Musseling in

...maybe thirty pots in all.

Holy Horticulturist, Batman!  When Uncle Ken used to describe the plants on his balcony, I pictured a much smaller number, no more than half a dozen or so.  Seems to me that he has a healthy pair of green thumbs and is the resident expert of Marina City's community of high-rise gardeners, another feather in his cap.  That spot of green among the steel, concrete, and glass must look like an oasis to the birds and insects.  Do many bees and  butterflies come to visit?

-----

Because of family history, I'm always keeping an eye out for certain age-related health information.  A lot of items have been popping up lately about the symptoms for dementia and Alzheimer's and it can get scary.  Whenever I can't remember any odd bit of trivia I start to wonder, "Is it finally happening?"  So far it's all been false alarms; ten or fifteen minutes later the forgotten piece of information makes it through all the other memories and I can say, "Ah, Ha! I knew it!"  Haven't lost track of my marbles, yet.

That's one of the things that's been bugging me about the tale of the Catfish, it is all too familiar to me.  I know I read it before, but where, or when?  A little sleuthing was in order and I tracked it down to an old email from Uncle Ken more than four years ago.  There was an attachment, a story titled Catfish, maybe seventy pages long.  I liked it then and I like it now, but the shorter, daily format works better for me now.  The small bites give me time to savor it, if you will, and I enjoy the story more than if I read it all in one sitting.  And another lost marble is accounted for.

-----

I haven't given smelt much thought, and they used to be such a big deal.  Since Montrose Harbor was just a few miles down the road, a lot of the neighborhood men got into the annual ritual of smelting.  Some of the older guys pronounced it shmelting, but that could be their German heritage peeking through.

Anyhow, from what I've recently read the smelts have indeed disappeared, but it isn't from disease or predatory fish.  You can blame the invasive zebra mussels.  Since they've entered the Great Lakes they've been sucking up the plankton, the very same food that the smelt depend on.  Less plankton, fewer smelt.  Fewer smelt, fewer trout, and on and on.  There's no easy answer to the zebra mussel problem, and smelt may soon be just another memory.  The only thing I can think of is the introduction of river otters to the local ecosystem.  Among other things, they eat mussels.  And they're cute, it could be a good tourist attraction to watch the river otters coming out to feed.  It might not be a preposterous idea; I read a while back that there was a beaver sighted in the Chicago River but maybe the coyotes got it.  And if we could train rats to swim and dive to eat the mussels our problems might be over, and then the recently released feral cats could eat the fat rats.  The wheel of life continues to turn.