Chebucto Regional Softball Club

@mathcolorstrees

Both she and Pica the cat think about shoes too much IMO.

@mathcolorstrees

Oh you meant my mom asking about shoes. Yeah, that's also strange. She saw something on the news about shoes and gangs or something I think.

"Who is Peter? How old is he? Does he do his homework? What kind of grades does he have?"

How would I know!

@mathcolorstrees

My pants seem to be the focus. But in the past she has had some ... concerning ... behavior re: shoes.

She likes to stick her face in them after you take them off. And then she rolls around with them and it... it's kind of indecent!

However Pica does not care.

It's like when I was a teen and my mom would start quizzing me about my friends "where do they live? what kind of shoes do they have? where does their mom work? on and on..."

Only it's just Pica reading the smells of this other cat. Now and then she will look up with her mouth open ... I think to huff the smells more deeply in some cat way.

I tried petting her but she ignored me and kept *smelling*

I spent some time with my sister-in-law's cat and #PicaTheCat has been *studying* my pants and bag with extreme intensity since I came home. It's the next day and she's *still* at it. Her whole body is focused. Like she's reading directions on a tax form.

How much information is she getting? I can't even smell anything there but she is deeply interested in the smell of the "other cat"

I don't think she's being jealous.

@hellomiakoda

So that's NOT just to be annoying??

Mammals have two nostrils but they aren't really far enough apart for our sense of smell to have much stereo or sense of direction.

Why aren't nostrils on the side of the head so we could map smell in space more?

Ants do this with their antennae. Like sound, ants sense chemicals as coming from a direction.

I guess having your nose above your mouth (and connected to your mouth) helps with eating. But still seems like a missed opportunity.

@liamvhogan

Forget "it goes to 11" I want something that goes to whatever this is!

@BarneyDellar

dude has drip.

@Retreival9096 @lapis

This happened with phones too for a bit. Though I think they are getting over it now.

But I'm still not getting a new phone. I'm mad.

@ira

It seems geosmin is the compound the gives soil a smell, though there are many others, like a complex perfume.

Geosmin is produced by bacteria and humans are very sensitive to it. In small amounts it's pleasant, but too much and suddenly it's not. Consider how blue-green algae can smell gross. This seems related to how we decide if water is OK to drink.

The threshold where you can detect this compound is tiny.

@ira

Discovering how worms can make soil has forced me to come to terms with the fact that when you are in a forest and smell the wonderful wet, fresh but earthy smell of good soil it is probably some mix of fungi and worm poop.

But I suppose the human brain is set to process those smells as clean and nice since roots dug from such soil are nutritious and there are few pathogens that can harm us. While other kinds of waste are naturally repugnant.

@ira

Yes we have worm compost, vermicompost and I love it. I especially love how it smells. Which is what worried me most when getting started. "would it smell bad?"

I'm very selective about what I put in the worm bin only vegetables, very little starch and in small consistent quantities. NYC has industrial mass composting that takes everything from bones, to fat, to bad cheese. So, I sort the food waste, keeping the easy to compost raw greens and veg and letting the city do the hard stuff.

@MCDuncanLab

Like most artists he just has paintings ... laying around. It is very annoying in a way.

@DocAtCDI

Charles Henry Turner

@Photo55

We found four of these caterpillars one year and I took them to school to keep as pets so the students could see them build their chrysalis.

This meant that there was a time when I went to Zabar's to buy organic broccoli raab for bugs.

My mother must never know of this.

(They loved that fancy broccoli so much. )

@MCDuncanLab

One of my uncles is an artist, not famous one, but he's made MANY huge oil and acrylic paintings. Landscapes of Pittsburgh and the steel mills a portrait of my grandparents. I've been trying to get the information about what each artwork is, when it was made on the back ... because it's good work, and someday I will not remember.

@iwein

The phrase "dirt cheap" makes me wince. Dirt isn't cheap. It's really hard to get enough dirt around here.

It's not like you can steal it from the park.

@iwein

I have so much worm compost. Really too much, I struggle to find things to mix it with so it's not overwhelming my plants so kale or cabbage maybe a good idea.

(And the inedible leaves will help build the soil I think. I'm like a person on a spaceship up here. leaves and grass for composting are precious to me. I need MORE BIOMASS)

@pms

You see this is the danger of social media you see some guy with an amazing cabbage and can't get past the idea of cutting it in half. Who wouldn't want to have a cabbage JUST like that one?

(I would be very proud to have one the size of an apple.)

And I recognize your advice is more practical if we expect to get a few meals out of the garden. We grow the most expensive vegetables in the world up here.