Rat Replacement

A couple days ago, our beloved hamster died.  I don't know what happened to her.  She was fine Monday night when we took her out to play.  But Tuesday, Chuck came home from work, bent over her cage as he always does (cuz he thinks she's cute when she's sleeping), and asked, "why is she laying in the middle of the cage like that?"  Then he went into the bedroom to change his clothes, came out and checked on her again and said, "why is she limping?"  (I was too busy cooking supper to examine her myself).  Then about 10 minutes later, I heard Chuck say, "Oh no!!"  I looked over, and he was bent over her cage, and he said, "she's dead".

I don't know why she died. The gal at the pet store that sold her to me said that hamsters are supposed to live about 4 years.  She was only a year and a half old, and we took good care of her, so I don't know what happened.  Anyhoo, we are NOT getting another one, at least not at this time.  A hamster is one of those pets that I like to have only once in a while because I get tired of the smelly cage. ANYHOO.........................

Apparently Bossy felt that a house was not a house if it did not have a mouse, so she proceeded to get us another one.  Just hours later, and I do find this funny that this happened on the same day, I watched with amusement from the kitchen window, an animated cat trying to catch something in the weeds:

A few moments later, she came trotting toward the back door with something in her mouth.   All I knew was that it was "big" and it's legs were wiggling.  Gross!!  Ew! Gross! Ew!

Her plan was to run straight into the house with it, but Chuck stopped her in her tracks, slid the screen door shut, and said, "OH, No you don't!"

So she dropped her treasure right there in front of the door, I suppose waiting for us to let her in.

She waited, and waited:

and finally figured out that we did not want to keep her new pet.

So she played with it until it was dead, and went back out into the weeds to catch another one.

Luckily, she came back into the house when we called her cuz otherwise we might have had a whole collection of shrews to choose from, all dead of course, and what would we do with a dead shrew, anyhoo?

On another note, I had another setback with my garden.  Can you guess?  The moose came back.

She chewed down my broccoli, beat greens, and cabbage again.  And also chomped my peas half way down.  It's like she knows exactly when to come back - after she's given it time to regenerate itself, and just when I have hopes again that I might get to enjoy it, she comes back and helps herself, and has the gall to not even leave a tip! We've had a mama moose and two babies running around in this area this whole summer, and I'm pretty sure it's them cuz I'm seeing smaller hoof prints in my garden as well as the big ones, and I get reports from my neighbors that they have been chasing them away.  

She was gracious enough to leave this though:

I find it backwards that we humans have to glean after an animal, instead of the other way around. Where's the dignity in that?

As for my pumpkins, this is what I got:

You can't really tell in this picture, but I have lots of these female buds coming and going on the vines.  They get to a golf ball size, and then they turn yellow and die.  I don't know if that means they were never fertilized?  Anyhoo, see the green squiggly thing that's attached to the maltese cross stem?  It's hanging on pretty tight, but I guess that's what those green squiggly things are supposed to do.  The annoying thing about those maltese cross flowers - they are pretty, but they get so tall that they fall over.  This one fell over next to my pumpkin bed, and the pumpkin vine grew long enough to reach it, and now I don't know if I should leave it alone, or unsquiggle it.  

(Why am I suddenly thinking about "Squiggy" on "Laverne and Shirley"?)

Back Again.

Well, we made to Wisconsin and back, and it's so good to be back home again.  Whenever we parents leave the kids behind, we always have those worries in the backs of our minds:  "what's going at home?  Are they taking care of everything the way I instructed?  Will the hamster be dead when I get home?  Will the cats be lethargic due to dehydration and starvation?  Will my garden be all dried up and withered?  Will the house be trashed?"  Even though my kids are legal adults now, I know them too well not to leave them behind with no worries.  But at the same time, at least me and hubby were finally able to go somewhere (just us two) and leave it everything behind with someone we know.  Notice I didn't say "someone we know and TRUST".  Anyhoo, when we came back, all seemed to be well, and most of my worries were unnecessary.  My garden looks like this now:

My son Justin did a pretty decent job keeping it watered, and it looks like the moose didn't come back, allowing it all to grow back.  Yesterday I picked some ginormous radishes, and again wished that I hadn't planted so many cuz I will be the only one eating them.  Plus, I ate one of them and it gave me a stomach ache w/gas.  Maybe that's because I let it grow too large and it was getting kinda "woody",  but don't radishes have that effect on people anyway?  I don't know.  I will try another one later.

