At the top of our street is another ‘garden’ – a concrete
hard patch of earth scraped bare and supporting half a dozen small ‘trees’;
mainly sour oranges.
On this bare earth, like many other such patches, kind locals
put out food for the semi-feral cats that live around here. You can tell this clan of cats are related to
one another, stripy jumpers with one or both sleeves missing, worn on an
otherwise white cat, are a popular fashion in this clan. A few of them have hats and tails to match
their jumpers.
Many of these cats use this patch to make deposits. All cats I know prefer to bury their waste,
and bury it deep. They also prefer to
dine as far away from that as possible. Here
the ground is so hard the scat stays on top. And it’s scat on scat, while a mere 4 or 5
yards away are the bowls and plastic tubs that are used for their food and
water!
YUCK YUCK YUCK. That’s cat ghetto!
In summer the smell is embarrassing. The smell is awful and all the humans say so. Trust me – cats think so too.
 |
| a local trying to escape the smell |
Having survived the potential social disaster of openly gardening
public space, F decided that she can challenge herself to fix this. The plan as I understand it goes something like
this: DIG it. Add COMPOST.
Put PLANTS in it. Sow flower SEEDS.
And her reasoning is that if you dig it, the cats will dig
too and properly bury their wastes. Compost will diversify the soil microbes,
and they and the plant roots will make short work of the cat supplied nutrients. Of course I taught her all this over the
years that we have been gardening together in UK. I have repeatedly demonstrated that where she
digs and makes the soil all nice and loose, I dig too. And the plants in our
garden have always looked good. They must thrive on double aerated soil.
[F’s note: Tigger,
however, demonstrates no respect for seeds and seedlings, so I don’t expect his
brethren up the road to be any wiser on that score.)
This new garden is poor and very dry, so the project began
with some aloes and every week another small patch is enriched with a bucket of
compost from our balcony.
Just like in front of our apartment, plants have mysteriously
appeared. Some are good choices, others
will struggle here in summer. They are
jammed in so close together round the edges that they are fighting for
space. Further from the edges, F added a
rosemary and some calendula and eschscholzia seeds. (Did you see my big word? Just testing F’s spelling skills – the easier
name is Californian Poppies.)
Last weekend the shutters and windows of the house that
adjoins this space were open for the first time we have seen and a woman spoke
to us. Her windows are at garden level so
I’m not surprised she kept them firmly closed all summer.
I wonder what next summer will bring.
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