It's Cat Blog Day!

Thisbe in repose, after a thoroughly taxing adventure.

Friday is, of course, cat blog day. This morning Thisbe was most accommodating and chased some critter across the yard and ended a foot or so from the street, then freaked out, as in "where am I and how did I get here?" Her tail as big and round as a baseball bat. Definitely surprised by her catlike activity.

Notice the halo effect in the photo. Thisbe has a genuine white cross on her chest, earning her the nickname of "Sacred Kitty." She knows that the pope likes cats and if she weren't scared of strangers, she would like to meet the pope. Maybe if he hung out at the house for a very long time, and spoke softly and never ever clumped around or made noise, she would eventually come out and give him the once over. Annie would be here usualy sluttish self and jump in his lap. But then, Annie not sacred in the sense that Thisbe is.

This morning, when Thisbe realized she was in the yard alone, she saw me open the door and raced in. Gadzoosks, what a close call! Then the UPS man came, necessitating a visit to beneath the bed where everything is safe and known, including the dust bunnies.

The hummingbird appeared today. Haven't seen him/her since we returned from Chicago. Checking out the geraniums and the small blooms atop the big purple flowers, said to attract butterflies.

Tomatoes coming along apace. The lawn care people, we call them the "turtle crushers" because they have mown down big turtles, hell they would mow a cat if it were sitting in the yard, did a number on the neighbors zucchini which was marching across the grass as zucchini are wont to do in August.

My morning glories seem to be on the wane, but the geraniums and the red begonias are still crazy with blooms. Impatience still good. It's the time of year when extra grooming in the garden pays dividends. Hey, there's still at least another month of summerish weather, and a prudent gardener doesn't throw in the towel. I ate the heirloom beets which were delicious.

Baby sparrows chowing down at the feeder. I think the parents show them where it is and say, "go to it, kids." Bluejays, cardinals, titmice, doves, etc. join in the feast.

Tonight we're having a salad with bulgar wheat, shrimp, tomatoes, arugula, mint and feta. Sounds good, no? I keep telling you, an adventurous spirit is good. Go forth and eat strange stuff.

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Salade Niçoise

We had company this weekend and due to working around a theater curtain time, etc., I decided to make a Salade niçoise, I chose the salad in Julia Child's The Way to Cook as my recipe.

Now we all know that Julia is not the short-cut queen, no recipes in 30 minutes from the French Chef, so I was prepared for a bit of work. My only "shortcut" if indeed it was, was to cook the small Yukon Gold potatoes whole and peel them. I also omitted anchovies since I don't like anchovies and when you are the cook you can do what you damn well please.

O.K. second substitution was to buy three small beautiful tuna steaks and grill them. I made Julia's potato salad, cooked the beans, S.O. grilled the tuna, and I boiled some eggs, and pounced upon a beautiful red tomato, capers, black olives, lettuce, the works all laid out beautifully on a big ceramic platter.

The dressing was a lemon-garlic affair, with both lemon peel and lemon juice and raw garlic pounded to a paste. A bit of work but well worth it. The whole was greater than the sum of its parts and we had a feast.

At the other end of the spectrum was dessert. I know our friend likes strawberries, so a strawberry dessert seemed optimal. I recalled back in the first years of marriage I had been on a Bavarian cream kick, making various flavors of a French dessert called Bavarian cream.

I looked in the old New York Times cookbook and lo, there is was, but it was the shortcut version--Julia would have disapproved big time. I measured out all the ingredients including a heaping cup of chipped ice and dumped them into the blender in the prescribed order, and blended the prescibed number of second, and lo, strawberry Bavarian cream in less than a minute, no cooking. Raw eggs, too. My bad. I licked the spoon to test whether the eggs were safe and I guess they were.

We ate it with sliced strawberries from Wards Berry Farm, altogether lucious with no hard white centers, but red berry all the way through.

So this was yin and yang of meals, but lovely.

As for lovely, the garden looks and smells lovely. The white carnations bloomed and have sent a fragrance over the yard and now into the house as I picked a few and added the sage blossoms, favored by the bumble bees.

The tomatoes, heirloom beets, pepper and herbs are growing apace, and the flowers are blooming, even the new white lupine, and the clematis has huge purple blossoms. The hummingbirds come to the feeder regularly and one looked at us in the window this morning. We had a fantastically large butterfly, all yellow and black, and of course the dragon flies swoop and land on the flowers. So life is good on the edge of the slough.

Big goldfinch battle yesterday. They are territorial little guys. Catbirds have discovered how to get into the suet feeder for small birds.

We had a good rain this morning and everything is lush. Looking at the garden puts me into a good mood, which is a good thing, because Festival Madness has two more rejections. We looked at the beginning again, and it read pretty good.

The New York Times Book Review today had many of the same books as the WSJ. Not my cuppa tea. The Globe's list is more literate, but Boston readers are obviously not typical.

Tonight I'll do a few more pages of the new book. I really need a working title.

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