Cat smarts

I did not witness this. My husband told me about it over breakfast. At bedtime, Bonnie was on the cat tower in its new popular location. My husband closed the curtains and Bonnie wanted them open. She couldn't find the opening in the folds to part them, so she jumped up on the curtain rod and separated them from the top, just a few inches so she could see out. Then she hopped back down and returned to her nap.

All of the cats know what door handles do and sink faucets too. Thankfully they haven't figured out how to turn any of them. I once knew a dog that could open the refrigerator. Mack knows how to bite an opening in a bag of treats, so now the treats live in Tupperware containers. We had to replace the bathroom trash cans with metal ones that have lids because Daisy liked to pull things out of the open ones. Our bedroom closet has sliding doors, and we have to keep a stick in the track to keep the cats out. Daisy knows how the remove the stick. Her favorite time to do it is while we are trying to fall asleep. Or in the middle of the night. On one occasion, she forced open the bedroom door by jiggling it from underneath until the latch popped out of the face plate. And when we adopted Bonnie, it was Daisy who muscled aside a gate with twelve pounds of lead weights holding it down, in order to get to Bonnie's bowl of kibble. Daisy weighs only eight pounds herself. So that was the end of Bonnie's safe room, which lasted all of half a day. So our house is only somewhat cat proof. They are clever and good observers and have lots of time to figure things out.

Beware the Ides of August

I spoke too soon, and too confidently, two days ago. On the day before the Ides of August, I spent the morning in the garden. A bad guy patrol for invasive and weeds, mowing the grass, raking the driveway, and pruning two tea olives in front of the house.

On the 15th, Monday, the first day back for students in our county, I was sitting on the sun porch celebrating the successful completion of the first day of teaching for the year, and then I looked up in the back yard. I did not like what I saw. I got out the binoculars. No doubting it. Skunk vine over ten feet up a pine tree. Native clematis, smilax, grapevine, too, but also unmistakably mixed in was skunk vine, blooming.

When I got home today it started to rain and it was too dark to see in the woods back there, so my plan to at least cut the vines and clean up the roots later will have to wait another day.

Ides of August

Summer break is ending. The yard looks a lot better than it did eight weeks ago, and I have greeted the yard waste workers several times with cold bottles of Gatorade. The big push for pruning branches and hand-pulling weeds and vines is done. I still have one patch of English ivy in the front, but the skunk vine is now under control all over the yard. I have been pulling up seedlings in the woods and remaining roots wherever new leaves appear. But there are no vines growing up into the trees, no flowers waiting to drop seeds onto the ground, and very few roots running across the ground looking for another tree to climb. I will always have to patrol vigilantly. The roots sometimes lie dormant for months before sprouting.

There is only one big problem area left. Around the base of two pine trees growing side by side, wild grapevines have coiled and thrived, growing more than thirty feet up the pine tree. The vines are as much a three inches in diameter at the base. The problem is that skunk vine has set down significant four-pronged roots under and among the grapevine coils. Thick layers of pine needles have fallen all around this dragon-like tangle of vines and it is hard to penetrate under the massive grapevine coils. I pulled as much as I could but I couldn't get every root, and so tendrils are coming out with the two weeks of rain we have had. As a stop gap, I can keep them from making it up the tree, but I still have to get those roots out from under there. How to do that? There are two equally time-consuming options. I can try to remove the pine needles and lift the grape vines and pull the knuckles of skunk vine root buried under the tangle. I didn't have much luck with that approach before. I can cut through the coils of grape vine, clear out the pine needles, and have a clearer shot at the skunk vine roots. I can try the first method and hope it works before I resort to the most drastic option.

If I have to cut the grapevine, I know it will grow back quickly. There are sprouts all through the woods and today I noticed some grapes had fallen to the ground.