The Journal of the Browncoat Cat

by Paul Gadzikowski
From Arthur King of Time and Space

As suggested by my friend Sharon, here is a photo of the unkown plant in my garden. Any ideas what it might be?

I love cherry blossom, even though it does not reciprocate.  During the month of May, the pollen from the blossom exacerbates my mild asthma.  The tubes in my chest fill with mucus making breathing difficult and I cough a lot.  So, I must be mad because I have a Flowering Cherry sapling in a pot in my garden, set to replace the might tree that had to be chopped down.  When last I wrote about my garden, I said that the sapling was starting to wake up. I spoke to soon, winter returned with a vengeance, and the small crown of leaves atop its five-foot long stem has only been fully open for a couple of weeks.

The lilacs are looking particularly good this year. As can be seen from the photograph on the left, they had been looking particularly leggy last year, not having been pruned of over two decades.  Once I had finished with the Snowball Tree, I moved on to the lilacs.  They are now down to a mere ten-foot tall.  Although they could still do with losing another couple of feet of the top as all the flowers are still concentrated on the higher reaches of the plant, and I want to encourage blooms lower down.

I am not sure what the plants growing around the base of the Snowball Tree are, but they are very pretty.  They have dark green blade shaped leaves and deep purple bell shaped flowers on a single stalk like foxgloves.  Last year, the overgrown Snowball tree created so much shade in that part of the garden,  that only the dreaded bramble could have survived.

The bramble seems to be under control at last.   It had been a royal pain, I would cut down a patch of bramble at one end of the garden, and in a few days, another one would be blooming at the other.  The fact was that it was the same plant, connected by a vast underground root network; I dubbed it the Evil Empire.  However, after two years of digging up roots and cutting back shoots as soon as they appeared, even the deep underground bastions have shrivelled and died. So far, each bramble plant I have dug up this year has been a single plant with a tiny root system. The Empire is no more.

Whist nothing is perfect, and everyone has a right to their own opinions, sometimes what is written on the Outpost Gallifrey Forum about the new series simply beggars belief.  Unbelievably, someone started a thread on the School Reunion forum entitled How to write crap Dr. Who and get away with it.  The initial post on this thread lists a raft of reasons why the original poster thinks that School Reunion was the worse Doctor Who story ever made. What planet is this guy living on?  School Reunion was marvellous, and as far from being “crap” Doctor Who as it is possible to get. . Some people will never like the new series, precisely because it is a new series and not exactly the same as how it was done in the 1960’s 1970’s and 1980’s

I loved every second of the return of Sarah Jane Smith, and I also grudgingly liked the return of K9. The alien threat sub plot was a bit thin, but it did give Anthony Head a reason to strut his stuff as the villainous Brother Lhassa/Mr. Lucas Finch. The main thrust of the episode is what happens when the Trip of a Lifetime comes to an end.

George is not a happy cat. There appear to be cats wandering around the area, regularly paying visits to my garden, and generally acting as if they own the place. Neither has a collar on, so they must be strays. I have christened them Lenny and Fred.

• Lenny is ginger, so I assume that he is a Tom. He is the same size as George, with very similar markings, but he has a very sad face, he looks as if he is carrying all the woes of the World on his shoulders. I call him Lenny because it goes with George, as a reference to both a Bugs Bunny cartoon and Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men.
• Fred is pumpkin, in other words ginger with a white front, belly and paws. Not sure whether it is male or female, as pumpkins could be either, so Fred could easily become Freda. Fred is smaller than either George or Lenny, although I think it is fully grown, this makes it incredibly cute to look at.

I assume that they are sleeping in my shed at night, because it has the none to subtle aroma of entire male cat hanging around it on mornings after it has been raining.

Not that I am claiming ownership of either of these two miscreants. One cat is more than enough in this household. It is just that I am more aware of the local feline population since I have had my own pet cat.