Thoughts In Grey

Brief Notes

It's been a rough few weeks, dominated by difficult "family" situation.

• Clio being diagnosed with cancer seems to have cost me about two weeks of my life. As is always the case with me, the tough part was the 5-6 days during which we didn't know what was going on. Now the challenge is to find the best course going forward, for however long that may be.
• But going to use this as an opportunity to get back online.
• Can't really say I care much about the GM IPO today, except to note that Barry again has it right. It's what we should have done to the banks.
• My brother's been having fun in Tokyo. Check out Jon's Tokyo Diary.
• My new Mac has been really showing its colors as I slowly scan and start processing some of my old negatives, to recreate the stuff I once was able to do only in the darkroom with noxious chemicals.
• But it really does suck that Nikon no longer supports their film scanners on current Macs. I understand that some companies cant be bothered to writer drivers for newer operating systems. With consumer products, more often than not it just isn't worth the trouble, but these are professional photo equipment, used by their "best customers," and they've terminated support on the platform used by most professionals? The same professionals who Nikon wants to retain as customers for high-end photo gear of all sorts? Dumb.
  The ill-will this obviously generates (just check out the various messageboards discussing the topic) would have been worth the cost of writing a stupid driver. The reason I've stuck with Nikon cameras for so long is that they DO still support my photo equipment roughly back to the beginning of time! If that's no longer the policy, maybe I don't need to be quite so loyal?
• Was really looking forward to finally skiing this weekend, but looks like I'll have to hold off for a bit due to the cat craziness around here. Snow base still not all that great anyway.
• Perseid meteor shower tonight! Hoping some of these clouds go away.

-mg

Growing Catnip

Yeah, I know. Off-topic for this blog. But I've been having fun with it so feel free to skip on to the next thing if you like.

Want to do something really cool for your cat and have fun growing something on your own? Grow catnip. I've done a lot of this for my cats over the years and have come up with a variety of options for growing it, some better than others. I'm illustrating a couple of variations here.

Fresh catnip is a lot more fun and usually a lot more potent than the dried stuff you buy at the pet store. For the appropriately sensitive feline, there's nothing quite like it. Even big cats like tigers and mountain lions seem to have an interest.

First, you need catnip seed. I get mine from The Catnip Farm, who sell their own strain of Mr. Nipster brand fully organic and very hardy catnip seed. I have seen and purchased catnip seed in the past from other sources, but the Mr. Nipster seed is the best. It's also by far the most economical solution, as most "grow your own" catnip is sold in pet stores as part of a kit that includes small overpriced quantities of soil or peat discs, a pot and some other things that you may already have and certainly won't need to buy every time if you grow the stuff regularly.

Some pet stores also sell small pots with catnip seedlings in them that you can transplant. Personally I find that much less satisfying. Growing seeds from scratch -- whether it's catnip or something I'm going to eat -- is incredibly fun, in a very zen way. I have to work for it and wait for it, which makes me feel so much more attached to the rhythm of natural life that the cats are still so much closer to than I am.

Growing things brings me closer to nature. As Doug Peacock said recently about something slightly different: "All of a sudden you're part of an ancient system again: You stop, listen more often, scent the wind... You're part of the original landscape, a far older more faded world."

Yes, even if you're just growing catnip and herbs on a patio in Venice Beach.

It's an old, necessary art form that everybody should experience.

Method 1: Small planter pots

One way of growing catnip is in plain old little planter pots. These two are left over from other plants that I purchased and transplanted. They work just fine. I filled them with a mix of potting soil and organic peat moss that I had lying around from a previous project, keeping a fine layer of the peat on top where the seeds get planted. It's important (especially with peat moss) that everything be soaked through fully before you try to plant the seeds.

[Click on all photos for larger]

I keep the pots in some kind of a shallow dish or tray. I find that it's easiest to water them without disturbing the seeds by filling the dishes with water and moistening the soil from below rather than by pouring water over the seeds which might be washed to the sides of the pot or into other locations where they bunch up and make for much less even growth.

I take a small number of seeds and place them in a folded piece of cardboard, in this case it's just the folded label from the top of a bag of Mr. Nipster seeds. It works well for holding the tiny seeds.