My daughter Kayla (PeeWee) was given the task of taking care of the inside of the house.  She did okay taking care of the animals, but did absolutely nothing in regard to cleaning.  It appeared that she hadn't washed the dishes even ONCE while we were gone.  Now I know what happens to leftover cereal milk when it sits in the bowl for 10 days.  Anyone got a chisel handy?

A brief summary of our trip:  I'll try not to let this get too long and boring.

We had a real good time, having no kids with us made it that much better!

First of all, I would highly recommend anyone not to rent a car from Dollar.

That was a very unpleasant experience.  Not only was the customer service (the process of picking up the car) a horrible nightmare, but this is the joke of a car we ended up with:

Notice Chuck is getting ready to check the oil AGAIN. You would think those car rental people would take good care of the cars and make sure everything was good with it, and NOT rent out cars that eat oil. This car has a ravenous appetite for oil!! Customers should NOT be expected to maintain the oil! Luckily, Chuck is the type of person who has a habit of checking oil.  If he hadn't done that with this car, who knows what would've happened?  Before we returned the car, he had put in 3 quarts of oil!  

Never rent a car from Dollar!!

Despite driving around in this little matchbox circus car (and getting teased by every family member, except my mom who said the car was "cute"), we had fun visiting with everyone.  We mostly saw Chuck's family; I didn't get to see much of mine, but that's okay.  We were in Wisconsin for only one week, so we can't expect to see everyone in that short amount of time.  We did get to take my mom and my sister to the circus in Baraboo for my sister's birthday, though.

I don't want to complain, but the circus was somewhat disappointing.  I guess I'm comparing it to the last time we were there a few years ago.  This clown Roger wasn't very funny, and was not my idea of a traditional circus clown.  He was more like a dumb TV show for kids.  Last time we were there, they had a husband and wife clown team who had very little or no dialogue and they were VERY FUNNY just by the what they were DOING.  Roger had a lot of of dumb dialogue to him which made him NOT funny.  His favorite line that he used most was "Oh my gosh!!"  (Is this the best the circus can do?; did they hire him out of desperation or what?)  His costume wasn't what I expected either.  Maybe my image of a circus clown is stuck back in a different time, but he was just really disappointing (at least the kids liked him, but they don't know any better - ignorance is bliss).  Plus, this time they had no tigers, and no trapeze acts, although they did have the scantily clad women hanging upside from the rings.  It was just lacking in a lot of things that you would expect from a circus, so I guess the $20 admission price was about right. They did have elephants though!

Even though the circus act itself could've been better, the whole point was to spend the day with my sister, and that made it worthwhile.  They also had a museum there where you can see old circus wagons from 100 years go, so that was really interesting.  This guy was explaining the history and stories behind some of these wagons.

Okay, that's about enough of the circus.

Back to real world, I think this was my favorite part of the trip:

We got our moms together and took them out for lunch.  They hadn't seen each other in about 3 years or so, so I wasn't sure if Chuck's mom would remember my mom (she has Alzheimer's).  I think she sorta remembered her but not quite.  She seemed to know her from "somewhere" but couldn't quite place her.  She did good though; I think it was one of her "better days".

BTW, here is a little interesting side note.  This restaurant is called "Melody Gardens" restaurant, which is an extension of the Melody Gardens roller rink.  The restaurant wasn't added on until after I grew up and left town, but I used to go roller skating there as a kid.  The roller rink was founded by my dad's cousins YEARS ago, and it is still run today by some of their descendants, so that gives me some bragging rights, right?

At the end of our trip, we drove to Michigan to visit my friend Tammie (and her husband Pete).  And we got to stay and watch the 4th of July fireworks with them.

I could say a ton of wonderful things about her, but that would be way too much typing.

So here I am at home again, and I'm glad to see that my cats and the "fuzzy rat" survived my absence:

Home sweet home.

Pride Goeth Before a Fall....

In my last post, I lamented about the gambles of gardening in Alaska because of our unpredictable summer climate.  I am here now to lament about another Alaska gardening gamble, a special kind of Alaska gardening pest.  And I do not mean aphids, or worms, or slugs.    I am talking about the big kind of pest that cannot be controlled by pesticides or fungal sprays.  Moose.

