RBoC in Pictures

• The garden is in bloom:
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Cats are cute:
  
  
  
  
  
  
• We have a lot of weeds.
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Dr. H. thought he wasn't allergic to poison ivy. He was wrong.
  
  
  
  (The picture is from a week and half later, a few of those days with prescription steroids.)
  
  
  
• Ugh, just ugh.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Fun in lab:
  
  
  
  
  

Perhaps it is not surprising...

We are plagued by visits from she who shall be called "The Black and White Cat". Perhaps you think this too impersonal? Well, one of our neighbors, who happens to be a member of her family, said "I just call her the little cat" when I asked about her name. The neighbor's partner told our other neighbor ""I call her crybaby because she meows all the time." In any case, The Black and White Cat is almost always in our back yard.

I have been wondering why our backyard is so popular. Several other cats frequent our backyard as well. It is largish, with lots of grass and trees, but not dissimilar from the yards around us.

Then it occurred to me: Our backyard is full of this:



What is it?

A variety of Nepeta or Catmint, also called catnip. It isn't the same variety as "true catnip" (Nepeta Cataria L.) but does have plenty of nepetalactone none the less.

In addition to its well known effect on cats, nepetalactone is also apparently an insect repellent, though how large its effect is seems to be a matter of some debate.

I love this plant. It grows like crazy, flowers for months (the variety I have anyway), tolerates hot sun and lack of water, and I find its bushy overgrown appearance very attractive. The cats do occasionally roll in it, but it is hardy enough to withstand their attentions. Only recently did it occur to me that the cats may be attracted by the catmint.

I am now wondering if I am effectively an enabler. If I embrace the role, perhaps I should be piping Pink Floyd's Comfortably Numb into the back yard to give the cats a fuller altered state college-like experience.

It's Good to be Home RBoC

• Our housesitter, who moved out three weeks ago, left the inside of the house cleaner than we did. Yea!
  
• Only two indoor plants seemed to have suffered significantly from my absence. The two expensive trees we planted last year seem to have survived, as have all of the rest of our grown trees. We lost two Rose of Sharon bushes. Too bad too, they blocked our neighbor's ugly plywood fence.
  
• Our incredibly kind next door neighbor (who does not have an unsightly fence) spent hours weeding our front flower beds and trimming overgrown bushes this week so that our house didn't look abandoned when we came back. We specifically told our housesitter not to do this, I should say. Much to do in the back yard, however.
  
• Our kids and cats seem right at home. The kids appear more at ease and comfortable than they did in our sabbatical house. Hard to say if this is really how they feel or just a projection of my own feelings.
  
• Drop-off at the "old school" (what we have been calling Dalton and Curie's old daycare) went really well. They moved from the infant/toddler room to the preschool, so it really is "new" but some of the grad interns and teachers from their toddler room came over to say hello to them.
  
• We left our sabbatical home in reasonably good shape and hopefully now free of mice. Glad we thought to let our cats patrol the basement before we left. The owner is a new assistant professor at Sabbatical U. who has yet to live in the house himself. We have told him he needs a cat.
  
• I cannot express how nice it is to have more than three knives and two mixing bowls.
  
• Driving back into town made me realize I really consider Not on a Coast home - despite my bi-coastal bias.