Feral Cats and Flowers are the Purrfect Match

Blogging in my garden today is pure bliss. I’d like to share the Feral Flowers Project from the beginning.

Summer is my favorite season, especially since we converted the backyard into a full garden. Every year I like to change it up and experiment. You can see the different garden configurations we’ve tried on my Flickr page.

This past winter was brutal. B-R-U-T-A-L. The polar vortex gave me the worst case of seasonal depression. I worried about the outdoor cats all of the time, despite the heating pads we installed in their outdoor shelters.

Spring was also slow to start, and some of the colony cats were showing up sick. The vet bills were racking up.

During this dark time, I started planning my garden to cheer myself up. And decided to focus on flowers this year. My friend Janessa owns her own flower shop in Uptown called Forget Me Knodt, and we talked about cutting flower gardens. Somewhere in that conversation, we agreed to plant a garden here, and sell the flowers at her shop to help raise money and awareness for the colony cats.

The Feral Flowers Project was born. And has been growing ever since.

We had to wait until almost June, but as soon as we could, we bought cutting flower seeds.

It was clear from the very beginning that my cat Mooha was in charge. Which makes sense. She was born in my co-worker’s flower pot in 1999, and has been with me ever since.

Time to start planting!

So we did.

This is what the garden looked like when I prepped it in June.

JUNE.

No wonder I was depressed.

Anyways, Janessa started digging.

And dug some more.

I helped.

And Mooha helped.

What’s with all of the sticks?

To start plotting out the garden of course.

This is what it looked like on paper.

Ok, so Mooha doesn’t want you to see it. Let’s take a closer look. Ok, forget it.

Anyways, put down the sticks.

And some more.

Mooha inspects the whole thing.

And here’s what it looked from my deck like all planned out.

We planted all of the seeds, including these awesome Chinese Forget Me Not seeds.

I have no idea what makes them “Chinese.”

Mooha didn’t help us plant seeds at all. She found the tiny bit of catmint growing out of the ground, and decided she was in love with the garden hose. Like, REALLY in love.

After we finished messing with their yard, the colony cats came to take a look.

Dash was first.

Janessa and I celebrated with cocktails, and have been watching the garden grow all summer.

To be continued…