well, we got a good dose of sleet this morning, from about 3am (doesn't insomnia suck?) to around 8am. so that's about it for the garden, except maybe the carrots. i'll take it down and rake it out on saturday.
a few years ago, we had the same kind of conditions on the day i took the garden down. sleet, rain, cold blustery weather.
but fortune smiled on me as i pulled out the dead stringbean vines. hidden behind them was the runt of a mama cat's litter, who she left there when she moved the other 3 larger kittens. her eyes were just opened, so i figure she must have only been a few weeks old.
i held the freezing little thing in my coat for a while, and when she started to do that really high pitched kitten mew, i knew she was hungry. i brought her into the basement, away from our other 3 indoor cats, and set her up in one of my parrots travel cages, with a towel, litter box, and a bowl of milk.
dw brought home some kitten food, and that was that. we had our 4th cat, originally named stringbean, but then changed to bean bean.
for the next 6 months, dw would lay down on the couch and bean bean would climb into her hair around her neck and feed on a bottle of kitten formula.
she's a nervous but sweet little cat who sublimely watches her brother and sisters (from her litter) through the window, toughing out each winter outdoors. another neighbor caught the 3 of them, had them fixed, and released them, so they're sort of our outdoor cats. more like the neighborhood cats since they get fed at 4 or 5 houses everyday, lol.
the funnniest thing is when bean bean "cleans" my sideburns, eyebrows, and hair on the edge of my temples whenever i lay down and put my head next to her. if i let her have her way, she'll lick my forehead 'till the skin is raw and my hair looks like it's been moussed.
she's the best thing i ever harvested from my garden.