Scents of the Past

As I sit here and gaze out of my front window, I can see several containers full of bluebells. They are a little late this year, due to the cold spring that we have had, but definitely better late than never. I just love bluebells. I love their colour and their simplicity. Their delicate heads, rising above a carpet of shining, emerald green. I also love bluebells because they remind me of home. The first time I left home and moved down to Exeter to do my first degree, one of the things that I missed the most were the bluebell woods back home. That carpet of bright blue, beneath the brilliant green of freshly opened beech leaves, so new, so vibrant, the sunlight shinning through the leafy canopy, dappling the rippling sea of bluebells beneath. To this day, every time I see a bluebell, I think of home and I wish I could be transported to those bluebell woods........

Recently, in her blog, English Mum asked her readers what made them happy. I immediately thought of my cats - burying my head in their warm, soft fur, listening to the most relaxing sound in the world - a cat purring. Just thinking about them makes me smile. I also thought of daffodils, their cheery yellow heads, bobbing in the wind, reminding us all that Winter is on its way out and Spring is just around the corner - really, it is, you just have to be patient. Daffodils also remind me of home. More specifically, they remind me of my Granddad, who had the most wonderful garden in the world. Last night, I couldn't sleep. This is what happens of you drink too much water before going to bed. It is all very well going on and on about staying hydrated, but if that means you have to get up five times during the night.......I guess I have to choose between being dehydrated or sleep deprived, and after last night, sleep wins out over hydration every time! Still, it did give me lots of time to let my mind wander, skipping back to the past and meandering through the scents and sounds of my childhood. I started to think of all the things that made me happy now and realised that many of them make me happy because they remind of my childhood. Let's look at a few examples:

Some of the smells that make me yearn for the past:

Lavender and lilac

Wallflowers - maybe not the prettiest of flowers, but they have the scent of heaven.

Roses, mainly the old, rambling rose that we had growing over our shed in our garden. Also, another reminder of my Grandad, who grew some of the biggest and showiest roses that I have ever seen.

Box hedges - this may seem like an odd one, since they are not much too look at and their smell is not exactly sweet. However, we used to have box hedges in our garden and every time I smell one, I am transported right back home, playing in that garden.

Tomatoes - I don't even particularly like tomatoes, nor did I as a child, but the smell - oh my God, straight back to my Granddad's greenhouse, picking baby tomatoes. I can almost taste them as I sit here typing.

Sage brush and ponderosa pine, reminding me of a summer spent in Utah.

You will notice how many of these are flowers that remind me of either my garden or my granddad's garden as I was growing up. There are many more, and whenever I hit the garden centre, my choice of flowers nearly always reflects the gardens of my past - dog daisies and giant red poppies, lupines and hollyhocks, buddleia and delphiniums and pansies, we mustn't forget pansies - my Dad was smitten with pansies........... Oh for a large garden that I could fill with flowers. Unfortunately, we have a garden the size of a postage stamp and Mr. DBM has his own ideas about gardens and their uses. If he had his way, it would be full of lettuces and spinach, strawberries and raspberries, onions and garlic. Hang on a minute - it is! It is quite amazing how many vegetables you can fit into one tiny garden. Not that I am against growing vegetables - I think that it is a great idea and we should all do it, but I do have to draw the line somewhere. Right now, that line is drawn at chickens living in the garage and a sheep to keep the grass short. Again, great idea, but we really do need a bit more space before I can allow the introduction of farm animals to our urban Eden.

While most of my strongest memories are triggered by scent, there are also certain sounds that have a similar effect. I have been to Australia several times now, and I always look forward to hearing the galahs. I know, they are not the prettiest, or the smartest and definitely not the most melodious of birds, but their song is just so Australia. As is the kookaburra. How can anyone hear that bird without smiling and starting to laugh? One of the most prominent sounds of my childhood is the sound of a cricket bat hitting a ball. Mostly, this is a good memory, although having two brothers knocking in cricket bats could potential drive you nuts pretty quickly. Then there is music - ah, now that is a whole new post, but I will mention one sound bite of my past that starts the memory juices flowing - the theme tune of Grandstand. Sitting on the floor of my grandparent's living room, with a small stool across my legs, eating a boiled egg with soldiers..........I still have that stool. I finally persuaded Mum that it would be OK to give it to me and let me bring it to Canada.

All of these memories are happy memories of a wonderful, carefree childhood. A while ago, I wrote about how luck had little to do with the life Mr. DBM and I had made for ourselves (Special Offer of the Day). However, I am very willing to admit that the halcyon days of my childhood were due to luck - the luck of having a family full of love and laughter. We didn't have a lot of money, we didn't have a lot of material things, but we did have a lot of fun and many a hectic holiday, chaotic family gathering or frenzied family outing and we are now very lucky to have a lot of fond memories of our past. These memories now shape my present and my future. Perhaps only in small ways, such as the flowers that I chose for my gardens, but they are always there, influencing how I live my life today.

Tulipomania

In my last post, I asked if anyone was interested in learning a bit about tulips - I got no response. I assume this means that you, my loyal readers, are not dying to know about tulips. Do you think that is going to stop me from telling you anyway? Hell no, this is my blog and I am going to write about whatever I want to - so there!

