The cat can't wait any longer

Casper isn't happy. He's voicing this unhappiness loudly and very vocally while pacing back and forth in front of the door. His person is in the garage and not inside petting Casper.

You see, Jamie (Casper's person) is working on the dahlias. This is his specialty. He's very talented at raising dahlias and is knee deep in all the labor fall brings. This was our backyard - in full bloom just a week ago.

Then came the first killing frost of the season...and then our backyard looked like this:

Then the hard work began. You see, dahlias are tender perennials and can't survive our winter deep freeze (so I've learned. It's amazing how many different things you learn once you became married), so every year Jamie gets to plant them all. Every last one of them. He cares for them all summer long, and after the first killing frost each fall, he digs them back up and stores them in our basement until next year when he gets to do this all over again.

Today he dug several rows of dahlias, tied a tag with its variety name onto each tuber to keep them all straight, washed the soil off each clump and set them all out to dry in the garage. 

[Side note: where I grew up we had dirt. Now that I'm married to a horticulturist, we have "soil." Even the dirt has a proper name. Who knew!]

Tonight he's out there again, cutting the rest of the stalks off the tubers.

Later he'll gently place them in wood crates filled with vermiculite and tote them all into the basement for their long winter's nap. A few cut stems in the house are all that's left of the color from this year.

So back to the cat: He's given up waiting for Jamie and has gone downstairs to visit his food bowl. A cat can only take so much, ya know!