Late autumn flowers

Artur does not do sneaky. He wheezes so much that he can’t creep up on me here in the office. And his purring gives him away. It makes me smile every time.  I even stop working and pay him attention. So I guess the ruse works.

Yep, I’m cat sitting. So that means the elderly Critter becomes a pampered house pet for a few days.

He is eating lavishly, and he took to this lovely rug on the sofa for over a day. Head down wheezing and purring.

But the temperature has dropped, it’s raining out there, and I have retreated to my office with a good heater next to my desk.  And where heat goes, Artur follows.

I have to put a lot of sturdy objects for him near me. Mostly boxes and chairs.  I can’t have him up here on my desk as he still doesn’t quite understand what those fingers are doing flying across the warm keyboard. He tends to pounce.

And I wouldn’t be able to resist scratching under his chin. And that could cut into his valuable sleeping time.  So we have a compromise. Both of us on chairs, both with cashmere, both with the heater close by.

I’m the one who doesn’t wheeze. Or trill.

The forecast was for rain, so I knew it was going to be an office day. Deadline for a big project is this weekend. But I had to go to town in the morning to deliver flowers. I couldn’t miss my market day.

Gorgeous dark crimson dahlas are still going mad in the potager.  I didn’t stake many plants (note to self for next year) but there were plenty, even the floppy ones, for bouquets.

And with the pink zinnias and the grasses, it felt like quite a sumptuous display.

I’ve been meaning to finish the chestnut supports in the potager beds for about six months now. That chore has dropped way off the page of Must Do Now.

It’s bulbs, bulbs, bulbs all the way. I have done about 400 of the narcissus Thalias. So that’s positive progress. But I want to get the allium purple sensations in the ground soon too.

But the mole rat is making me have to think tactically.  Do I pot up single allums in pots and plunge them like I do the dahlias? I suspect I will need to.  I haven’t been out to the potager today (unless you count a mad dash to get rocket leaves for Elodie’s veggie box) but I just know the rat will have had the three other spinach plant roots muched to nothing by the time I stagger out.

If only I could train Artur to hunt mole rats…. he’d really earn his keep.