Warning - educational information follows.

Would you believe me if I told you that tulips nearly ruined the economy of a certain country famed for its tulips? Would you believe that a grown man would chose to spend vast sums of money on a single flower? A flower that he might buy before he even knew what it would look like, which would then flower for a few, brief days and then wither and die, not even leaving offspring that might look the same? Absolute madness, if you ask me, but it happened all the same.

We are talking about Holland in the 1630s and we are talking tulipomania - an apparently well studied economical event that nearly ruined Holland. People went mad over tulips. I kid you not - men really did spend vast sums of money to buy a tulip. Now, everyone can understand why someone might want to spend large sums of money on a work of art - let's say a Rembrandt or a Van Gogh, for example. This would be considered an investment - you may not even like the painting, you may lock it up in your cellar for years, but it will still be there in years to come and it will still probably be worth a lot of money. But this just doesn't apply to our tulip. Let's take the most famous of the tulips around at the height of tulipomania - the Semper Augustus (see picture). I would hope anyone can see that this is a gorgeous flower, a feast for the eyes, the rich colours, the delicate and intricately feathered petals are a marvel indeed. But do you really think that anyone could be daft enough to spend over 6,000 florins on one bulb back in 1635? Just to give you some idea how much this was - an average income back then was around 150 florins. Let's say an average income now is $50,000 - that would mean that some numbnut just paid approximately $2,000,000 for a tulip! Such ridiculous sums of money for a flower that will wither and die. Why would anyone do that? I really don't know - perhaps you have to ask someone who has bucket loads of cash lying around, may be they would think that it is worth it. Now, I can tell you that many rich Dutch men bought the tulips for status reasons - can you imagine trying to keep up with the Joneses if they ever got a Semper Augustus in their front garden? I also know that many a man made his fortune by speculating and trading in tulips. However, in 1637, some bright spark suddenly turned around and said "Eh up? Why would anyone spend this much money on a poncey flower?" Everyone had second thoughts, the market collapsed and many people were left with nothing but a few worthless tulip bulbs.

One of the big questions for me was why certain tulips were so rare and hence so valuable. Surely if you have one tulip you could let it grow and multiply and then have lots of tulips, all of which you could then sell. Of course, if this were the case, the tulip would no longer be rare and therefore it would lose its value. Still, this doesn't answer the question of why some tulips were very rare. It turns out that this is Mother Nature's doings. The colour of a tulip depends upon the pigments present. Most tulips have two classes of pigments, an underlying base coat and a second coat of a different pigment. If you can vary the amount and coverage of the top coat, you can develop patterns on the petals. When this occurs, the tulip is said to have broken. So, you can have a pale base coat of say yellow or white and then bursts of colours over the top of this. In some cases, you can get incredibly fine streaks of colour along the length of the petals - imagine these in a deep, dark red or a brilliant, fiery orange, feathery patterns spreading out across the petal, bold colours contrasting against a pale background. If you are really lucky, you end up with a rare beauty, such as the Semper Augustus. I say lucky, since this exquisite, natural work of art was a one off and was caused by a virus. This means two things. The first - the tulip cannot, ever, be reproduced exactly, since you will not get two tulips to break in the same manner. The second - it results in the tulip being less fit, since it is infected with a virus. Once the Dutch realised what caused breaking in tulips and why these tulips were less fit, the unique beauty was doomed. The Dutch increased the fitness of their tulips by ridding them of their virus - so depriving the world of these magical beauties.

Much of the above information was gleaned from the book "The Botany of Desire" by Michael Pollan. Very interesting book. I also learnt, among other things, that apples do not grow true from seeds, which is why you have to graft branches on to root stocks to get a particular variety of apple. On a more bizarre note, I discovered the truth behind witches and their flying broomsticks. This is a little delicate and I shall try to put it nicely. Apparently their flying trips had more to do with psychoactive plants than with actual flying and their broomsticks were used to insert said plants into a witch's most private of places......ahem....I hope I don't have to elaborate. So much for riding the broomstick..........I think I am blushing!

I shall finish with an amusing titbit that I found while reading about tulips - since the Dutch are a bit strapped for space, they are thinking of making an island, much like the palm tree island of Dubai, only theirs, of course, would not be the shape of a palm tree but, rather, a tulip!

If you go down to the woods today.........

After my last floral post, I had fully intended on exploring the history of tulips, since I know how much everyone likes to be educated. Whilst it is all very fascinating - the history of tulips, that is - I figured that people might actually prefer to hear about my close encounters of the bear kind. Besides, I know that it will make brother Moon very jealous. After all, he kept on whinging and whining the whole time he was up here visiting about the lack of bear sightings. So Moon, here are the bears......

