Urban Jungle

Last weekend was beautiful and I decided to take full advantage of having a back yard and did some yard work. I just had gotten a composting bin and wanted to set it up in our backyard and was looking for a place to put it. I found a spot next to our deck but away from any windows incase it got stinky.

First I should explain about our backyard. One thing that really drew us to this house was the fact that we would have a backyard and access to the garden. It’s stipulated in our lease that, with our landlord’s permission, we can plant and use the backyard all we want. We were excited about this beautiful little area behind our house that was ours. Then our landlord got sick about half a month before we moved in and then died about two days after we had moved in. Having no one to tend to the grass or the garden the backyard became very overgrown and by the time we had unpacked the house and had time to focus on something other then the inside of our apartment the backyard was almost unreachable. Weeds had grown everywhere and some were even as big as I was. I spent the better part of the weekend wrestling with the weeds and tall grass. I still have a lot of work to do back there, bit with the long absence of humans in the backyard the city’s wild life has taken over. So last weekend when I started to move things around I found wild life.

While trying to clear and area for the composter I found two snakes a mouse (alive) and multiple very large and ugly slugs. I’m a big fan of the ‘live and let live’ theory when it comes to wild life but I reserve the right to freak out when I put my hand next to something the it runs away from me.

I haven’t really gotten deep into the backyard until today when I wanted to harvest some of the yummy tomatoes that are growing in the garden. Worried about potential wild life I took Moose with me and set him in the middle of the tomato patch. He looked up at me with distain and sat in the patch for about a minute before he ran off to find a better place to sleep.

I know it’s a bit weird to rely on a cat for protection but until I’m sure I’m not going to encounter something that likes tomatoes more then I do I’m going to rely on kitty power.