Recent Comments

1. about 9 hours ago on Ten Cats

   Eleanor Rigby.

2. about 9 hours ago on Ten Cats

   Belated Happy Birthday greetings! Also, seconding Marilyn’s hope that you get a new pup soon.

3. about 9 hours ago on Ten Cats

   Siberia.

4. about 9 hours ago on Breaking Cat News

   It’s a good-sized tree these days and doing well. However, it’s waayyy in the back, so not in our faces (or noses!) as was our front yard catalpa.

5. 1 day ago on Breaking Cat News

   How wonderful that your catalpa is over 200 years old! Ours would’ve been planted after 1947 (neighborhood was built then) and it was fully grown when we moved in here in the early ‘80s. I didn’t realize catalpas could be so long-lived, so I’m especially bummed that ours didn’t get that chance.

6. 1 day ago on Ten Cats

   We do have mockingbirds, cardinals and blue jays in our yard, but none of the recordings I’ve found online sound like our bird (the online ones sound like birds). We haven’t laid eyes on it either, so don’t have a physical description.

7. 1 day ago on Breaking Cat News

   Thank you, Sue! I had completely forgotten about chitalpas—I am probably mis-remembering and confusing its parentage with the desert willow! I think I would enjoy the chitalpa’s vanilla-melon fragrance as much as I enjoy the sweetness of the catalpa and the freshly starched laundry scent of our desert willow.

8. 1 day ago on Breaking Cat News

   When we’ve used these terms, we’ve always used verge to refer to the grassy areas to the sides of highways, or larger city streets (not the smaller residential streets within a neighborhood) and berm to refer to built-up grassy areas on the sides of overpasses and the grass- or plant-covered “hills” in landscaping (especially on golf courses, or the grounds of commercial buildings).

9. 2 days ago on Ten Cats

   I’m in the DFW Metroplex (Texas). Hubby and I have been hearing a bird for the last few weeks that sounds very much like the electronic beep today’s alarms clocks and microwaves make—beep, beep, beep or beep, beep, beep, beep. I’ve looked online and listened to a number of recorded Texas birds’ calls and haven’t heard anything close. Any ideas?

10. 2 days ago on Breaking Cat News

    As Uncle Snipe said above, our median is a front easement that we as the homeowners are responsible for maintaining—hence our having to insist that the city take down the catalpa. If the tree fell into our yard, we’d have had to pay for the removal. Most tree roots are located in the top 6–24 inches of the soil and occupy an area two to four times the diameter of the tree crown—the exact area the city was completing digging up, causing a severe injury the tree was unlikely to survive.