Daylilies

Daylilies are one of the top perennials you can plant in your garden. They require little care. If care is taken when choosing plants, they will bloom over a very long period of time. Daylilies have very few pests and will thrive in a variety of soils. To find out how to grow daylilies, find out the many varieties and how to propagate daylilies, click this link.

Garden Pruners

A good garden pruner finds plenty of work in the garden. Flowers need trimming and deadheading, shrubs need trimming and training, and trees need shaping and pruning. It is a never ending job.

There are a number of different types of pruners to handle these jobs. Chainsaw pruners, hand pruners, and pole pruners all have their place in the gardener's tool chest. Visit this link for a pruner primer

Ruby Throated Hummingbird - Indiana Garden Bird

The ruby throated humming bird is the only hummingbird to be found in gardens in Indiana. These active little birds feed on nectar, insects and tree sap. Find more information at this link.

Butterfly Garden

Planting a butterfly garden is a rewarding experience. Not only are the flowers that attract butterflies beautiful, the butterflies themselves add the elements of beauty and movement to the garden.

To find out all the information you need to plant a butterfly garden, visit our new articles at this link.

Jewel Weed - Woodland Wildflower

In a few weeks the jewelweed will be adorning wild places here in Indiana. This pretty member of the impatiens family blooms from summer until frost, flowers glistening in the early morning light.
Jewelweed seed is edible, forming an important food source for birds and other wildlife. The stems and leaves of jewelweed are also good remedies for poison ivy and other minor skin maladies.
For more information about jewelweed, visit this link.

Mittens

I will begin this by saying that I never used to understand the relationship between people and their pets. Sure, we had dogs and cats when I was a kid, one dog was even mine. But I never developed an especially close relationship to an animal. It was nuts, I thought.All that changed with a small cat named Mittens. This is the story of Mittens, or Mitty Kitty, as we usually called him.

About five years ago, a stray cat showed up at our door. We live in the country, with hardwood forests all around and stray cats showing up was nothing new. But this cat had staying power and I began feeding her. She rewarded us with five kittens. Of these five kittens, three disappeared into the forests when they were small. The old cat we never tamed, or named. But the two kittens who stayed we kept and loved. They were called Pusscat 1 and Pusscat 2. The old cat disappeared and we never saw her again.

But Pusscat 1 and Pusscat 2 stayed around long enough to have kittens of their own. Pusscat 1 had five kittens. Three of these we managed to give away. One, named Smokey, was later killed on the road. The other, Scamp, is still with us. Pusscat 2 had kittens, but we didn't know where she had hidden them. She brought one down to the house, a snow white one, which I later found dead. We were getting ready to leave for vacation, when my wife saw Pusscat 2 going into my tool closet repeatedly. She opened the door and in the bottom of a large flower pot, she found a coal black kitten with white feet and golden eyes. She rescued this kitten from certain death, as Pusscat 2 disappeared around this time. We called this one Boots, because of her white feet. Her mother gone, Boots was old enough to eat cat food, so she survived.

So now we had four cats. Pusscat 1, Scamp, Boots and Smokey. During the winter of 2006, Smokey was killed on the highway during the first snow of the season. So now we had three cats. Pusscat 2, in the spring of 2007 had another batch of five kittens. Lemon, who is actually a butterscotch yellow tiger stripe. Stormy, so named because she is colored like storm clouds gathered in the evening sky. Another we dubbed Smudge because of the smudgy coloring on his face and Runt, the smallest of the litter. There was another yellow one, I have forgotten the name. We gave this one, along with two other kittens, to our niece's three children, who promptly renamed all of them. Another kitten was given to a nephew. Boots had a litter of two, fathered by Scamp. One, a calico, was named Butterboots by our great nephew, because he thought the black and yellow coloring was inspired by the mother, Boots, and one of our disappeared kittens named Butterscotch. This made ten cats, of which we gave three away, leaving us seven.

In August Boots had three more kittens. Two were coal black kittens. A male, I named Satan, because as a kitten he was the kitten from Hell. He has since matured into a gentle cat with two main hobbies - sleeping and getting his belly rubbed. He has a small white patch of fur on his belly and his mothers golden eyes. The other black one, a female, we called Midnight. She is fully black, also with golden eyes.

The third, the runt of the litter, we called Mittens. He was colored almost identical to his mother, Boots, except he had a white nose and gold rimmed black eyes. Mittens started off badly, as he was the smallest and weakest of the three. By winter they were still small. Our cats were all outdoor cats, whom we rarely let in the house, except for extreme cold weather. Mittens changed this policy. He got sick in December. Very sick. We got antibiotics for him, and brought him into the house. I put him in a box and tended him. At night the box was by my side of the bed. At night periodically I would awaken and reach into the box to check on him. He came out of it, but remained smaller and weaker than the others.