The first one we saw was just on the side of the road as we were driving to Long Beach on the west coast of Vancouver Island - well known for its long beaches - duh, big waves and endless surf. We had stopped on the side of the road for safety reasons - apparently someone was missing a headrest in the back seat. Turned out to be not so safe a stop, since once we had all piled out of the vehicle, someone noticed the large tree stump just behind the vehicle move. "My God, the tree stump is moving!?!" Oooooh, the tree stump is all furry and it has eyes.....wait a minute........" The coin finally drops - it is a bear. We all leg it back to the car, for two different reasons. The sensible half of the group deems this to be the safest spot. The photographers of the group need to grab cameras and zoom lenses. Am I sure that you have guessed which group I fell into - and weren't the photos worth the risk of a bear mauling? Besides, it was only one small bear, and there were four of us, and the car was pretty close by. As I was taking photos, I could tell how close the bear was getting by the pitch of my companions voice - one of the sensible ones in the car - as she was yelling "Get in the car. Get in the car now!" Good thing too, since you can't really tell how far away a bear is when you are looking at it down a camera lens. Needless to say, it would have been a very sad ending for all concerned if the bear had got me while I was browsing through the photos that I had just taken of it - well, you have to check that your exposures are correct, don't you? I can imagine the judges verdict now - death by camera distraction.

Anyhoo, the bear didn't get us - in fact he was quite happy chomping away on freshly sprouted herbaceous plants and grass, apparently not bothered by us in the slightest, even when I started singing "Look for the bear necessities, the simple bear necessities......." That is normally enough to enrage any hearing-capable mammal, but even this did not phase the bear. The bear just didn't care - look, he is even smiling at me....

We bearly survived our next encounter - this time it was with a mother and a cub - the most dangerous combination when it comes to bears attacking. The mother was on one side of the path and the baby on the other. Both munching away on grass and dandelions without a care in the world. That is until we came along. They then had to put up with my renditions of the Teddy Bears Picnic, Winnie the Pooh and the Bear Necessities (well, I only have a limited repertoire when it comes to bear songs) and my friend imploring us to step away from the bears - again, we could only get so far back, since our zoom lenses are only so good. So, what to do now? I suggested that we throw a couple of stones at them to try and move them along - well, it had worked with a rattlesnake one time in California. That one got voted down - can you believe that!?! Our only other plan was to make noise (hence the singing) and wait, at a safe distance. Unfortunately, I am not good at waiting safe distances, so I tended to drift closer and closer to the bears, which were moving very slowly down the path, not leaving a dandelion uneaten. I did beat a hasty retreat at one point, when the mother bear huffed at me in a very threatening manner. Huffing may not seem very threatening, but trust me, it is when there is nothing between you and a mamma bear and her cub.

Plan B was about to be put into action when a group of hikers wended their way down the path, blissfully unaware of the danger up ahead and their impending mauling. This could be the answer to all our problems. All we had to do was let them continue on their merry way and observe the outcome. The possibilities:

1). The impending mauling becomes an actual mauling - good photo op and should clear the path for us, since mamma bear will have her claws full.
2). They will scare the bears off the path, leaving the path clear for us - not as exciting as option one, but a good outcome for all concerned.
3). As above, but the bears are actually only hiding and we get the mauling - might get a decent last shot before going down.

Of course, we didn't get to test these options, since my good will gene got the better of me and I informed the hikers of the danger up ahead. They seemed to quite like the idea of seeing bears and so carried on down the path. Meanwhile, we took the less dangerous route and bushwhacked it through the undergrowth, onto the beach and back to the car the long way round. Turns out that our route was the more dangerous - lots of spiky and prickly bushes and some very dangerous tippy logs. By the time we made it back to the car, the other group was already ensconced in the local inn, toasting their lack of a bear mauling.


For those of you dying to know all about tulips, and I am sure there are many - well, another day, another post...........perhaps, if you ask nicely.

Tulips from Amster.....damn they're beautiful!

This weekend, Mr. DBM and I loaded our bikes into our car and headed south. We love our little excursions down to Seattle and surrounding areas, but there are a few things that tend to limit such forays. In order of bugging-me-ness:

1). The dreaded border
2). The cost of petrol
3). Seattle traffic and the length of the drive

Every time we go down, we swear we are not going again, but, overtime, the frustration wanes, the memories dim and the numb butt recovers feeling. So, the time had come to brave another trip across the border, into the land of the free.

On this trip, we decided on a new border crossing strategy - instead of getting up at "oh my God, its early" time to beat the border rush, we decided to take the laid back approach and wait for the initial early morning rush to run its course. We're in no rush, oh no, we have all the time in the world. By the time we managed to get our laid back bums in gear, it was 2pm as we approached the 49th parallel. All was going well until we made that fatal mistake, the one that seems to happen to everyone in every queue around the world - we picked the wrong one! Now, obviously, not everyone can end up in the slowest queue - someone has to be in the one next to me that is moving twice as fast as ours, but we always err on the slow side. When we finally get to the front of the queue we find out just what is holding up the line - a devious, sly, sneaky border guard who was asking really tough and tricky questions in the hope that he might uncover the next mastermind suicide bomber. And how does he do this? Well, the sly guy asks the same question, separated by two others, twice. I guess he must think that the mastermind terrorist can't keep track of their answers. "So, ma'am, what is your job?" "I am a lecturer." A couple of questions later........"What did you say you do for a living?" "I make bombs.........ooops, I mean that I am a lecturer in bomb mak.....I mean biology." I have to wonder if that strategy ever works for him?