The other day when my hubby and I went for a bike ride, we spotted a mama moose with two young babies strolling through the neighborhood.  My guess is that this mama moose led her babies right to the salad bar in my back yard when she knew we would be in bed peacefully dreaming about sugar plums and candy canes, totally unaware of the nightmare going on outside in my garden.

Here is what my broccoli and peas looked like in my last post:

Here is what they look like now:

There is pretty much nothing left of my broccoli. Do you see the hoof print?  

The peas don't look too bad, but they were obviously part of the menu.

Here are before and after pictures of my beets:

Chomped right down the dirt. They didn't leave any been greens for me at all, which is what I was so proud of eating this past week.

My cabbage went from this:

to this:

Pretty much nothing left of the cabbage either.

It's almost funny in a way, but at the same time I feel like the little kid who is in the process of building a big tower out of dominoes and the big brother comes along and knocks it all down.

But let us be thankful, right?  I am glad that moose (apparently) don't like radishes or lettuce.  At least I still have those to look forward to, and hopefully the peas.  And when the domino tower falls down, what do we do?  Start all over, right?  

But, it will have to wait a couple weeks because we are leaving for Wisconsin tonight.  I will continue the next chapter of my garden after I get back.  In the meantime, I will be hoping that the moose doesn't come back and finish off what little she left.

Does anyone know where I can buy a potato gun???

Nothing Exciting

This is one my cats, Kiska.  Today is her birthday.  She is 9 years old.  It's hard to believe we've had her that long already.  Man, she is like ...... MY age already!...in cat years.  As you can see, she really doesn't give a hoot about her birthday.  Usually, I'm not very good at knowing the exact dates of my cats' birthdays, but I will always be sure of Kiska's birthday because she was born on my brother's birthday.  This makes it easy to remember.

Now for the dreadful report on my garden.  All together now:  "SIIGGHHH!.............NOT AGAIN!"

Here is my pathetic cucumber:

It's the only one left that is still sort of "alive".  I keep watering it, but I know it's hopeless.  Now that's what I call a "vegetable" that's just begging me to pull the plug.

(actually cucumbers are fruits, aren't they?)

okay, move along.....

My dill plant is actually growing some dill on it:

But with no cucumbers to make pickles with, I don't know what I'll do with the dill.  If I get a good crop of dill, maybe I'll buy some cucumbers from a farmer's market or something.

Here is my pathetic pumpkin:

Same as the cucumbers, I keep watering it, knowing it's hopeless.  The problem with Alaska summers is that we never know what kind of summer we're gonna get.  It's not like the Lower 48 where you can pretty much count on and expect a normal "hot" summer with temps regularly in the 70s and 80s.  Up here, it can be HOT one summer, and COLD the next.  So planting a garden is a gamble every year.

Since we are having a COLD summer this year, my cool-climate veggies are thriving quite well.  Here is are my lovely, lovely peas:

I planted a lot of them because I LOVE peas straight out of the garden!  I could snack on them like candy until they are all gone.  These will NOT make it to the dinner table, I assure you.

Here is my cabbage and lettuce:

I have already been picking from the lettuce and eating it.  The cabbage is getting pretty big, but I don't know if it's the variety that I'm unfamiliar with?  I'm expecting it to look like the cabbage we buy in the store that look like a tight ball of leaf layers that you peel off.  But these are just big leaves that are not forming into a ball.  So are these leaves THE cabbage that we're supposed to eat?  Or should I wait and keep looking for a leaf ball?

The little plants in between there are radishes:

Sorry about the blur.  I couldn't get the camera to focus (don't know what I was doing wrong - don't tell my husband - he gets mad at me when I can't master the simplest technology tasks).  The radishes look like they might be ready to pick already.  I might pick a few for my salad tonight and see.  I think I planted too many of them though, cuz I am the only one who eats radishes and I don't think they freeze well.  So I will have to scarf them all down and risk getting a stomach ache, or figure out what else to do with them.

Broccoli is supposed to be another cool-climate veggie:

Out of my six broccoli plants, only one of them does NOT look all brown and yucky like this one.  According to what I found on the internet, if broccoli leaves are brown, they are probably either over-watered or under-watered.  I expect they got over-watered from all that rain we were getting last week.  And just like the cabbage, I am waiting for something other than big leaves to form on them.

