Heartbreak

          A cloud of sadness hovers over my house.

          “What’s going on?” you ask.

          Ginger’s lump on her neck is getting bigger and more painful and she’s having more trouble swallowing. She’d take a bite, swallow, then have to wait as it passes the lump. Then she’d take another bite. I was worried and her vet appointment was still more than a week away. I called, expressed my concerns, and got an appointment for two days later.

          “It is bigger,” Dr. Lori confirmed. “By about half an inch.”

          It grew that much in a week.

          “We can do a biopsy and see if that gives me any more information on how to treat it but I don’t think surgery’s an option. I just don’t have the skills without knowing what all it’s wrapped around.”

          “What now?” Mike asked.

          “We can up her meds into chemo range and increase her pain meds but I think we may have to put euthanasia on the table,” Dr. Lori replied.

          Tears welled in my eyes as I thought about losing my love of twelve years. I’ll miss how her little tongue always peeks out. I’ll miss how she always wants to be with me. I’ll miss the heartbeat sleeping in my lap as I work on the computer. But I have to confess. I move too much for her. Up for coffee. Up to pee. Up because I need something. Up because someone else needs something. Eventually she’d tire of the interruptions and go nap with Mike in his recliner while he watches TV. I’ll miss the living breathing bundle of fur snuggled in a pocket between me and the arm of the recliner as we watch TV at night. I’ll miss the little warm body sleeping next to me in bed, stretching, yawning, turning over, and spreading out because she’s too warm. If I move over, she’ll move over — just so she can be touching me. There’ve been times when I’d wake up to find I’d moved the whole way over to Mike’s side of the king-sized bed so I wouldn’t accidently roll her out of bed — and I’ve done that!

“But you don’t care if you push me out of bed!” Mike fake gives me a hard time.

How am I ever going to get through this!

I want to scream and rail at Dr. Lori and beg her to just try! If Ginger dies on the table at least we tried! But in my heart, I know it wouldn’t be practical. I know it might even be cruel to try to keep her with me. The meds mitigate the pain but still, I’m just being selfish. It’d be kinder to let her sink into sleep and never wake up.

And my heart is gonna break so hard!

Early in the week we made a shopping trip to Sayre. Since it’s a trip we’ve made often I don’t have many new pictures for you.

A new one I took would be a picture of someone’s tabby laying in the street. He was ‘tired’. Just a joke — and a bad one at that! I’m not going to show you the picture. I only took it to remind myself.

“Aww!” I exclaimed. “Someone’s gonna be sad.” A few miles up the road another dead cat! “Aww! Someone else is gonna be sad too!” When you live beside a road, sooner or later the cat runs out of lives.

But this picture I will show you. Look at all the lilies! All along our route the banks were just loaded with them. God is so good to give us such beauty to feast our eyes upon.

Itsy has a rash. All winter long I’d kept her in a sweater and I’m guessing that wasn’t good for her. Heck! No guessing required! It wasn’t good for her as the rash will attest to! But I needed something to pin her diaper to. She can’t always hold it all night long anymore and without a pin she’ll shimmy out of it. It was just easier to let her wear her sweater all the time. Now that I know about the rash, I’ve been taking steps to clear it up. I’ve got medicine to put on it three times a week, and I don’t let her wear her sweater all the time. With summer and warmer temps, she needed something lighter. And I was also thinking I should put a clean one on every night. So, on this trip to Walmart I bought a pack of preemie onesies. Six ninety-seven for a three pack!

Three’s enough, I think. I can hand-wash them in the sink and hang ‘em out to dry.

Imagine my surprise when I get to the register and they ring up at a dollar! Cha-ching! “I’d’ve bought another pack if I’d’ve known that!” I told Mike.

We get to another store, Aldi’s, and realize we’d forgotten to get Macchiato his treats. He’s been prowling around the house yowling and when I offer him the generic ones I’d bought he wouldn’t eat them. He doesn’t want anything other than Temptations. That was all Molly would eat so that’s what I bought for her and I guess that’s what he’s used to. Now that she’s gone, I just thought I could buy something cheaper.

The next stop was plumbing supplies at Lowe’s then a bite of lunch. They’re letting people sit inside again but Mike and I didn’t want to take a chance on getting Covid 19 so we went through the drive-thru at Burger King. Mike likes the Whopper, cut in half.

“Let’s go down to that Chinese restaurant and park in the back in the shade,” Mike suggested.

