You can see one of the the many orange and black butterflies, and to the bottom left, a very similar looking caterpillar, looking about as big as they get before the change.

A few things have changed- now we have some jays and cardinals around, which makes for a more interesting viewing experience for my seed-purchasing dollar, but also, and maybe more importantly, the cats are older and more sedentary, so I don’t feel guilty, as if I’m stuffing them like mini-turkeys.

But Bianca decided she wanted to relive her kittenhood and started searching for a vantage point. He’s a bit of a porker herself these days, and the birds saw her coming a mile off. She happened upon the brilliant idea of climbing the trellis, I suppose with the plan that she’d drop on them from above.

This greatly alarmed the dogs:

Initially she was proud of herself, and basked in her queen-of-the-hillness:

But shortly thereafter, she got worried, too, and hoped for a helping hand:

Eventually Bianca made her way down, and peace was restored to the kingdom:

So far, this year’s experiment goes well. Cats have not peed enough (yet) to kill the vines. Things have not dried out to dangerous proportions. True, I’ve scaled back expectations- there are no truly exotic strains here, but I’ll be happy if we just get enough vines to really pop.

But it’s a start.

vs. “Ooh, dammit. Did I just spend that money for nothing? Totally not interested in it…but at least it’ll last awhile, I suppose…”

Except for one thing – the bamboo!

It was one of the first things to go in when we first started the garden, not realizing that the stuff is indestructible and will do its best to overrun everything it can. I don’t have a picture from when it was planted, but at only about 3 feet tall and in a 1 gallon container it looked innocent enough.

It’s now almost as tall as the house and has to constantly be whacked back, because it’s impervious- bugs don’t eat it, the cold doesn’t touch it, and after it rains you can practically sit back and watch it grow with the naked eye:

I don’t know if you can get an idea of the depth here, but there’s a ton of the stuff.

Luckily the parrots have decided they love it- I’ll cut a couple of canes and criss-cross them through the bars. The boys’ll go to their work, stripping and breaking them down, covering their cages in shredded little leaves.

It’s kind of hard to get pictures of the action, but here’s Pratch hanging down from his swing to get at it:

Honestly, he usually stands right on the canes to strip them, but he had a little a little Wile E. Coyote-style accident the day before. Taking a tumble after snapping the branch he’d so recently been standing on made him a little more wary the following day.

Jack loves it too, but of course had to get nosy when the camera came out:

He actually has it somewhat easier, being smaller, lighter and (sorry, Pratch!) more agile, he climbs and hangs all over the stuff- it’s a completely free jungle gym.

Proving that I am totally insane, I briefly considered buying another of those tiny, innocuous containers of the stuff at the nursery, thinking I could leave it in its pot between the parrot cages. They could strip stuff at their leisure, Pratchett could have a screen between himself and the hated Jack, and the bamboo would be contained and unable to spread.

Luckily I came to my senses, which, contrary to popular belief actually does happen once in awhile. But if you’re looking for a low cost, high yield parrot toy, this one fits the bill! Or beak. Or talon…

They’re a sort of strange shade of yellow, but I guess that’s par for the course.

Now to defend them against the slugs and caterpillars. This is third time I’m trying this experiment, and the ‘pilars have gotten them both times before. Diligence will hopefully pay off with lots of gazpacho this summer.

Every spring around this time we get tons of these guys, and I’ve always just shied away from them, leaning on the idea that the orangey color was mother nature’s warning to stay away. But when someone mentioned they thought it might be a relative of the Black Widow, I figured I’d better look it up.

Turns out the scary colors are false advertising, which seems to be a pattern in our local spiders. The banana spider looks like it could rip your face off, but it’s the brown recluse that’ll do the serious damage.

If I ever really decide to turn tail and run away from New Orleans, I swear it won’t be because of the dysfunction, the heat or the hurricanes- it’ll be the critters that does me in.

But guess what has come back with a vengeance? The absolute last thing I’d have guessed.

The freaking roses. They’re blooming all over the freaking place. I haven’t been able to keep them alive, at all, ever, but there they are.

The dead stick that had been Ebb Tide is blooming:

The Lady Banks went crazy:

St. Joseph’s coat is busting out:

For the first time, even Zepherine Drouhin put on a show:

And even Double Delight is living up to its name:

I’ve been at a total loss to explain this. I have watered, fed, pruned, and watched for blackspot with a level of paranoia that I didn’t have when Alison was learning to ride a bike. For naught. They die. Until they were subjected to true abuse…and then they thrive. Honestly? How contrary is that?