Anyhoo, our answers seemed to satisfy and once we got across the border, it was all plain sailing, for all of about half an hour. Then it was an hour in a traffic jam through Bellingham. Our ETA for Seattle was pushed back by one hour. Not a problem, we weren't in a hurry. Of course, we hadn't factored in the fact that we were now late enough into the afternoon to hit the Saturday early evening rush into Seattle. Another hour in traffic, amidst all the fumes outside the car and the fuming inside the car. Just as we were about to despair of ever reaching our exit, or of ever escaping the god-forsaken stretch of road that is the I-5 just north of Seattle, I remembered the Green and Blacks that I had slipped into my bag earlier that day. Disaster was averted by two squares of chocolatey bliss and we finally arrived at our friend Js. Mr. DBM downed a beer, I downed a cider and all was well with the world again.

So, was the above worth it? Well, look at the photos and you tell me......

I have seen the tulip fields before, but the sight still amazes me. The colours are so vibrant and so intense. Blocks of colour that are so unexpected - reds, pinks, and purples, yellows and oranges all so bright that you think someone must have adjusted the colour saturation settings on the whole view. Where you expect to see green, you see magenta, where you expect to see cows or perhaps a couple of sheep, you see rows upon rows of regimented colour marching out into the near distance.

Of course, there were a lot of other people around, all out to bug me. I have posted before about how rude, inconsiderate and selfish people can be (see "OK, so I didn't have to call him a moron....... February 17, 2008) and how some people seem to think that rules are meant for other people but not them. That was all very evident here. There was the woman moving a bright orange cone that was there to keep the road clear - well, it was getting in the way of her husband trying to park his car so obviously it needed moving. Then there were all the people wandering down the rows of tulips, even though there were signs everywhere asking people to stay out of the tulips - well, how else can they get photos of their nearests and dearests surrounded by the tulips if they didn't venture in - the signs really didn't mean that you couldn't do that, did they? Oooh, and one of my all time favourites.....just as you have got your perfect shot lined up, some ignoramus walks in front of you. You very politely point out that you were in the middle of taking a photo and that his giant, oafish frame is now blocking your shot. Does he apologise and quickly vacate your photo? Oh no, the oaf just looks at you and then calls all of his family in to surround him to make sure that there is absolutely no way you can take the photo! Bloody hell! People really are very inconsiderate. That, or incredibly stupid - I am never quite sure which!?!

Special Offer of the Day

I have been very busy recently making lots of arrangements for our next travel extravaganza. It is one of the things we do - we travel. We spend wad loads of cash on long holidays to exotic places to wallow in beauty and to seek out the most interesting and cutest animals that money can find. While people can always understand my obsession with cute - who can't resist an adorable baby elephant, an orang that is vaguely reminiscent of your youngest brother - must be the ginger thing, a kangaroo that will not take no for an answer and insists upon getting into your camper van, despite being threatened by Mr. DBM wielding a tyre iron, a flying fox dangling off your arm, it's beautiful brown eyes staring right into your eyes, oh, I could go on and on and on and on...........but I can see you might get bored. I can also hear you cry - "Hang on a minute, what this about a flying fox - a bat, cute!?!" See, here is where I start veering off from the general population in my animal obsession. I really do think that flying foxes are very cute. I also happen to think that weevils could possibly possess one of the most endearing faces in the animal kingdom. See, I like different, unusual, odd, rare, peculiar and out of the ordinary plants and animals.

I have been known to trek through the forests of Borneo to find the world's largest and, probably, ugliest and smelliest flower. Who wouldn't want to see a flower that looks and smells like a rotting hunk of meat? In Africa, when others were demanding elephants, me, I wanted to see vultures and I got really excited when we saw a secretary bird. It goes around stomping on lizards and snakes and, no, it doesn't do shorthand. I am overjoyed by sightings of antlions and pitcher plants, cockroaches and geckos, komodo dragons and any kind of frog, toad, salamander or newt. And I haven't even started on the other two thirds of our planet - underwater. Sea snakes and leafy sea dragons, pygmy sea horses and warty frogfish, not to mention night dives to see spanish dancers and spawning coral. I could spend all day trying to communicate with a cuttlefish. I plan entire holidays just to catch glimpses of sharks, be they great whites or whale sharks, wobbegongs or snaggletooths. In fact, the whole starting point for our gallivanting around the Galapagos is so that we can see the schools of hammerheads before their fins end up in someone's soup!

This has led me to wonder what fostered this fascination with all creatures great and small. I suspect the blame must lie in the direction of a certain Sir David Attenborough. Like most children, I spent many hours in front of the TV and, given the chance, I would be watching nature programs. My siblings may have had other ideas and I am now very capable of giving a mean deadleg due to hours of endless practice while fighting for control of the TV. Mr. DBM claims that he never fought with his family - just the odd bout of Greco - Roman wrestling. Now I have to wonder - whose family was the normal one? I have always assumed that siblings had all out fights about most things, but apparently not!?!