Here are my beets:

Some of them are starting to emerge out of the ground, indicating they are ready to be pulled, but the bulbs look awfully small to me.  Is it just the variety?  If I wait too long to pick them, they will get woody, so I don't know what to do. (and we are leaving for Wisconsin next week)  But I do wish I had planted more of these beets and less of radishes cuz me and Chuck, and yes, even PW! likes beets!  Also, did you know that the beet greens are VERY healthy for you?  Since I found that out, I have been clipping them off and tossing them in my salads and soups.  Next year I will have to remember to grow more beets!

My rhubarb is really taking off nicely:

I will be making some jam this weekend, I hope.  

My chives are already getting past their prime and have flowered quite a bit:

Mrs. Fuzzybee and her children were pollinating them today.  (Thank you, Mrs. Fuzzybee!)

But since there are so many flower stalks on my chives now, it is more of a pain to harvest the chives cuz I have to spend so much time picking out all the woody flower stalks.  So I think I'm pretty much done harvesting chives for this year.  I just cut off a few stems here and there if I want some fresh chives to go on something right away, like my baked potato that I"m gonna eat for supper tonight!

So that's pretty much my excitement.  Bossy is pretty excited too:

Well, not really.  I think she came outside to get away from Kiska who was gloating about her birthday.

I mean, she does look like swallowed the cake whole, doesn't she?

Aloha #4

Tuesday:  Me and PW started the day playing in the ocean (as I promised).  It was kinda cloudy, but the air was warm, and the water was warm, so it was perfect, so we just had fun playing in the waves for about an or two, and trying to figure out how that boogie board was supposed to work.  I'm really glad we did that cuz it turned out to be our last chance to do it.  As we were heading back to the cabin, Chuck met us on the way, informing us that the news of his dad's health had gotten to the point where we needed to head back home ASAP.  So while Chuck was on the phone and the computer trying to change our plane tickets, I packed everything up and cleaned up the cabin as best as I could.  (didn't wanna leave a bad impression for the maid, ya know!)  

So what do we do with those tickets that we bought for the Polynesian Cultural Center?  There's no refund for those, unfortunately.  It turned out that the next available flight was in the evening, so we decided to check out of Bellows and go to the PCC for as long as we could.  We decided we needed to leave the PCC no later than 5:00, which was when the luau was supposed to start.  And that was a major bummer because the luau was the main attraction that I wanted PW to experience, and here we are, leaving right at the moment when we could've gone to it.  But life is full of unexpected unpleasantness and we just have to simply accept them.

By the time we got there, we had about 4 hours to walk around and explore.  One thing PW wanted to do was learn how to make a lei, and luckily this stand was one of the first things we found:

I'm glad we found it early cuz we were able to wear the leis for the rest of the day and they smelled really good.

Then we noticed a crowd of people gathering behind us so we went and sat down to find out what kind of performance was apparently about to happen.  It turned out to be representations of several different islands in the area, like Samoa, Tahiti, Fiji, Tonga, etc.  They came out on canoe platforms and did their dances, each island represented by a different color.

My favorite one was Tahiti cuz they were doing the traditional hula dancing.  I didn't know that hula dancing came from Tahiti, so I learned something there.

We walked around some more and watched other shows and demonstrations, and then PW tried her hand at spear throwing:

I was disappointed that he only let her try three times.  It's not like there were other people waiting!

Oh well.

There's those roosters again.

According to the Waimea Valley bird guide, they are actually "Junglefowl".  Huh?  To me they are "Farmfowl".  If it looks like a rooster, walks like a rooster, and crows like a rooster, it's gotta be a rooster.

Then Chuck found this dispenser for fish food, but apparently someone didn't inform the birds that they are not fish.

It was so cute the way this duck just stood there looking up at Chuck waiting for him to slide the coins in and surrender the goods.

And of course it drew a crowd:

I think PW found herself a new BFF.

Our time was running out, so me and PW checked out the gift shop, while Chuck went to the main gate and tried to give away our luau tickets.  He said people were giving him weird looks, cuz who goes to the PCC and gives away their luau tickets???  Everyone he asked had already bought their tickets, and he didn't want them to go to waste, so he took them to the counter and told them they could let someone else have them.  Hopefully our sorrows turned into someone else's joy.

So that was our trip.  There were a few things we had planned on still seeing, like the USS Arizona, and the Macadamia Nut Farm, and PW never did see the famous Waikiki Beach, or Diamond Head (except from a distance).  But we made the best of it, and hopefully she will have a chance to return there some day if she wants to.