Amazing Customer

Every customer is wonderful naturally but some go beyond that to *amazing*.

A lady in California who has ordered a number of posts for herself and at least one relative has beautiful handwriting. I noticed this some years ago when she sent a video to me. The address label with my name, etc. was a work of art that I framed and still have on display.

After she ordered a cork post, she liked it to the point that she sent some excellent preserves and sweetbreads in return. Very kind of her.

She also sent a note about the Cork Natural Scratch that I scanned and put on my Web site at http://www.naturalscratch.com/jttCA.html.

Have a look, JanYce is amazing.

Small World

Over the years I have had many great Natural Scratch customers, and some live far away.  Recently a nice professional woman, initials L.L., in Manley, a seaside resort community near Sydney, Australia, sent an e-mail expressing interest in a double-wide cedar scratching plank.

My e-mail reply went to her at about 8:30 a.m. US central standard time which was nearly midnight in her time zone on the east coast of Australia.   She was still up and replied that she wanted the plank and requested I send a PayPal invoice, which I did.  Not long after her payment arrived.

I mentioned that our daughter Ann had been a study-abroad college student in Perth, Australia, and she said her daughter Alexandra was a post-doc fellowship student in London.  

The next day, Thursday, August 12, I sent the plank "First-Class Mail International Parcel."  Nine days later, L.L. e-mailed to let me know the package had arrived at her residence.

Wow.

I found a Web site* that provides "as the crow flies" distances, and it indicates Sydney is 9,240 miles from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA (I'm in Brookfield, a suburb). 

L.L.'s cat, Bonnie, likes the NS plank and the catnip that accompanied it.  (Always great news.)

New South Wales cat Bonnie is clawing a white cedar plank from a tree that grew in Northern Wisconsin, USA and enjoying catnip that was found growing wild in Southeastern Wisconsin.

In addition, L.L. and I were communicating around the world via e-mail in seconds at no more cost than each of us pays for Web access.

Certainly modernity and technology have downsides but the upsides are astonishing.

*http://www.infoplease.com/atlas/calculate-distance.html#axzz0xQdVxEhM

Cardboard Bed And Hornets

A new bike carrier arrived in a cardboard box that is about 24" by 36" and maybe 5" deep.  I took all the parts out and haphazardly set the box on the floor between two cat beds made out of the fluffy stuff cats seem to love.

The cat beds are designed for cats and are only for cats and our three have slept many hours in each one.

However, our oldest cat, Twinkles, who is 16, promptly climbed onto the box and has made it his new bed ever since.  I'd like to throw it away, but hate to with Twinkles evidently in love with it.

Cat behavior is often surprising and nearly always endearing. So why would he prefer the box to a soft, just-for-cats cat bed?  Only he knows.

Saturday, I was carrying yard debris to a utility trailer we have and noticed hornets flying by in both directions at one point on the route.  I stopped and traced the ones heading in the direction of our house to a hole in the ground just off the deck.  The number or hornets arriving at and departing from this hole was impressive, a constant stream in two directions. A hornet nest this large near a home is dangerous so I knew I would have to kill them.  I marked the hole with a 2 x 4 and came back after dark with a can of Ortho Hornet and Wasp Killer spray.  

Coincidentally I happen to be reading a book by Richard Rhodes about the development of the atomic bomb.  As I was spraying nasty chemicals down the hole I kept thinking of what Robert Oppenheimer said as he was viewing the first atomic bomb blast, ""Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds."  It's from Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad-Gita.

I certainly was destroying the only world the hornets knew.  The next day I didn't see a single yellow jacket leave the nest, but I did notice several return, but they only hovered in the air near the entrance.  They seemed to know that landing meant death.  It struck me that these stragglers were hornets that left the nest near darkness the day before and had spent the night away from home.  Fortunate in a way, I suppose, but now they had no home to return to and no idea what happened.

Cactus Flower 2011

The post below is about the flower my cactus produced last summer.  There are several pictures.  Here is this year's flower.  It bloomed on about the same day in August but only lasted about 12 hours before it closed and started to droop.

 Click and hold to get a larger view.

* * *

My brother Bob gave me a cactus that is the offspring of one he received way back when from our Aunt Lily and Uncle Earl.

It produced a flower in 2009 at two separate times, so I knew what to look for this year and sure enough, a stalk appeared about two weeks ago and grew steadily.

The pictures below were taken over five days.

Most of the year, the cactus does nothing and seems to need nothing but a little water.

But, then, a few days of growth, 24 hours of glory, and...dissolution.

Click on the photos for larger views.

The End.