I was sort of more or less planning to write another ranty post today, because of all the Corona-related stupidity happening here in Germany right now, but I'll postpone it. Because guess who used the cat stairs today, with only minimal prompting?

Madam obviously wanted to hop up onto the desk, but she's having a non-jump day. So she only suggested a slight hop (not like yesterday, when she tried to jump but didn't get high enough, so she dropped down from having her front paws on the desk, but not more). So I petted her and tapped my finger on the stairs to get her to look at them, and maybe consider using them in her little cat brain... and she actually did look at them. And used them.

Minimal prompting, I'd say. Quite possibly next time, she'll need no prompting at all anymore! Of course she was properly praised and petted upon arrival here upstairs, and after some cuddling on my arm, she's now happily installed on her office cat bed, snoozing peacefully.

 

After more gentle nudgings these past days, and generous application of treats, and the addition of one more "stair step", the little cat seems to slowly consider using the board. (The additional "stair step" is a wood ridge right at the bottom, because otherwise her hind paws slip when she tries to step up.) She actually put her front paws up on it today without prompting, then looked about a little, then stepped down again.

Some more nudging, placing her front end on the board again, and then providing another treat did see her up the stairs and onto her cat bed, where she's now sleeping. (Someone has to, after all. Cat beds are there to be used.) Even more importantly, she wasn't rushing up the board trying to get off that weird thing as quickly as possible, but more or less strolling up it.

So it's actually looking like maybe another week or so will see her using the stairs without a prompt - unless she feels like jumping... which may always be the case. I'm fine with her jumping, I'd just like her to have the option of getting onto the bed or desk without it for those days when jumping so high is too hard.

I found out about a conference about Jewish crafts by chance, and jumped in on short notice - which means that I have some catching up to do on the other work stuff now.

Which also means you get a cat picture instead of a proper blog post:

We've made good use of the beautiful weather in the last days and got the garden partly cleaned up for spring. The bushes and shrubs are all pruned, most of the leaves have been removed from the beds under the willow fence, and I've started clearing out unwanted things from under the raspberries. There will be need for fertiliser at quite a few places, and there's still a chunk of work left to do, but it begins to look a lot like Chrisma - no, spring, of course.

The neighbour's bees are also stopping by occasionally, and he's told us that all his hives have survived the winter. We've also seen at least one bumblebee queen - the white-arsed variety, probably Bombus Terrestris.

There has also been some spring cleaning in the wintergarden... and there, unfortunately, losses were quite considerable. The lemon tree and the two physalis plants made it fine. Of the three Ecuador Purple chili plants, one survived, one is dead, and on the third jury's still out, but it's not looking good.

[caption id="attachment_5878" align="alignnone" width="159"] The Ecuador Purple sprouting again!


I also suspect that the tomatoes are a complete and resounding nope... which is a pity, because they are so much earlier when you get them to survive the winter. Ah well.

The smaller of my dwarf pepper plants also survived, without even shedding its leaves:



The other, large one, is probably dead too. As are all my coffee plants. There's some avocado trees still growing happily - but of the Marconi Red pepper plants, none seem to have made it. I'm not sure if one or two of the noname spice rack chilis have survived, but most of these are crunchy as well.

On the positive side, all three of the Bishop's Hat pepper plants did survive, and are working hard on new leaves right now:



We got those seeds because the fruits look quite weirdly funny.



These are recently harvested, by the way, so they are from last year. And they are tasty as well!

So this year will see a lot of new, young tomato plants. And then, who knows, some of them might actually make it into the next year...

The little cat is getting old - she's still quite fit for her age, but you can see the tooth of time taking its toll. Not only on her own teeth, which are fewer now: she's had surgery recently, with the removal of three of her remaining (not so numerous) teeth. She also almost only white whiskers now, where they once used to be all black.

We don't know how old she really is; we got her from the shelter back in 2012, and she was grown then but of unknown age. She'd probably had kittens at least once before then, so that would mean at least 3 or so years of age, and the shelter vet estimated her to be about seven. Another vet, later on, said she's probably already much older, estimating her to be 10, more likely 12 years. Which means that she's now something between at least 11, or maybe even 21. We will never know, but hope she'll remain fit and happy for some more years to come.

More important than her actual age, though, she now has some days where she seems to have a hard time to jump up onto my desk or her cat bed in the office, which are about the same height. Sometimes she floats up there utterly gracefully, and sometimes... well. Not so graceful abortions of the jump. Since she loves to hang out on my desk or snooze on her office bed while I'm working, we installed a little cat ramp for her on the side of my desk:



This has been met with some suspicion. She's not very adventurous, the old lady, and was not sure about putting a single paw on the board, let alone explore it to stroll up it. So in the last week, there's been treats and gentle putting her onto the thing and nudging her to use it... and it seems she's now losing some of her mistrust and apprehension. We're still waiting for the penny to finish dropping - so bets will be taken on when she will use the ramp without promting!

I like cabbage. As we're trying to eat regional and seasonal food, that is a good thing, for winter in Germany means that quite a few different kinds of cabbage are available. The usual white cabbage, of course, which can also be nicely turned into Sauerkraut; brussels  sprouts, which some people just hate (I love them), and many more.

One of my favourite cabbage side dishes, typical in Franconia, is Wirsing - Savoy Cabbage. Though it's pronounced a little differently hereabouts... more like "Wähschingg". Anyway, just in case you're interested, here's how I do it:

Remove dodgy leaves from the outside of the head; cut into quarters and remove the core, then cut into stripes. (Sometimes a recipe tells you to remove the thicker stems of the leaves - I don't bother. You'll find out why in a bit.) Place into a large enough bowl, pour boiling water over, let sit for 2-3 minutes, then stir it a bit before transferring the cabbage to a clean pot. (This will allegedly make the cabbage easier to digest. I mostly do it because it's a quick and convenient way to get rid of any dirt that may have been hiding between the leaves.) Add salt and some water to the pot with the cabbage, bring to a boil and let it boil for at least half an hour - better if for an hour. The cabbage should be all soft. Make sure it does not run out of water while boiling.

Now it's time to turn it into mush. If there's a lot of liquid still in the pot, you might want to drain some. I use a stick blender to get a thick sludge. It should be firm and fairly dry, because now we add more salt if necessary, a bit of pepper, a dash of nutmeg and a generous dash of cream. If the cabbage is fairly runny after pureeing, you can let it boil a bit more on low heat to remove some of the liquid. Add more cream, water, or milk if it's too dry.



It looks like unspectacular pastel-green sludge - but oh, it's delicious!

Serve hot and enjoy - this is a wonderful side for fried sausages or roasts of all kinds, including roasted duck or goose. Dumplings or potatoes would be the typical second side dish for these.

The cold spell here seems to be over, at least for now - we've had rain today, washing away all the snow. Now the snowdrops are visible again:



as are the first crocus blossoms. Not open yet, but soon.



It's really nice to have these first heralds of spring coming out! It also reminds me that it's about time to start the tomato and chili and pepper seedlings...