So, in my quest for unusual animals, and to fulfil every biologists dream, we are heading to South America and the Galapagos! Just think of all the odd animals I can find there. Marine iguanas (the only marine lizards) and all of the finches that allegedly inspired Darwin to come up with his Theory of Natural Selection, including the vampire finch - honestly, I kid you not, there is a vampire finch. They are particularly fond of the blood of my brother's favourite Galapagos attraction, the boobies. I keep trying to explain to him that they are birds, but whenever they are mentioned he zones out and I lose him for a while. There are the giant tortoises, flamingos and pelicans and my all time favourite and the cutest of birds, the Galapagos penguins, right on the equator! And, of course, let's not forget those hammerheads..........

The whole point of this post is not to make you jealous about my next holiday or bore you to death with a list of 1000 animals to see before you die. In fact, I am getting to the bit where something bugs me. When I tell someone what Mr. DBM and I are doing for our holidays, the normal response is: "Oooooh, aren't you lucky?" Well, that really bugs me. I will admit that my childhood upbringing had little to do with me. I did have a great childhood, thanks to my parents and, I can now see, although I couldn't at the time because we were too busy fighting, to my brothers and sister. But, I would like to think that a lot of the rest was not luck. I worked damned hard. I didn't go to a great school, but I worked hard at the school I did go to. As a student, I didn't spend all my time drinking beer and protesting student loans. I actually worked to get my degree. I then moved out to Canada and I was lucky to meet Mr. DBM - who had also done everything possible to get a good job with a good wage. No luck there. In reality, the main reason that we have the time and money to spend has nothing to do luck - although, wait, perhaps it has, if you count bad luck. The bad luck is that we can't have children. There are lots of downsides to this, the most important one being who the hell is going to look after us when we are old and smelly? But, there are definitely upsides. Loads of cash that doesn't have to be spent on nappies, food, electronic gadgets and education. No need for an inheritance. We don't have to worry about ruining the planet for our children or our children's children. As far as I am concerned, I have done my bit to save the planet by not having kids! Still, I can't help but wonder what life would have been like if we had been able to produce some little DBMs.......

So, the next time that I tell you that I am spending an arm, leg and right ear (the left one is too damaged to sell or trade) on a holiday, maybe you should be saying "Oooooh, aren't you unlucky!" And this finally leads us to the Special Offer of the Day - One exotic holiday to the Galapagos, an expensive camera to capture all those magical moments and cute and not so cute animals and a brand new 42", high definition TV to view all those wonderful photos. But wait, that's not all - I will also throw in an almost new car - how's that for a deal? How can anyone resist? And how much is all this going to cost you? Not four, not even three children. Hell, I am not even asking for two - just your first born is all that it will cost you!

Please note, this offer is not open to anyone with children between the ages of 13 and 21. You can keep them!

Willow vs. the FURminator - Round 2

Round One went to Willow, but here you can see the results of Round Two - I think that the FURminator wins it by a hair! I will admit that this is not the result of just one session with the FURminator, but rather many, very short sessions. Thankfully, all my body parts are still intact and no blood was shed during furmination, although I did come close to losing my ear again today - yep, same one as last time, and no, I have not yet invested in some ear protection.

Revolvingly Good Lamb

Finally - a gorgeous, warm, sunny and perfect Barbeque Day. Time to try out the new barbeque........












Mediterranean Lamb Marinade

5-7 lbs lamb joint - preferably no bone, rolled and tied
1/4 cup oil
1/4 cup red wine vinegar
1 tsp dried oregano
1 tsp onion salt
1 tsp dried rosemary
1/2 tsp freshly ground pepper
2 cloves garlic, minced

Mix all ingredients and marinade lamb for 4-6 hours or longer. Don't chuck the marinade away once you are done, since you will need it when cooking the lamb.

Preheat barbeque to a medium heat - you want to cook the lamb with an indirect heat, nice and slowly, so that it stays nice and tender. Before skewering your lamb, pan sear each side of the joint over high heat to seal in all those lovely juices. Then skewer the lamb on the rotisserie and place on barbeque. Turn on rotisserie and watch the joint go round and round and round and round...... Once you are bored with this, go find a nice cool drink and relax in the sun. All you have to do now is come back every 20 - 30 minutes to baste the lamb with your marinade. It will take around 2-3 hours, depending on how hot your barbeque is. We left our's until the internal temperature was 145 degrees F - gives medium rare lamb that is still nice and pink in the centre. Make sure you let the joint rest for 20 minutes or so before carving.

While waiting for the lamb, you have lots of time to drink, chat, beat your friends at poker - we won a truck, but then felt sorry for R. since he had no way to get home. You also have time to make some beautiful roast potatoes - my absolute favourite way to do potatoes, possibly because it is probably the unhealthiest way to do potatoes. Oh well.......

Yummylicious Roast Potatoes

However many potatoes you want
A small amount of flour
Salt and Pepper
Lots of oil

Peel and quarter potatoes. Boil some salted water in a large pot and cook potatoes for 5 minutes. Drain, then bung the potatoes in a bag with the flour and seasonings. Shake, shake, shake until the potatoes are covered in the flour. Now you need to heat some oil in a pan - I used the oil left over from searing the lamb, since it had lots of tasty bits in it. Fry the potatoes until they start to turn golden. After the boiling and the frying comes the baking. You need to do this at a fairly high temp - around 400 degrees F and it is very important to get the oil very hot before you add the potatoes - if you don't, your potatoes will stick to the bottom of the pan and you will swear a lot when you can't get them out. Pop the potatoes into the oven and cook for around 1 hour - I turn mine over after about 40 minutes.

