cats on the web

Since Della and Moxie moved in, I have learned many things.

Here are a few of them.

A kitten can scroll a touchscreen with her paw.
Considering that I - a human with fingers - sometimes have trouble with the touchscreen, this really amazed me.

Kittens can also - in a split second, on a daily basis,

and with just one little paw -

find things on your laptop you have never seen before.

They can summon Help for the operating system. Repeatedly.

They can turn on voice activation.

They can open a pop-up window of keyboard shortcuts that I wish I could find again.

They can set up skype.

They can mute the system in a way that requires googling to figure out how to cancel. (So far, they themselves have not googled anything. But to be on the safe side, I only open Amazon when they are both asleep.)

They can add umlauts to the onscreen keyboard.

I still haven't figured out how to undo that.

They can compose and send a tweet:

I just noticed: twitter provided a "translate" button on the kitten-tweet - LOL!

A couple of days ago I opened my laptop and found
a pop-up window on twitter that sternly warned:

You are not permitted to Block yourself.

Well, thank goodness, is all I can say to that. Because I don't know how I could have ever gotten back into my account to Unblock myself.

Of course there's one thing I already knew, but which the kittens have learned:

it's possible to fall asleep at the computer.
~~~~~

sunrise

This little bottle, in a south-facing window at the foot of my bed,

catches a few minutes of sunrise in one of it's beveled edges.

 Time to get up and out.

The days are short and there is always much to do.

But sometimes during morning chores,

I take a few pictures to share with you.

~~~

I hope your week is off to a good start

and your chores are going well.

~~~~~

mullein

When I photographed this mullein plant,

it was only moments away from losing it's light layer of frost.

Can you see it?

The morning sun was just coming up through the trees, so plants close to the ground were still coated with frost. The trees were intercepting the sun rays, and frost on hemlock needles and beech leaves was sparkling and literally disappearing before my eyes. Melted frost dripped from the tips of beech leaves faster than I could focus on an individual droplet.

This particular mullein plant has given me a lot of pleasure this year.

It grew in the Very Raised Bed, so I walked by often and stopped to admire it many, many times.

You may already know that mullein is a biennial plant. The first year there is a rapidly-growing basal rosette of thick, fuzzy "bunny ears."

(That may sound twee or childish, but I defy anyone to see that first rosette of mullein leaves in the Spring and not think of soft furry ears.)
The second year, the plant produces it's impressive stalk and flowers. I find mullein visually interesting at all stages of it's life, and all year round.

Mullein is always a popular plant with pollen-gatherers.

This one had frequent visitors:

I did an ink-and-watercolor drawing based on that same cluster of blossoms. Can you tell I was drawing a stalk that was far over my head?

The big soft leaves and sunny flowers made me smile so many times all through the summer. And come next Spring, I'll hope to find new mullein plants, offspring of this one, sprouting nearby.

But meanwhile, right now, I find this plant so beautiful.

~~~~~

morning path

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wordless seedy saturday

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