The Mega Pawsitive Fundraiser

[mama africa]

One of my colleagues brought four plants of Nepeta x faassenii to the office.




I never had fresh plants of catmint/catnip before. I'm eager to know how Missy is going to react to it. A very good excuse to leave work early today.

 

[1CatOverTheLine]

I used to lay on the grass, between daffodils and iris flowers, when I was six, wondering if a white rabbit would pass running while checking his clock and show me the entry to a magical world.

I think I am still waiting for him

@Alejandra Rico - He's late - he's awfully late - but he's coming!

One of my colleagues brought four plants of Nepeta x faassenii to the office.

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I never had fresh plants of catmint/catnip before. I'm eager to know how Missy is going to react to it. A very good excuse to leave work early today.

mama africa - No doubt Missy will absolutely Love fresh catnip. Remember that the concentration of nepetalactone is much higher in the buds and flowers than it is in the leaves!

View attachment 229528 tarasgirl06
OMC Karen would kill me. Love it all

It is a beeeeautiful day in Ottawa today. And the weekend looks like I can get some cottage time in

Shane Kent - It's about time that Spring arrived in Ontario! It's a cloudless 78º here (Fahrenheit, of course - not Celsius), and it actually looks and feels like Summer! I'd intended to paddle 'round the shoreline this morning, but the Mute Swans are, indeed, preparing nests on the island, and I just hated the thought of disturbing them.

Cherry blossoms are forming, and there are buds everywhere. Get out the charcoal grills - here comes Summer!
.

 

[tarasgirl06]

Shane Kent absolutely beautiful! I'll share another treasure: a pair of Siamese that belonged to my mom, probably bought in the 1940s or 1950s. I've never seen any like them. Of course I think of her when I look at them!

 

[ileen]

What a glorious day today! Very warm and sunny, seems like we skipped over Spring right to Summer for the day. I went out at lunch and quickly realized I was searching each block for an ice cream truck, but to no avail. I thought I saw one, but it was a stinkin' Fios repair truck. I wound up buying Double Caramel Ice Cream Bar | Magnum at CVS instead. I hope my colleagues don't steal it out of the work freezer.

 

[tinydestroyer]

The roses HAPPENED! I was really worried that they were not gonna show up again, because I went kinda prune-crazy. Not to mention I am an amateur gardener. But here they are, in all their spring-ey glory:

More colors coming soon! Stay tuned!

 

[tarasgirl06]

What a glorious day today! Very warm and sunny, seems like we skipped over Spring right to Summer for the day. I went out at lunch and quickly realized I was searching each block for an ice cream truck, but to no avail. I thought I saw one, but it was a stinkin' Fios repair truck. I wound up buying Double Caramel Ice Cream Bar | Magnum at CVS instead. I hope my colleagues don't steal it out of the work freezer.

ileen What! You mean you weren't happy to see the IT truck? Knowing it wasn't YOU who had to order tech support?
tinydestroyer -- gorgeous!!! We lost quite a few of our roses because of the extreme heat and drought of the last couple of years, but the survivors are pruned, quite well, by the gardeners, and it seems to make them very happy and productive.

 

[segelkatt]

I'm freezing here! Overcast and even rain for the last two nights, it never even hits 65! BUT, there is a forecast for up to 90 by the weekend. What kind of craziness is this? On the other hand kitties are staying close for warmth, and Panthera and Chamouti try to share me whenever I sit down to rest from my labors (yeah, it's house cleaning time, no messing in the garden with the rain coming down although it is light). So I end up with one cat on my left leg and the other scrunched up to my right one. The two old ladies are holed up in my bedroom on the down comforter. I'm glad I have not packed those up for the summer as I like to sleep with the window open and the temps are in the low 50s at night and kitties are crowding me almost out of bed which is actually something pawsitive as I don't have to sleep all alone..

 

[mama africa]

One of my colleagues brought four plants of Nepeta x faassenii to the office.
View attachment 229529
I never had fresh plants of catmint/catnip before. I'm eager to know how Missy is going to react to it. A very good excuse to leave work early today.

Missy initial reaction was not very strong when I gave her some leaves, but the flowers did it all. She rubbed her head on them, jumped up and started rolling around ... An exciting catnip trip !

 

[tarasgirl06]

segelkatt I know -- it's so bizarre! I LOVE cool cloudy weather and rain, which we're not getting here in L.A. Metro (but hope springs eternal!) though I was watering the yards yesterday morning as it misted, sort of. I love that way of sleeping, too, and the cooler the nights/mornings, the more CATS curl close
mama africa -- that last pic is PRICELESS! *I'm so blitzed I don't know which way is up!*

 

[1CatOverTheLine]

mama africa -- that last pic is PRICELESS! *I'm so blitzed I don't know which way is up!*

tarasgirl06 - There's no question about it - Missy has been overcome by The Munchies!

A few tiny clouds have begun to move in now, an harbinger of tomorrow's coming rain, and it's dropped from 79º to 77º here, and as ileen - a few hundred miles east of me - noted earlier, it surely does seem that we've skipped over Spring right into Summer, at least for one day.

tinydestroyer and tarasgirl06 - What lovely photos - I'm envious of your roses. Here in the land of cool nights and perpetually high humidity, Black Spot, Rust and Downy Mildew will drive anyone who attempts to grow roses straight to a nervous breakdown. Sadly, I must admire them from afar - but admire them I surely do!
.