There you have it - the tenderest lamb I have ever tasted and the best ever roast potatoes.

Many thanks to R. for providing the marinated lamb and to D. for the wonderful barbeque. It took a while to get it together, but it was worth it.

I am now going to find some thermal underwear and I am very happy I bought that down jacket last week - it was sleeting yesterday and they are forecasting snow for this weekend. Come on global warming, I am waiting.......

Mr. Lee's Catcam

I often wonder what my cats are up to when I am gone during the day. I imagine them sitting there, waiting for Mr. DBM and me to leave. They pretend that they are asleep, but really they have one eye half open and are watching and waiting, waiting, waiting. As soon as the door closes, woohoo!!! and all hell breaks loose. Cats on the countertop, licking unmentionable parts, claws are embedded into my new sofa, fur is flying. Cats are sliding down the banisters, swinging on the light fixtures, and making faces at the neighbour dogs as they walk by. I imagine them raiding the cupboards, rolling in cat food (it's OK, they only get dry food), opening cans of tuna and snorting vast quantities of catnip. Tess will be eating bubble wrap, while Willow will be knocking over houseplants. Perhaps they will be torturing each other with the FURminator, having hairball hucking contests or indulging in a bit of toad licking. Maybe they might try surfing the web, looking for the best prices for cat toys on eBay or, God forbid, looking at naked cat photos!?! The possibilities are endless. Let's just be grateful that they don't have opposable thumbs. If they did, they would be able to open cupboard doors, operate the can opener and open their catnip container. It just doesn't bear thinking about. Also, all that endless fun they have chasing small rolly things around on very slippery floors would be gone - they would just pick up the rolly thing and be done with it - oooh, we are back to Eddie Izzard.......

So, I have been flirting with the idea of installing cameras in my house so that I can keep an eye on them. But then I thought about it and decided that I don't really need to watch my cats sleeping - let's be realistic, that is what they actually do all day. Some days when I leave in the morning, Tess will be asleep on my bed. When I get home, Tess will be asleep on my bed. I do wonder if she actually does anything else all day or if she really has spent the entire day asleep on my bed, but I don't think finding the answer to this burning question really justifies the expense of cameras.

Cameras in the house are out, but what about cameras out of the house? I would love to know what Willow gets up to and where Willow goes when she is outside the house. Obviously, she spends a lot of her time running from the back door round to the front door, but there are times when she ventures further afield. Where does she go? What does she see? Does she ever really get accosted by coyotes or packs of roving racoons? You see, this is one of my biggest fears and the main reason that I don't want my cats out at night. I am terrified that they will be eaten by some big hairy coyote or ripped to pieces by ravenous raccoons. If Willow isn't in by 9pm, I start to worry. I go out and peer into the darkness, wondering helplessly where she is. I start calling her name, hoping that I will hear the little tinkle that is her bell. When that doesn't work, I resort to the shaking of the treat bag, trying to lure her back home with the promise of food. If that doesn't work, I may play the T card - that will surely work. The other night, it didn't, and that got me really worried. Nothing stops my cats responding to the T word, unless they entombed within the belly of some carnivorous beast. So I go back inside, just wishing I had some way of knowing where she is. Five minutes later, there she is, meowing at the window and all is well in the DBM household.

Having done extensive research in the field of cat gadgets, I have found some options for keeping track of my furry felines. The first one that I came across was Mr. Lee's catcam - Mr. Lee is pictured above. It consists of a small camera in a waterproof case that you fix to your cat's collar. It then takes a picture at five minute intervals as your cat does its rounds of the neighbourhood. I did think that I could try this with my Nikon D80, since I do have a waterproof housing for it. I figured I would always know where my cat was if I did this - exactly where I left her! (The thing weighs about 20lbs)! I like the idea of the catcam, but it doesn't really solve my problem. It would not help me find my cat, it would just tell me where she had been. I imagine scanning through the photos after her return and seeing photos of claws and teeth, gaping maws with hellish teeth, saliva dripping onto the camera (good job it has a waterproof case). The cat would then be condemned to a life indoors, never to see the light of day again. I could try the camera on Tess, but I really don't need to see endless photos of various duvets - I know what my bedding looks like!

So, I moved on to explore the possibilities of remote tracking and GPS. Mr. Lee is also the proud owner of a GPS tracking system. This allows you to download GPS data onto your computer and then overlay the results onto Google Earth. Pretty cool, uh? It still suffers from the problem that your cat has to return in order to retrieve the information. I then found the LoCATor - notice the clever use of capitals to highlight the word cat. The webpage is great. It tells you how you can use this device to track your cat, horse, child, demented parent, with this device. I can just imagine stalking the wilds of my neighbourhood with my aerial and headphones, getting worried glances from neighbours wondering who has lost grandma. No, not going to work, it is just too obtrusive and quite frankly embarrassing. Then I found the Pet Tracker - the answer to all my problems. It is GPS based and you can access the location of your pet from any warm, comfy, lazy location you chose, since you can access the unit via a cell phone from anywhere in the world. Now we are talking! Unfortunately, it is not yet for sale or I would be on the web, ordering one as we speak.

