I like your pictures! We don't get Horace's Duskywings here in PA, but we do get Wild Indigo Duskywings. I just read that Horace's Duskywings overwinter as caterpillars. I raise Wild Indigo Duskywings every year and I had some late ones a couple years ago that I brought into our tool shed for the winter. I wish I had left them outside because they all ended up dying. They must need some special care, and I don't know what that is for sure. I had some up until a few days ago and decided to put them back outside rather than keep them in a container and probably kill them again. Cathy

I'm petrified of dead mice and living ones out here in the New Mexico can carry Bubonic Plague or Hantavirus. So, we use a combination of mousetraps (that DH has to empty for me), steel wool into every possible opening they can get into and pure peppermint oil. Our pest control people told me that mice (and packrats, another huge problem out here) have highly sensitive noses and for some reason hate the smell of peppermint. It must be the pure oil, though, and not the peppermint extract sold for cooking. I stuff plastic webbed tubing with cotton balls, tie off both ends with rubberbands or plastic coated wire ties and then put several drops of peppermint oil on them. I put them in corners and along the walls where I know the mice travel, as mice follow the urine scents they leave as they walk and tend to use the same routes over and over. I buy the peppermint oil at my local Ace Hardware store. You may be able to get the tubing there, too. I'm still using the bunch my pest control people gave me, so I haven't had to buy any as yet. Re-moisten the cottonballs every month. I've been using mine for a couple of years now, so they do last. Here's the oil I use: And here's what I use to make them with: I've also used one of those high frequency emitters outside in our seating area on the front portal. It needs to be plugged into an outlet and seems to have worked fairly well. I need to remember to buy a new one as mine broke a while back. Lynn

We have a large black kitty who loves to perch over corners like that, too. Although, usually, that's not a "hit" pose, he often is purring and wants interaction. Lower-third of tail twitching: apparently means "I'm interested and engaged"--he does this all the time. Lying on back with paws up in the air: AAAAHHH, relaxed The "stare-down": I want to be fed. Pawing at DH while on the recliner, or pulling on my clothes at the counter: I want to be fed. Tapping my head in the middle of the night: wake up--I want company/I want to be fed

Thanks. Sorry, I didn't realize the "gallary" (newbie here) and posted this in there too. I don't cut the ferns back; but I don't need to in Minnesota. I don't really see any sign of the old ones in the spring. I just clear away everything when they start to sprout again. This is their best time of year. When the warm weather hits it is really hard to keep them looking like this. They'll get brown or die back. But this is a very shady spot that really gets about 1/2 hour of sun in the morning and that's it.