1. Phenology: It's co-o-old again (by Virginia standards), overnight lows down below freezing. Most water on the ground this morning had formed at least a thin layer of ice but began to melt when the sun hit it. This makes it sort of amusing to see stores dutifully change with the calendar. People are more likely to wish they had a blanket today than they were during the February Thaw, or even January Thaw, but blankets have been replaced with plants, garden stuff, sun hats and (at Wal-Mart) a row of kayaks, because it's March. Those who don't feel like kayaking yet can still get a space heater from T. Quillin's hardware store; they stay prepared for everything, all year.
Nevertheless the following spring foliage was observed this weekend: ground-ivy, daffodils, dandelions, weeping willows, and in Kingsport, where the local warming effect was strongest, a few Prunus.
Ornamental Prunus are bred for sterility so they don't actually produce fruit, but most of them are actually mutant specimens of fruit-bearing trees--mostly cherry, sometimes pear, quince, or apple. Names commemorating this fact will in due course be offered for the consideration of the kittens that arrived on Saturday night...
2. Cats: No, Samantha didn't have kittens. It's too soon to tell whether she's planning to have kittens at a more reasonable time this year, or has just put on a little weight in advance of a final growth spurt. So whose kittens are they? Definitely not Burr's and Serena's: those two wouldn't have produced kittens with extra-long stringy tails. Serena was a big fluffy-looking Manx-shaped kitten on Saturday, and is still a big fluffy-looking Manx-mix kitten today, but during Saturday night she started nursing the four little ones and ignoring the big one. She looks as fond and proud of those kittens as if she were their natural mother, and she induced lactation fast enough...and on Monday someone asked when or whether she was going to have kittens some time in March! I think the kittens are Serena's own, though the tails are too long for them to be Burr's and the color suggests that they're not Tickle's. There's been another black-and-white tomcat in the neighborhood, not stump-tailed...
A Queen Cat stays on top of every situation. I often know when kittens have been born by seeing a mother cat with "water" slicking down her back end, but on Sunday morning Serena's fur was as dry as if she'd never had any "waters" to break.
I have seen pregnant cats nurse someone else's kittens and lose their own...but Serena has not lost anything since Sunday! I suspect the kittens are her own and the remaining roundness is a more generous than average supply of milk. She is one cool customer, in any case.
3. Me: I was looking forward to catching up on e-mail and Twitter on Friday, but on Wednesday morning I smelled strep on someone's breath. So I spent substantial parts of the weekend, including Friday, starving and sweating out the infection. This can be a long and tedious process but it is how many Native North American, Northern European, and Northern Asian people fend off streptococcal pneumonia, or even "colds," which are tiresome enough. If we feel tired out by exertions like writing a blog post or eating a bowl of plain rice without even chicken, we curl up under a pile of blankets and sip water until we fall asleep, then wake up, drop the sweaty sheet in the laundry, wash off the sweat, and go back to normal but cautious work and everyday life. If we feel tired during everyday life, we repeat the treatment as necessary. It's usually possible to do all the sweating out at night and go to work or school during the day, I learned from a school friend (part Iroquois, from Ohio) who managed to avoid sharing colds with Seventh-Day Adventists. It didn't work for me while I was living among Seventh-Day Adventists, who have to be the world's worst for breathing their germs on other people who might otherwise avoid colds and flu...but it has worked for me when I've avoided adding that extra burden to my immune system.
So, if local lurkers see me and I avoid you, that means I care about you. If I were to rush up to you and gush and hug your neck...well, you'd probably know what you'd done to deserve it.
And, according to cafe conversation: this year's flu is A Real Bear and is affecting even people who've had the flu shot, because once again the flu virus is travelling in company with this otherwise harmless little strep infection. Apparently together they defy flu shots, defy antibiotics, and keep people who don't fight infections naturally in bed, not just sweating but feeling ill, for weeks at a time.
Take care of your immune systems, Gentle Readers. Eat garlic if you can, take Vitamin C if you can't eat garlic, don't eat too much of anything else, keep a good healthy distance from people, and avoid getting chilled...
Why this book? Because it contains the pattern--made much lacier with only one strand of lightweight yarn, but basically the same simple stitches worked on the same big needles--for a relative of my Blanket Shawl, under which I was not only avoiding chill but actually fanning myself, in the freezing air, as I walked slowly into town this morning.
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