 

[tarasgirl06]

*Moo Shu* So adorable. 'Nip coma! *Around here, we prefer the seaweed sheets. Actually, one of my many aliases is "the Nori queen"

 

[Lari]

We've almost got our full set of butterflies. Prince Wednesday and Daniel Tiger were out in the morning (I was worried about Daniel since he had fallen) and our little runt Margaret has been half out most of the day.

Hope she figures it out.

We also reached 100 Class Dojo points so we've decided on pajama day tomorrow as a prize. Yay wearing pajamas to school!

 

[1CatOverTheLine]

We've almost got our full set of butterflies. Prince Wednesday and Daniel Tiger were out in the morning (I was worried about Daniel since he had fallen) and our little runt Margaret has been half out most of the day.

View attachment 229595

Hope she figures it out.

We also reached 100 Class Dojo points so we've decided on pajama day tomorrow as a prize. Yay wearing pajamas to school!

Lari - are you going to have a little ceremony when the butterflies are released and left to go on to live their Lives?

Still sunny and breezy here - 77º (Fahrenheit, not Kelvin), and the rain is moving very slowly across the lakes, probably not to appear much before midnight. It's amazing what a little rain and a few warm days will do to the landscape. Film at eleven, assuming that Moo Shu doesn't destroy the camera before then.
.

 

[Norachan]

@Alejandra Rico Those look like some happy dogs on the beach!

Loving everyone's flower pictures. I'll have to get my camera out tomorrow and take some pictures of the garden so far this year.

I went to the garden center today and, as well as a few more plants for the deck, I bought a chainsaw. I was thinking they would be around $300 but I got one for under $100. Only a small one, but it's plenty for an amateur lumberjack like me.



I lobbed off some dead tree limbs and got a lot more work done on the latest outdoor cat tree I'm making. It's almost finished now, hope the kitties approve.

 

[Lari]

1CatOverTheLine - yeah, we'll do a small something. They'll be all grown up and ready for the wide world.

Morning coffee and wearing pajamas to school. Should be a good day.

 

[1CatOverTheLine]

@Alejandra Rico I went to the garden center today and, as well as a few more plants for the deck, I bought a chainsaw. I was thinking they would be around $300 but I got one for under $100. Only a small one, but it's plenty for an amateur lumberjack like me.



I lobbed off some dead tree limbs and got a lot more work done on the latest outdoor cat tree I'm making. It's almost finished now, hope the kitties approve.

Norachan - A smaller chainsaw is almost always the best way to go. I can't even remember the last time I started one of the bigger saws - a 14 inch bar is plenty for most jobs, and it's a lot easier to control a 14 than a 20 or 24. Bars over 24 inches are just accidents waiting to happen.

It rained overnight here - a soft, gentle rain, exactly the way April early May evenings are supposed to be. I'm still a week or so behind the usual seasonal bloom times here on Lake Ontario's south shore, but things are beginning to shape up. Ground covers are just beginning to fill in, and the Forsythia are only a couple of days from peak bloom:

Yesterday was the first day for blossoms opening on the Higan Cherry beside the house, and the open kitchen windows were standing room only, with kitties jammed into the window wells, absorbed in the comings and goings of the honey bees.

One of my favourites here, a little Magnolia at the head of the path into the woods, also decided that it was a good day to open its first buds as well.

I'm uncertain of the variety, as it was one of those, "five bucks for a stick with a few leaves," specials at a nursery just up the road here (although I've an hunch that the cultivar name is Alexandrina). No matter - it's gotten better every year for its six years here, and I think that's five dollars well spent, no?

The Redbuds should be next, followed by the Lilacs. It doesn't get much better than this!
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[Shane Kent]

1CatOverTheLine and Norachan - My wife, co-workers, bosses and friends won't let me use a chain saw. They don't trust me with it and prefer I keep all my appendages. I borrowed a chain saw from work one time but had to promise my friend Ron would use it and not I. They do however let me use skill saws, jig saws and drills. I think they are afraid their computer geek will lose an arm or something. I almost lost a finger in 2006, not by chain saw, so I guess I kind of deserve it.

The weather in Ottawa today feels like British Columbia, light misty rain. We are a little further behind on green grass and plants coming up than 1CatOverTheLine is. With the milder weather and rain it shouldn't take long to catch up which is most definitely Pawsitive

 

[mama africa]

It's a pleasure to come home from work, to have dinner on the sunny patio and to enjoy the colours and the presence of my furred girl and my three feathered girls - matriarch Sussex girl and the young ones Ocha and Uri- who are getting along very well.

 

[tarasgirl06]

What gorgeous pix, 1CatOverTheLine and mama africa -- what a PAWSitive way to start the day's TCS experience!
I haven't taken any pix yet, but my gardeners are making the yards look better and better, in a manicured sort of way. Things were pretty wild before I hired them, and I kind of liked it like that, but I decided that, aside from some broad parameters, I'd let them do as they saw fit and see what that looked like. So far, they're doing a wonderful job and I'm liking the new look.

 

[Furballsmom]

Hi everyone! You-all have such marvelous photographs, it's raining, my cat's in the window after some post L-box zoomies, my lilac bushes are just starting to bloom and one of my lupine is huge and almost ready to explode.
All makes for some serious pawsitivity

Oh, not in the window any more, mild complaints at me being "on the 'puter" AGAIN??!! and so (speaking of catnip) a birthday gift for guilt/solace, and ensuing happy 'nippy zoned out heaven.
My goodness - I'm not sure if it was the little baggie it was stored in that kept it fresher or it benefitted that much from being in the freezer for a little while - THIS catnip toy went over very well!