eye repair, snipped kitty, and Sunday's task

Yesterday was my annual eye appointment and the good news is that my eyesight hasn’t worsened and the good/bad news is that she did not tell me the cataract in my left eye wasn’t bad enough for surgery, come back in a year. My left eye, which is my seeing close eye, has really been bothering me for the last several months. It’s been feeling like there is some goo that I can never rub out or a sheer veil that doesn’t make things more blurry so much as reduces the clarity. I had to fill out a questionnaire considering my answers as if I was looking with my left eye only. Anyway, I had two options for where the surgery will be done, at the hospital here or the hospital in Bay City a half hour away. I will need to be taken and then picked up with about 3 hours in between. So rather than Marc having to sit around the hospital in Bay City for 3 hours plus the hour of drive time I opted for the hospital here. The downside to that is that she only gets one day a month at the hospital here. The March slot is taken, she will be out of town during the April slot, so it will be May before I get the cataract removed. The right eye is also developing a cataract but it’s not bad enough for surgery yet.

Yesterday was also the brown tabby’s day to get taken to the vet to get snipped. This little cat is mostly silent, has a very quiet mew when he does mew and the only way I can tell if he’s purring when I hold and pet him is from the vibration in his throat. He was very loud and vocal in the car but after a few minutes he quietly settled down until we got to the vet where he expressed his displeasure. I’ll pick him up this afternoon. It may be awhile before he lets me pick him up again though the gray tabby got over it pretty quick.

I moved all the rest of the outdoor plants back outside last weekend and we even got the last three out of the garage, the biggest most problematic being the night blooming cereus. It is huge. And heavy. And cumbersome. And needs a new pot as the plastic one it’s in is starting to break apart. I’m going to have to cut it back though I don’t want to because I love how big it is and that it gives me 20 or more flowers at a time. Not that I always see them since it blooms at night.

So the task I had to attend to over at Pam’s house Sunday was filling an animal burrow, my guess would be armadillo. I don’t know if you can tell from this picture but there is a big hole under the bottom stair of the steps up to the front door and it extends under the concrete paver that the post sits on, which was already tilting down into the hole, and on under the house. Fortunately I had a wheelbarrow load of clayey dirt from digging the hole I planted the yellow angel trumpet in. 

First I pulled out the ferns that had migrated there in front of the steps and in between the steps and house and moved all the rocks she had there and the concrete paver at the bottom of the steps for better access to the hole. 

Shovel some dirt on two sides of the paver under the post and into the hole under the stair, used a length of 2” x 4” and a hammer to pound it down as far as I could, more dirt, more pounding, add a little water, more pounding until I felt like I had it well filled and compacted. 

Then I got a small piece of limestone I had hanging around and pounded it in the space between the 2” x 8” and the bottom of the step. I still need to get some small shims to complete that part. And then I put the rocks and the other paver back in place.