So, there are some of the options available to you to keep track of whatever it is you want to keep track of. My biggest fear, if I got one of the GPS tracking systems, is that I would track down my cat, only to find one fat, well fed and content coyote!

The day I nearly lost an ear

I decided after my last post that I was moving on - no more hair / fur / doormat posts. But then I discovered the FURminator. A friend recommended it and after going to the website I was seduced into parting with a ridiculous amount of money for a grooming tool. The claims made by the website were amazing - reduces shedding by up to 90%, guaranteed to reduce shedding better than any brush, comb or rake, reduce shedding for about four to six weeks, nominated by Tufts University School of Veterinarian Medicine’s newsletter as the number one product to reduce hairballs in cats - Mr. DBM will be particularly pleased with this one, since he doesn't appreciate getting up at 5am and stepping in a cold pile of cat vomit, especially since he doesn't wear slippers - urgh. I am not overly fond of that either and being woken up at 3am by a cat hucking up a hairball is not exactly pleasant. Anyhoo, if you don't believe me, go to the website and have a look - they have pictures of dogs and cats surrounded by all the hair that the FURminator has removed in one session. They even have video clips - the hair is coming out in handfuls. I swear that there is enough hair there to make another dog or cat and I am surprised that the animal being FURminated doesn't end up bald.

Being a somewhat sceptical person, I thought, hang on a minute, this is the FURminator website, of course they are going to say their product is wonderful. So, before rushing out and parting with my hard earned cash, I did a spot of web browsing, looking for negative comments, for reasons not to buy this too-good-to-be-true product, but to no avail. Everyone loves it, best thing ever, worth every penny, why didn't I buy one sooner, my dog, cat, rabbit, horse, ferret, two-toed sloth loves it. How can I fight that? Off to the pet store I go...........

So, if the FURminator is so wonderful, how come I nearly lost an ear? Well, once I get home, I eagerly unpack my FURminator. Two hours later, after much swearing, grumbling , hunting for some scissors, since mine are not where they are supposed to be, and general annoyance, I have the FURminator out of its plastic cocoon - I HATE plastic packaging - this goes way beyond bugging me - and it, along with plastic shopping bags, should be banned. Better get back to the point, because I could get really sidetracked by this. So here I am, the proud new owner of a FURminator, champing at the bit, ready to defur any cat that comes my way. But wait - shouldn't I read the instructions first? I suppose and since there were no cats within arm's reach, I quickly scanned the dos and don'ts - do make sure the fur is dry - check. Do make sure the coat is clean - check. Don't use on skin with sores, cuts or abrasions - check. Don't use on coats with mats or tangles - check, oh wait, no, I had better check Willow. And this is where things started going downhill and my relationship with my beautiful, soft, furry, nasty, wicked and mean cat took a turn for the worse. Since I really want to use the FURminator, I get out the dreaded comb, sit Willow on my lap and grit my teeth - I will get rid of all tangles. Next thing I know, her teeth are embedded in my left ear lobe and then she is gone. Well, am I going to let her get away with that? Oh no, so I scoop her up, wrap her top half in a blanket and get to work on her bottom half. That lasted all of 3 seconds. Off she goes again. I retrieve her again. Three more seconds of grooming. This goes on for a while until I give up and let her outside. She flounces off to her bed under the stairs and sits glaring at me with her best grumpy face on. So, do I give up on all my high hopes for the FURminator. Oh no - I have another cat.......

Here are the results - one session with the FURminator. Pretty amazing, uh? I am pretty sure that I could have got another cat's worth of fur, but even Tess has her limits and her claws. So, while I cannot, in all honesty, say that my cats loved it, I can say that it did what it claimed. Now all I have to do is persuade Willow that it is not a tool of the devil and will not inflict any serious or long-lasting damage, but, before I do that, I think that I might invest in some ear protection!

Some furscinating facts.

After my last couple of posts about a furry cat and a doormat, I got to thinking about hairy facts and decided it was time to hit Google, Wikipedia and delve into my vast internal library of biological knowledge to come up with some fun facts about fur, or should I say hair?

So, hair is the furst question - am I going to start annoying people if I keep making hair and fur jokes? Well, I suppose you can always stop reading......no! Don't do that, I'm sorry, I shall try and restrain myself.

Actually, the first question is - is there any difference between hair and fur? After some extensive research here is what I have found:

There is no difference! Well, that was easy. There is no difference, at least in terms of chemical composition, between hair and fur. Despite this, there are many different opinions on the difference.

Here is one: Fur stops growing after a certain length and hair keeps growing until it falls out or is cut. Interestingly, this will depend on the hair follicle. Some follicles have a long growth phase, resulting in long hair, while some follicles have a short growth phase, resulting in short fur. Different follicles also have different cycle times. If the follicle has a short cycle time, the hair or fur will be shed frequently, while those with a long cycle time will be shed less frequently. In Spring, fur/hair is shed more frequently - hence my many dust bunnies, and then in summer hair/fur can enter an inactive phase, resulting in a shorter, summer coat.

