needs before he explodes. Adios! (Knitting content soon I swear.)