[Pete from Shawnee Mission]

Stay safe! Hope you do not lose power or your roads!

[Qiviut]

LOL ....power is out! Two hours after the storm cleared & no warning, just suddenly out. We belong to a cooperative & they usually do a pretty good job restoring power. Per the app where I reported the outage, 1,500 people are out in our area & a crew is on-site. Estimated time to fix is another hour & a half.

[Qiviut]

Power back on - yay! They beat their estimated time by about an hour.

[Pete from Shawnee Mission]

https://www.acs.org/molecule-of-the-week/archive/n/nepetalactone.html

Swedish researchers have determined the reason why mosquitos do not like Catnip (catmint). (

https://www.acs.org/molecule-of-the-week/archive/n/nepetalactone.html

MOTW update: May 3, 2021 cis,trans-Nepetalactone is the primary psychoactive ingredient in catnip (Nepeta cataria). In 2009, it was the starting material for synthesizing (+)-englerin A, a promising kidney cancer drug candidate. It has long been known that catnip repels mosquitoes; but until this year, the repellence mechanism was unknown. Marcus Stensmyr and co-workers at Lund University (Sweden) discovered that nepetalactone activates a receptor in mosquitoes that makes them feel pain. Cats, among many other animals, have the same receptor; but clearly the effect is different for them."

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It grows all over my garden and yard. I do have hot dry weather most years. I do not have a mosquito problem that I remember. Whatever it does to mosquitos, bees and other pollinators love the stuff! Good to have a wild patch with something like this and Coriander and other Herbs somewhere on the edges or in the center of your garden! (A Scottish "Fairy Island" for imaginary garden fairies to stay undisturbed along with your insect friends like bumblebees and wild bees and predatory wasps and garter snakes and things.)