Somehow this post didn't get sent off properly yesterday - so you're getting the black morel photo today: 

These are, apparently, not very common anymore. They are also edible - though I think I prefer looking at them if they are rare, instead of eating them. (Especially not eating them rare.)

These mushrooms are also the first thing that had the rating "selten" (rare, probably, in the English version) in the ObsIdentify app. That is a recent discovery the Most Patient of All Husbands made - it's an app where you can upload images of (wild) plants and animals, and it will compare them to a database and tell you what it is, and with what probability. Observations that are made with surety can then be uploaded. Your uploads help with monitoring where what species are found, and thus for tracking biodiversity. The app will even recognise caterpillars, so it's a really cool help in finding out what critter you have somewhere.

You can find out more about the app here on their website, or search for Obsidentify in your app store thingie of choice. 

Yesterday was Pi Day - and today, my computer obligingly tells me (even though I did not ask) it's World Sleep Day. There's a something-day every single day these days, it seems!

At least this means that should you feel sleepy, you can blame the day. If you're feeling just the same as always... well, I guess our little cat does, too, and she sleeps a lot anyways.  

In, as you'd guess as she's a cat, varying positions and degrees of "aaw"-ness. Quite often it looks so comfy one gets the spontaneous wish to lie down beside her and take a nap as well.

In spite of today being World Sleep Day and the cat napping here and there since the morning (on a chair, in a basket, in her cat bed, and on my arm on the desk), I have not joined her for sleepies but instead did some writing and editing tasks and some spinning. And now for even more work... but no getting up for the moment even though I'd have some tasks that require hopping around... because the current sleeping spot is draped half over my arm again.

It's springtime(ish) again, which means the bees are out and about - and this is the season where they are in need of water. (In summer, too, but it's important in spring as well - they need water to be able to digest the pollen.)

Unfortunately, bees cannot swim, so the bee bar should be safe for them. I've found drowned bees in the saucers under pots where there was water standing after the rain. That's sad to see. 

Over the years, I've tried different things, and the current iteration looks like this:

It's a piece of coarse fabric wrapped around a mix of wood shavings and wool. That's set into a pot filled with water, and to prevent accidental drownings next to the fabric roll, I've stuffed in some more wool to keep the surface covered. It took the girls from the neighbourhood a few days to get it, but now they seem to appreciate their new bar! 

It's gotten pretty warm outside - not proper real spring-warm, but also not wintery cool or cold anymore. The snowdrops and crocuses are blooming, and the irises as well. It's a little early for all of them, if you ask me, but with the generally warm weather, I guess it's something we will all have to get used to.

At least they look pretty no matter when! See for yourselves:

The willow fence is almost completely pruned by now, so there's only the rest of the garden to get into shape for the next growing season... 

While we're at parallels... if you're asking me about my favourite book, I'd be hard pressed to give you an answer, there's quite a lot of them that I enjoy and like to re-read now and then. Even a favourite author would be a hard question to answer - there's a handful of them as well. (Jane Austen is among them, by the way, and C.J. Cherryh.)

But my favourite playwright? Easy question. It's Bertolt Brecht. He wrote quite a lot of plays, most of them looking at the not-so-nice and not-so-intelligent character traits and acts of human beings. He's the inventor, so to say, of the style of the Epic Theatre, intended to get people to think about what they see on stage, instead of just getting drawn in and getting pulled along.

My favourite piece is the Threepenny Opera, which is one (if not the) of his most upbeat pieces. (Also has great music.) But he also wrote something very relevant to today's developments: "The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui", which is a parable to the rise of Hitler. In case you're interested, there's the full play online, in a version brought onto stage by the CSU Theatre Production:

I only looked at a few of the scenes, but it looks good to me. Brecht-good, which means scary, in this case... There's also music, and dancing, and good costumes, and a lot of very obvious parallels to what we'd prefer to never have again.

If you watch it, I hope you enjoy it - do let me know in the comments what you think about it!  

It's gotten a good bit colder here, and there's also been - snow! Finally!  

And with the nice white background I suddenly noticed... we've forgotten to harvest one of the apples on our tiny apple tree.

It's not a huge loss, though, the apple is about as large as a marble, so we are not short an apple cake due to it! (The tree itself is really tiny, as it was intended as a potted tree for a balcony. The apples it makes are, accordingly, also quite small, but most are larger than marbles. And they are quite tasty too!)

This morning I found a link to an article in my news digest - about how free-ranging cats are a danger to species diversity, and may be to blame for species going extinct.

Well. WHAT?

I'm aware that there's been a discussion about cats hunting, killing, and (not always) eating all kinds of prey animals, and that this should be curtailed to give the birds and whatever other species more of a chance to survive. Yes, cats are fierce predators with a very strong hunting instinct, and yes, I can see that this may pose a problem. I'm also not thrilled about cats killing birds.

However, I'm also not convinced that keeping cats indoors all the time is the perfect solution. It's definitely safer for the cat in regards to traffic dangers (rarely do cars go inside of living spaces, after all) - but having seen how our old lady lived a second spring when she discovered the Great Outdoors, keeping cats penned up inside, even if it's a rather large place, is also not the best thing that can happen to them. (There is a lot of pros and cons for indoor vs. outdoor cats, but all the cats that I have had in my own life were outdoor cats, and were very fond of their freedom. And I am talking about Germany here, which had the wild cat before the house cat came, so it's not really an invasive species here. Things are different for areas where cats are not more-or-less native predators. Also - feral cats are a problem everywhere, and they should be caught and at least neutered so they cannot breed without restriction. There's enough cats around already.)

To get back to the main topic though - in my firm opinion, free-ranging cats may today pose a problem for animal species that are in their prey spectrum, and are already struggling. The reason for that, however, is not the fact that humans keep cats as pets and companions, or else we'd have lost a lot more species since the Middle Ages or even earlier. Species diversity is endangered because humans have been very good at making bad decisions, at impacting the habitats of a lot of species, and reducing biodiversity overall through the use of monoculture, pesticides, herbicides, and general other Stuff That Is Very Bad For The Environment (TM). And it really ruffles my feathers to have that blamed on cats now. Because it's much easier, obviously, to say that cats are to blame for this or that going extinct than our ruining the planet.

Interestingly, the article itself, from what I've read of it, is not blaming it all on cats as much as the news digest snippet that I got sent does. If you're interested, it is open access in Nature and you can find it here. Linked within is another, equally interesting article about "Invasive predators and global biodiversity loss" where, interestingly, not only cats are listed - but also foxes, rodents, and other imported invasive species. And also interestingly, rodents have played at least as large, if not a larger, role than cats. In any case, the main culprit for importing these species is... the human.