We weren’t the only ones who had that idea. There was already a delivery truck in the shade and two more cars came in while we were sitting there. They social distanced and parked several spaces away while they ate their lunch. But I told you all of that just to tell you that in the back of the lot they have these old implements.

“How did I not know these were here?” I asked Mike as I snapped away.

“Because we always park in the front.” An obvious answer. 

Every since we left Walmart I had a niggle in the back of my mind. A little itch that said, cheating is cheating and a Christian never cheats! I thought I’d be okay with it because it’s their own fault they didn’t have it in the register right.

Cheater! Cheater!

It was really bothering me. “Mike, can we go back to Walmart?” I asked after we finished eating.

“Sure.”

I breathed a sigh of relief. We were on the same page about cheating.

He reached in his pocket for the credit card. “Here. You want this?”

I reached for it but changed my mind. “I’ll use mine.” With mine, I take it out of my purse and put it back in. With Mike’s I hold it in my hand and drop it if I’m distracted. Done that! “I’m gonna pay them the six bucks I owe them for the onesies and get another pack.” Six would be better than three.

Mike was confused. “Oh. I thought you were gonna get Macchiato his treats.”

I’d forgotten about those. “Oh. Yeah. That too.”

Mike dropped me at the door. On an express mission I headed straight for the baby section, picked up another pack from the same rack, circled around to pets, headed the wrong way down the one-way aisle, reversed course, went around the block and picked up the Temptations. At the checkouts the lines were long. There wasn’t anyone at Customer Service so I skipped the lines and went there.

“Hi there,” I greeted her with a smile behind my mask. You can hear a smile you know.

“What can I help you with?” she asked.

“I was in here a little while ago and bought one of these,” I held up the onesies, “and it only rang up at a dollar. I think I owe you some money.”

She took the onesies and scanned them. It scanned at six ninety-seven. I showed her my receipt. She refunded my dollar and rang up the onesies and the cat treats.

“Did you put two onesies on there for the one I bought earlier?” I asked.

She made the adjustment, I paid and left.

At home I opened the package and discovered this. One long sleeved, one short. I’m guessing that even though my package wasn’t marked, they were on sale, clearing out the winter stuff.

“Are you going to get your six dollars back?” you wanna know.

Nope. It would be way too hard to explain. But at least now I can sleep without that little niggle whispering cheater cheater in the back of my mind.

Look at this spray of tiny little flowers. “What are they?” I asked that beautiful Jody when she came to make leaves.

She looked. “Are they sticky?”

I knew what she was thinking. Sticktights. But the sticktights have all gone to seed by this time. “No.”

“Hmmm. I don’t know then.”

I belong to a plant ID page on Facbook so I posted it there. I love this page! I can search for hours and never find a match. Three or four minutes after I post a picture, I get an answer.

“It’s a member of the galium family,” came a response.

I Googled it and it looks right to me. This guy is more commonly called Bedstraw or False Baby’s Breath. And it’s in the same family with sticktights! That explains the resemblance.

“Peg, you never said how your leaves came out,” you say.

I know, right! Sometimes I live in the moment and don’t think to take pictures. Jody came over and we peeled the leaves from the concrete. Some of it stuck so I don’t know if using the oil actually did any good. But with a brush and a hose it was easy enough to scrub away the pieces.

Jody was thrilled with hers.

I’d broken the one I made from a burdock plant but I made two others from a Mullein plant. I have the hugest Mullein leaves I’ve ever seen! I gave one away and this is the one I have left. I think I’ll paint it and put it in my flower garden to water the butterflies.

Speaking of Mullein, I’ve been watching to get a picture of the flowers for you. They’re not pretty here but I did find a bug. This is a TPB. Tarnished Plant Bug. They’re a serious agricultural pest. It’s considered a highly polyphagous species and feeds on over half of all commercially grown crop plants, but favors cotton, alfalfa, beans, stone fruits, and conifer seedlings. That big word, polyphagous, means he’s not picky and will eat just about anything.

This flower star combination flower is White Avens. It’s not very big, only about a half inch across. 

This is his seed called an achene. It just means it’s a single seed head that doesn’t open to release seed. The barbs help it to stick to animal fur and gets distributed that way.

Look at these wicked thorns, would ya! This is a young Black Locust tree. Next week he’s going to be evicted along with a bunch of his mates. They’ll grow just about anywhere and these are growing up between the fence and concrete.