After this, I kept Mittens in the house at night. He turned into my buddy. He was a smart little cat with the ability to open doors which were not closed entirely. He could also find just about any small thing, like a pen, on a table which he could knock down on the floor and have a ball playing with. He remembered things. He knew just where I had certain pens which he continually would find, knock down and play with. My wife had a set of wind chimes in the window between the sunspace and living room. This wind chime had a small crystal hanging on the end, which Mittens loved to bat around. The crystal had to be hooked up away from his reach to keep it safe.

Mittens took part in almost every facet of my life. When I was working in my office, he would jump up on my lap, then onto the computer table to find my pens. On our sunspace we have a small breakfast table on which I sometimes work on my laptop. He would jump up on the table, walk on the computer keys and mess up what I was working on. He even rebooted my computer once. I am still trying to figure out how he managed that. Then, after wreaking havoc, he would purr and head butt me, demanding to have his head rubbed. This request was almost always complied with. He liked to lay in the dining room on the floor. As I walked by, I would stop, bend over and scruff his neck and head. When I was finished, I would stand up. He always let me know he wasn't done by swatting at me, and catching his claws on my pant leg and holding on until I bent down and scruffed him some more. If I was in the bathroom, he would knock the door open, stick his head in and look at me. Purring loudly enough to be heard across the room, he would amble over to me and rub my legs. So instead of reading in the bathroom, like many people, I played with little Mitty Kitty. When I worked in the garden, Mittens was usually close by sleeping or watching me work.

Mittens loved to go outdoors. When I arose in the morning, he would be sitting in front of the patio door, wanting to go out. So out he went, to return a couple of hours later to eat, then hunt me down for his morning rub down. Then he would find a warm spot and sleep until lunch. I work at home in the mornings and go to the office in the afternoons. He knew when I was getting ready to leave. When he saw me put my shoes on, he would go and sit patiently by the patio door. I let him out before I left. When I returned home at night, he would be waiting by the door, wanting back in. He would eat some more, nap some more and go out once more before we went to bed. We leave our floodlights on at night, and he loved nothing more than to chase bugs, catching them and eating them. Then, finished with the evenings entertainment, he would sit by the door until I left him in. At bedtime, I would call, "Bedtime, Mitty." He would look at me, then head for the bedroom and jump up on the bed, and wait for me.

At Christmas, he found adventure with the Christmas tree. He would clamor up in the tree and look out, peering at me from between the branches. Occasionally he knocked an ornament down, but never broke one.

Then in early April we noticed a change in his behavior. He stopped jumping up on the table. The wind chime was silent. He didn't want to go outdoors as much, and when he did, he either sat by the door, a sad look on his face, or ambled slowly down to the pond to a special spot to watch the water. Finally, he lay under the dining room table, sleeping much, eating little. He was hot with fever. I took him to the vet on a Thursday. She looked him over and had a litany of things which could be wrong, none of which sounded good. She gave him a course of antibiotics to battle the infection she knew he had. I gave him antibiotics twice a day. After a few days he seemed to improve and grow stronger. The antibiotics ran out on a Wednesday and he seemed to be gaining strength. He was eating more and going outside. But, still weak, he didn't run and play with the other cats. He would go to his spot on the pond bank and sit, silently.

On Monday, April 21 he was really sick. He stopped eating. He just moped. I called the vet and made an appointment for the next day. I took him to the veterinarian at 1:30 in the afternoon on April 22. On the ride in, he sat quietly on the seat next to me. I stroked his fur and calmed him as I drove. I had convinced myself that he was just constipated. They would treat him, I would bring him home and he would be fine. The doctor looked him over and announced he was anemic and jaundiced. His liver was failing. A blood test confirmed feline leukemia. He was dying. I called my wife. As I waited for her, he gently head butted my hand. It was if he knew something was happening. I stroked his head and neck. I smoothed the fur on his bony body. My wife came in a few minutes and we watched as the doctor administered the drugs. We both stroked him and talked to him as he died. They put him in a blue body bag. I took him home. I placed his body in a cardboard box to keep it warm. I went back to my office and tried to work. That evening, I came home and built him a pine coffin. I placed his still warm body on a towel in the box and closed the lid.

As dawn broke on April 23, I took the box down to the pond. I dug a hole on the spot he where loved to sit during the last few days he was alive. I put the little coffin in the hole, covered it with soil. I placed a large rock over the mound.

So now he rests by the still water of our pond. We only had him a year and a half, but he will live in my heart forever.