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Snow

Crying in the Garden

Hooray!

Tina and the Nopal

Compostin' Rat Killin' Party Time Vacation

Over the break we did some garden prep, including a much need revamping of the compost pile. It was a productive day. Between the two of us Tien and I killed three rats. He killed and ate one, with his bare teeth, I killed and did not eat two, with a shovel and the flat of a machete.

Kittens

About the middle of December we acquired two new family members. Since Rhus was born we'd felt that Tien had been a little neglected. He's pretty social for a cat, he even used to go on play dates to visit his buddy Stewart Rosenberg (a handsome cat with the stiff, athletic swagger of a retired football player) until poor Tien had to move away. One of my dad's coworkers has a Manx cat that gave birth back in October, so we went over to bring home the stumpy, and ended up with two. We call the stumpy-tabby Tina, and the black-and-white longy is called Lobs (we thought about calling him Andrew Zimmerman, in honor of Stewart's owner, but he just isn't an Andrew. Perhaps Andrew can take some comfort from the fact that a kitten with the ridiculous name of Lobs, and a personality befitting the name, just wasn't good enough to be his namesake). Since they're brother and sister they kind of take care of each other, and, as you can see from the photo, Tien likes them just fine.

Murder Most Foul

Soon after J and I got married, on a whim, I stuck an pad from a spineless Opuntia cacanapa in the dirt near the driveway of my parents place. It took, and grew, and this last year was really taking on a nice shape. Nice enough that our neighbor across the street admits to keeping an eye on it. Today it was run over by unknown assailants. If only they'd driven six more inches to the right, then their car would still be hanging there over the ditch.