I was walking down by the pond when something shimmery and shiny went zooming past. The last time something like that went past me and I caught it, it was a Calligraphy Beetle. I reached out to get this one but missed. I hadn’t gone far when I saw this guy and I knew what it was I’d seen. A Japanese Beetle. They were all over the place. One web site says to take a bucket of soapy water and drown every one you can catch. And not only drown them but let them decompose. The smell that results will deter other beetles from eating in the area. It also went on to tell me how to make a natural repellant specifically for the Japanese Beetle. Soak cedar pieces in hot water for 24 hours, put in a spray bottle, and spray your plants. Easy-peasy.

“Peg, are they really that harmful?” you wanna know.

I know, right! I wanted to know that too! Here’s what I know. Japanese Beetles are a species of scarab beetle. They used to only be found on the islands of Japan, isolated by water and kept in check by its natural predators. In the early 1900s it found its way to the U.S.; in soil they think. In 1912 a law was passed that made it illegal to import plants rooted in soil.

Japanese Beetles tend to feed in herds and can strip a fruit tree in 15 minutes. They only eat the fleshy part of the leaf leaving the veins behind so it’s said to have skeletonize the leaves.

They live about a year with most of that time in the ground as a larva. As an adult they only live 30 to 45 days and can fly long distances. 

An Earwig inside Milkweed. I think Earwigs are disgusting. Fascinating but disgusting.

They go through five molts before they reach adulthood. The young look like the adults only smaller.

Earwigs are among the few non-social insects that show maternal care. The mother will not leave the eggs, not even to eat, until they hatch. Usually about seven days. She provides warmth and protection for the youngins until their second molt.

This tiny little flower is Dwarf St. John’s Wort. As far as I can tell it has no uses, at least not as far as herbal medicine.

This is a pond plant called Pickerelweed.

This guy is a faker all the way!

“It’s a sweat bee!” you say.

Nope. No he’s not. He’s striped like a bee and if he sits on you, he’ll dip his abdomen like he’s gonna sting you, but they don’t have stingers. This guy is a Hoverfly, the helicopter of the insect world and are as useful in aphid control as are ladybugs.

I saw this guy in his web, strung between the leaves of a bull thistle.

According to my spider ID page on Facebook, he’s in the family Acanthepeira, possibly a Starbellied orb weaver.

  

Here’s one of my patches of Milkweed. They’re doing really well this year. In year’s past the deer have come through and ‘clipped’ off the blossoms. 

With Milkweed come the orange and black spotted Milkweed Beetle. This guy saw me and fell over ‘dead’, tumbling down onto the lower leaves and laying real still. Talk about playing possum! 

“You faker,” I told him and picked him up for a picture.        

Hey! Look what we caught! We got the fourth pup in the litter and we haven’t seen anymore. Those peanut butter crackers are irresistible! At least to the youngins that don’t know any better. I don’t have as gooda luck catching the adults.

Alvin has managed to survive another week. 

This week I offered him banana and watermelon. He didn’t eat a lot of either one but he did taste them.

I think his favorite are the nuts whether it be walnuts, almonds, pecans, or plain ole sunflower seeds. My only concern is I’ll make him too fat to outrun the cats! And they only kill chipmunks for sport. I’ve not seen them eat one.

After Alvin ate, he jumped to the other rock and scampered to the top of his lookout. 

I know how bad the little Dutch girl and boy look. The girl is missing her shoes and has a cracked neck. I found them in the upper barn and brought them down. I thought a fresh coat of paint would improve their looks but that hasn’t happened yet.

Once he scoped out the neighborhood and discovered there were no cats in sight, he hopped across the yard and came up on the kitchen patio His little cheek pouch full of nuts, he paused once he reached the top of the concrete leaf.

Then on up the stump he went where he sat and surveyed his kingdom.

Midweek was Ginger’s vet appointment. Because of Covid, you can’t just go inside. You call when you get there and wait. Before, they came and took your pet inside for the exam or whatever they were doing, then come out and talk to you. With some of the restrictions being lifted, our vet now allows one person to accompany your pet in the exam room. But you still have to wait in your vehicle until they’re ready for you.

When we got there we checked in then I went to take pictures along the edge of the property. It’s always a wait. Partly because we get there early and partly because Dr. Lori spends as much time with you as you need. But anyway, that’s where I had a chance to take pictures of the Black-eyed Susan’s. 

