The first two cats went to the vet today, for annuals and shots. Athena finally got retested for the FIV they claimed she had when she was four weeks old. I have been stressed out about this for nine months, worried that I had let loose a pernicious virus into my Pride. But today while I sat in the exam room, trying to coax the nervous boy out from under my chair, I could hear voices down the hallway to the lab that was processing the blood tests. "Thirty more seconds and this is negative." I wanted them to be talking about Athena, and sure enough, a minute later, they came back into the exam room saying that she is clean. No trace of the virus. All this time, I have been worried over a false positive, that probably were antibodies shed from her mother at the time of her birth. I am so relieved I haven't figured out how to process it yet.
Nobody got to play outside until we were home from the doctor this afternoon, so I had to play catch-up the best I could once we got outside. I finished clearing the winter detritus from under the hydrangeas and holly, and acidified the soil so I can have blue blossoms. (An alkaline soil produces pink hydrangeas, which I don't like nearly as much.) I tried to scrape as much dirt back into the holes at the base of the deck, where the little red-headed dog dug in a vain attempt to kill the Bunnies Under the Deck last summer, and any other small mammals that may have been under there later. I discovered that in his enthusiasm, he appears to have shredded the cover around the cable that runs to my satellite tv dish. So far, I'm still getting an acceptable signal, so I have filed that into a "must fix later" folder in my brain, and then covered it up with cedar mulch. Hopefully replacing the little wire fence will help prevent more damage. I tried weeding on the other side, and clearing the dried fern fronds from last year, but I didn't get very far. I didn't have a lot of patience for sitting on the ground to work.
I thought maybe I would do more potting, but I got distracted. When I went to dump out some more old soil into the rock wall, I caught sight of my old nemesis. All my plans flew out of my head the moment I saw that the warmer weather has awoken the poison ivy vines along the old section of fence. I immediately started ripping out every vine I could see, of every variety I found. I am instituting a NO VINES policy on that side of the Park. I don't care whether it's poison ivy or plain old Virginia creeper. It's all going. My mother would probably throw up if she saw how I was dressed for an hour of enthusiastic vine removal. I have the feeling that by the weekend, I'm going to be wondering whether there is a prescription strength lotion for poison ivy skin reactions. Next time I will be wearing long pants. And sleeves. But I will be spending a lot of time fighting the long fight against my mortal enemy. Now, how do I convince the neighbor to set someone on it on her side? It's everywhere behind her shed. I can't vanquish the evil if it has sanctuary over the fence.
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