Roses are referred to as female, and women are generally contrary by nature. Maybe that’s the only answer there is.

Or maybe they were trying to lull me into a false sense of security, all the better to break my heart later. Which, in the end, might not be unrelated to the woman-thing either.

The day was grey and threatening rain, which would knock the delicate clusters off, so I grabbed the shot while they were still there.

I will admit to a certain amount of jealousy here- we have the stuff in our backyard, but it’s never really bloomed at all, although it spends the entirety of the warm months trying to reach out and strangle anything it can. I swear I’m going to do a time lapse over the summer to show just how fast the stuff grows. I’m constantly wacking it back, and for a show like this it’d be worth it. Around August I’m always wondering if an execution is in order, I’m so tired of it…but hope springs eternal and I always think “maybe next spring- maybe this will be the year!”

At least now I know where I can go for my spring purple fix.

Incidentally, what is it about looking for something that makes you lose your mind? Seriously? Around, oh, hour 4 of searching for the driver Cds so I could start the recovery I started having hallucinations, having looked everywhere it could reasonably be- twice. “You know, maybe I put the backup disks in the pantry, it kind of makes sense” or “I could swear I saw them in the freezer awhile back.”

I decided to pull the hard drive out to see if I could at least transfer the data. I was going to have to wait for the replacement driver disks to come, but if I could at least pull the backups…and that’s where the horror show began. One of humiliation and nausea for me, but that’s made many people around me laugh.

Inside the computer was… a slug’s slime trail. Across the motherboard. Over the fan, the power supply, the inner casings. Shiny and gross, it made my heart sink. There was no way this could be good. But still, I had my mission. I got the hard drive out and went to work.

I slaved up the drive to one old computer. Nothing.
I slaved it up to another, more recent computer. Nada.

The drive had ceased to be. It was an ex-storage device. Bereft of life ‘e rests in peace. The backups, the original drive, nothing. Gone.

I schlepped the corpse to ye olde repair shoppe, whose techs laughed their almighty asses off. In front of me, even. They just couldn’t help themselves. They traced the trail, noting that it smootched its way up the outside and into a vent. They called other people over. I know they would’ve done that anyway, but for $75 an hour they could’ve done me the courtesy of waiting til I left, dontcha think? I talked with them 3 times over the course of the day as they updated me on the state of the patient- every time I talked to them, people were laughing in the background. I doubt this is a coincidence, tho I have to say they really did take an interest, even researching slugs to reconstruct the scene of the crime.*

Death by slug.  Only me.

People kept asking me how could this have happened (while they, too, laughed)- as if I keep slugs around the house for entertainment and one got off leash or something. I had no freaking idea how the slug got in my house, or why it would want to be there in the first place.

Until last night, when I discovered that apparently I’m running Club Med for disgusting creatures.

Holy crap.  This is the really nasty part, and I’m going to put it after the jump, just to give you fair warning.

I was understandably in a vengeful mood. Charlie told me he’d bought some slug killer and I should sprinkle some around, kill some of the bastard’s relatives, that kind of thing.So…

this stuff:

caused….THIS (last chance to turn back!):

:::gag:::

Now, I know that the ortho is supposed to attract them, but how far did they travel, really? WTF? This is so disgusting.

 The white goop? Liquified slug guts. And as much as I didn’t even want to think about it, but mid afternoon, it STANK. And Charlie’s away on a business trip, so I got to pull up my big girl panties and go to it. I, being morbidly curious, did a quick count before I started shovelling and got up to 250 before I had to quit.

I’ve finally got the new computer relatively set up and a defensive perimeter around the outside of the house. I can’t imagine there could possibly be more slugs around after that killing field. I’ve more or less adjusted to the roaches, the spiders, and other creepy crawlies. If even more slugs come on the attack tonight, I might really have to reconsider this whole living-in-the-tropics thing.

She actually lasts 2-3 days, her colors changing. The pinkish fringe becomes orange and the center gets darker. IMHO it’s prettiest when it first opens, but any hibiscus is better than no hibiscus, right?

I was playing in the garden, so naturally Bianca arrives to show me what a real Creole lady looks like…