Another definition: Fur is shorter and denser and forms a thick coat made up of several layers while hair is longer, coarser and sparser. Well, that definitely makes my cats furry and not hairy, which is as I suspected.

Here is one from diffen.com - All mammals are covered in hair, but all non-mammal hair is fur. This means that humans can't be furry, but I would beg to differ on that, since I have seen examples of men with very furry backs - shudder. It also states that fur is shorter and coarser than hair, but trust me, you don't get any softer than my Willow (and I am talking about her fur, not her mental status!)

Now that we have got that one cleared up, let's move on to some furscinating facts.

The longest human hair - Xie Qiuping, a Chinese woman with hair that is 5.627 m (18 ft 5.54 in). While marvelling at the fact that she and twenty other people could sit on her hair, I noticed another hairy world record - the longest ear hair. This belongs to Radhakant Bajpai of India. It is 13.2 cm (5.19 in) long. He has more hair in his ears than many men have on their heads! I wonder if he would try combing it over if he ever went bald? I tried to find the longest nose hair, but to no avail. The longest eyebrow hair is 3.5 inches, but I suspect one of my brother's could probably beat that! I suddenly feel the need to go and pluck my eyebrows and shave various parts of my body......

Talking of going bald - male pattern baldness. Hair today, gone tomorrow...... It is genetic and is passed down on the X chromosome. To all you guys out there suffering from this affliction - this means that you should blame your mother, not your father, since she gives you your X chromosome. I have to say that comb overs really bug me. Please don't do it! Bald men can be very attractive - Jean Luc Picard can drive my spaceship anytime!

The longest animal hair - or should I say fur? - belongs to the muskox, a very furry animal closely related to goats and sheep, that live in the cold, white North. Their fur is highly prized for its softness, length, and insulative value and the yarn can fetch between $50 and $100 per ounce. Wow, maybe Mr. DBM and I should get into farming muskoxen...... we've always wanted a house, with land and chickens and a few dozen muskoxen......oh dear, I just found out that they tend to die of pneumonia when shaved. So much for that plan!

The polar bear has transparent hair and black skin. I always thought that the transparent hair was supposed to act as a fibre optic tube to transmit the sun down to the base of the hair, where it is absorbed by the black skin. Scientists have since shown that polar bear hairs do not transmit light to the skin - it is all one big fat myth! I am very dissappointed. How can I show my vast intellect by informing people about this fact when it is not true! Damn it, now I have to find another interesting fact about the polar bear to keep the myth of my intellect alive. Ooooh, I just found one. Did you know that some polar bears may actually turn green when kept in warm, humid conditions? This is due to algae that start to grow inside their hair!

The mammal with the densest fur - the sea otter. They have 150 thousand strands of hair per square centimetre (nearly one million per square inch) and are the only sea mammals that use fur rather than blubber for insulation. I haven't actually tried counting Willow's hair, but I am sure she must be pretty close.

This blog would not be complete without a mention of some of our less hairy mammalian relatives. Let's get naked! The first naked mammal that comes to mind has to be the naked mole rat. Incredibly ugly but endlessly fascinating. First of all, it is unique among mammals due to the fact that it is cold blooded. This means that it cannot regulate its own body temperature but relies on the temperature of its surroundings. Since they live in tunnels underground where the temperature does not fluctuate greatly, this seems to work. They have very low metabolic rates, requiring much less oxygen compared to more active and warm-blooded mammals and their skin is insensitive to pain. The most interesting thing about these follicley-challenged creatures is their eusocial behaviour. This type of behaviour is usually associated with the insect world - think bees, ants and termites, and it involves living in a colony with closely related siblings. There is a division of labour with different castes and cooperative caring for the young. In bees, there is a queen bee who lays all the eggs. Most of the offspring are female workers - all sisters - who run the colony. When there is a need for more sperm, a few drones are produced, the sperm is acquired and then it is back to girl power! In naked mole rats, there is also one queen, but she does keep a couple of males around to service her needs. The offspring form the workers who may end up as tunnellers or soldiers or nannies for the young. One last thing before I am done - naked mole rats can live up to 20 years, which is a long time for a relatively small rodent. Apparently, it is because they sleep a lot. Based on that, I should live until I am at least 125, what with all my afternoon naps. I think I may have to adjust my pension plan!

There are, of course, many other naked or nearly naked mammals, the most obvious being all those wonderfully smooth and streamlined aquatic mammals such as dolphins and whales. Then there are the not so smooth or streamlined nearly naked land mammals, such as the hippos and elephants. There are also several breeds of naked dogs and cats, such as the mexican hairless dog and the sphynx cat. I never quite know whether to laugh or cry when I see these poor creatures. I am not sure what the point is in breeding a naked animal which you then have to knit sweaters and coats for or slather up with sunscreen before taking letting them outside!?! I know there is the allergy argument, but since most people are actually allergic to the protein in cat saliva, this may not be valid. Perhaps someone could enlighten me on that one? Thinking about it, I can see one advantage - you will never end up with a cat that looks like a doormat and a $400 vet bill!

I would like to finish this hair raising and furbulous post by saying that an animal's fur belongs on said animal and not on the back of some skinny, rich b#%*h. Having said that, I have always thought that Tess and Willow would make a nice pair of gloves.......