Lynn - the dogs love him (Shelties seem totally intrigued by cats), GrayC ignores him, and Jack can't stop watching him. No mad playing yet but I expect it to happen quickly. He and Jack will be buddies, I'm sure. The new guy is settled in enough so that he's running, dashing, skittering and all the other adorable stuff that kittens do. He's been dragging even the dog's big stuffed toys around, growing to himself over the stuggle. I think that once he is allowed out in the screen room, the lizard population will plummet. I predict him to be a little killer so I'll have to keep him in and away from the birds! We found him at www.1-800-save-a-pet.com - a rescue organization that operates all over the US. You put in your zip code to find animals listed near you, then contact the individual rescue place. It's worth some computer time just to check them out. I had a Siamese as a child so I was sort of looking for one. When I saw this Siamese mix with the Big Foot I couldn't resist. I drove up to Jacksonville to get him! If anyone is interested, he has an identical brother and a crazy little sister who is tabby striped in gray and peach. I've never seen a cat with her coloring before and she's just beautiful. Both of the siblings have the toes too. Many of the cats in Key West are polydactyl and are referred to as Hemingway cats . (If he were female, Polly Dactyl would be a great name. Maybe Paulie Dactyl???) They are common enough so that you can even do a search on that save-a-pet site for Hemingway/Polydactyl cats. There was a fluffy black poly cutie listed in Orlando but the foster people never responded to my email about that one. Kate For a picture of Peaches (the sister): Peaches the 6-toed peach/gray tabby/Siamese

Thanks, everyone, for the compliments. With all this rain we've had again, don't know when my grass around the edges will take. I've planted twice now, and both times, as the grass is coming along nicely, we get a heavy bit of rain to wash some of it away. It hadn't rained all summer here until I tried to plant some grass. Oh well, the hosta and all the other plants are smiling. And, i dig it, Willow is just fine now. She had to spend a night in the emergency hospital this week secondary to a high fever and dehydration. After some IV fluid and antibiotic,(and $429 later) she is her usual kitten self again. As far as her breed, I don't think she is a particular breed but she is part Siamese. Here papers say Rag Doll, but I think that is just the coloring. She's funny and keeps us laughing.

My patio, what I've been calling my "poor man's flagstone" is actually broken up pieces of ugly concrete sidewalk pavers, roughly 2' square, about an inch and a half thick. We had them left over from when we redid the front walkway, so I decided to at least make some sort of 'good use' of them. A few blows with a heavy hammer and they shattered into usable pieces. The construction, if you will, is very simple. I put down a hefty layer of newspaper, place the broken concerete pieces (face down, as they're much more 'natural' looking on the underside), then fill in around them with 'top soil' (bagged at $1.17 per cubic foot from the evil blue store - so much easier than finding a place to dig it up, and easier than getting rid of the grass & weeds to put them into the existing ground). The soil, while a playground for weeds, helps to stabilize the concrete blocks quite well. I then topdress the whole thing with an inch of cocoa bean hulls. I like the cocoa hulls because they have an appearance of stone, but will biodegrade. The hulls are hideously expensive as compared to shredded bark mulch, but each bag does 24 square feet, so... it works out nicely. Total cost for what is seen in the above photo, $15 for cocoa mulch and bagged dirt. I've run out of the concrete pavers, unfortunately, I'm tempted to buy new ones to finish the path. ;-) I think it looks a bit funny at the moment, please pardon the redundancy of the photo: I'm linking my 'progress' gallery below, if you're interested in seeing where I started this year, versus the previous photo from 2003. :-) Here is a link that might be useful: Garden Progress 2005

Carrots? (They are a "bone of contention" between DW & me. ;o) DW likes looong straight carrots such as one often find at the soopermarket. I can grow short, dumpy carrots. I can grow the little, dinky varieties that we have come to think of as "baby" carrots. I may have problems with either of these but most will be okay. I've never even tried to grow carrots in this garden and most other places are nearly as rocky, just "pea gravelly" by some definition or other. It is disappointing to me that this year I won't be bothering with either carrots or parsnips. DW suggested that we take the 3/8" screen out to clear rocks from a bed. I think she realized how brutally difficult that would be as soon as she said it. Steve