The protracted struggle to clear the brush pile has ended. Today I put in a good five to six hours and cleared out the rest of the brush. I trimmed branches down so they’d fit on the wood pile, and it’s great to have that section of the yard back again. I re-seeded the ground with grass seeds, and added a layer of peat moss and other natural nutrients (lime, compost) to encourage the grass to dig in, and to trap moisture in the ground.

Sadly the earth beneath the leaves and brush became hard and dry, so it will take a bit of organic matter and some water to rejuvenate it.

I moved a mint in by the shed. I had to plant it because sometimes I go on plant-buying sprees and end up with extra things that I forget about — then I see them in pots and remember, “I need to plant that.” Hoping it will fill in the cracks and gaps, and deter rodents and other garden-eating beings from investigating the shed as potential new digs.

I think it’s going to take more than a scattering of seeds to rebuild the turf in the yard. In general there are exposed patches of dirt in the back. I will just have to knuckle down and get some yards of compost, and distribute the compost around the yard so the grass has enough nutrition to fill in the gaps.

Cat’s first catch

Mr Poofy, playful longhaired cat, caught a very small bird today. It was smaller than a sparrow. It might have been a juvenile sparrow. I saw him spring and catch something, and had the bird dangling from his mouth. The bird’s instincts to play dead were spot on. When he put it down, it attempted to fly away. He pounced on it, and it flapped, alive. At this point I knew the bird was about to be forced down a very long path of suffering, as the cat has no hunting instincs and has never been taught to hunt to eat, preferring only to play with its prey endlessly.

I did what I felt was the humane thing and put the bird out of its misery. The cat continued to play with the then-deceased bird for about an hour. If I had not finished off the bird myself, it would have suffered for a long time. I do hope the cat does not grow so skilled as to encounter a squirrel or any larger birds.

Brush pile breakthrough and cat’s first catch by mehron is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International