“Peg, there’s a bug on that one!” you say.

I know, right! Isn’t he pretty! He’s a Candy-striped Leafhopper in the same family with cicadas and spittlebugs.

Up close to the vet’s office is a flowerbed and it let me get some closeups of the Daylilies. You can steam the unopened blossoms and they taste like asparagus!  

I’m watching the Bittersweet.

This one is Fringed Loosestrife. It has ‘nodding’ heads.

I wasn’t going to lay down on the ground to get a picture of his face for you so I picked one. They’re pretty and one of the few flowers that produce oil instead of nectar as a reward to it’s pollinators.

And this one! Oh my gosh! I knew as soon as I saw it that it’s a milkweed but I’d never seen such long drooping heads before.

 I thought, in my own naivety, that there were just two kinds of milkweed. The kind I have and Swamp Milkweed. Do you know that there are over 100 native species of milkweed plants in the United States! And that Butterfly Weed is a milkweed? This one is called Poke Milkweed.

This week I made Swiss cheese crackers. I haven’t made them in a long time and I had a hankerin’ for ‘em. You may notice (or you may not) that the crackers are all different thicknesses. I was standing there rolling them out and thinking about that. Mike was at the computer cruising Facebook Marketplace (his favorite web page). I guess I was feeling kinda chatty because I said, “You know, Mike, one of these days I’m gonna get some of those things you stick on the end of your rolling pin so my crackers are all the same size.”

Guess what showed up in the mail two days later.

Yeah.

Maybe I need to dream bigger!

This rolling pin is cool though. It’ll let you choose between three different thicknesses. An eighth, quarter, and half-inch.  

Our major project of the week came in the form of adding new elements to our water system. A water test showed that we had coliform in our water supply. Coliform bacteria will not likely cause illness and is present in warm-blooded organisms such as humans. However, their presence in drinking water indicates that disease-causing organisms (pathogens) could be in the water system too. Bleaching the well will kill it but can also be damaging to the well. And we’ve been bleaching our well every few months to kill the iron bacteria that causes our water to smell bad. So I’ve been boiling all of our drinking water including the water our pets drink. You might think that’s a hassle but it really isn’t that bad of a job. I pour the cooled water into jugs and set another pot on the stove to boil. I keep a day ahead so it has plenty of time to cool. One pot of water nets me about two and a half gallons of water and that gets us through the day.

We already had two filters and a water softener on our system. 

We’ve added another small prefilter, iron filter, and UV light. The iron filter filters out iron, but I bet you guessed that. Ultraviolet water purification is the most effective method for disinfecting bacteria from the water.

We had a guy come to give us a quote and he wanted $4,000 to put this system in. We bought the components and did it ourselves for right around a quarter of that.

We’ll have our water tested next week and hopefully it’ll come up clean. In the meantime, to be on the safe side, I’ll continue to boil our water.

You know what I love about summer?

“Flowers?” you guess.

And that’s a most excellent guess! I do love the flowers and bugs and other things that come with summer but in this case, I was thinking about our neighbors, Rosie, Lamar, and Tux Kipp. In the summertime they walk and they stop at my house and we visit on the patio for a little while.

Summertime, patio visits from people you love, what could be better!

This week they were saying their good-byes, so-longs, see-ya-laters, and I walked out with them. Right there, right along the route that Tux had just navigated, was a drop of blood.

“Uh-oh!” I called to the Kipps who were only a few feet away. “There’s blood!”

Lamar came back to look. “It looks like blood.”

“It almost looks like there’s pus in it,” I said. By the way, pus has one s. If you use two then it means something entirely different, like kitty-cat for example.

Rosie and Lamar started checking Tux over but found no wounds on his paws.

A little later I had cause to go out on the back patio, the kitchen patio, and Mr. Mister is laying on a patio chair. Glaring up at me, big as day, is a big pink patch of flesh. Mr. Mister’s cat bite has festered and burst again! I haven’t been able to irrigate it very well with peroxide but I did manage to squirt some on it before he jumped down and left.

I almost walked into this guy! He was just hanging around. 

He’s a Tan Jumping Spider. Tan jumping spiders do not build webs, they wait for prey and attack them. They’re not aggressive or poisonous to us. They only bite as a last resort when they’re cornered. If you do get bit it’s like a bee sting. And their eyes give them 360° views! How cool is that!

And with that, we shall call this one done!