I wrote:
... with cat fur, twigs, and long grassy type weeds.

Daniel B. Martin wrote:
Cotton lint from your clothes dryer filter might be preferable to cat fur.

They get that too since I keep a small wastebasket situated in the
laundry closet specifically for collecting that. The cat fur was
actually put in there since bluebirds are known for collecting animal
fur for lining the insides of their nests. They've used a little bit of
the lint but it's definitely not as popular as our cat Spike's fur.
They also pretty much ignore the other three cats fur to pick out
Spike's. (He does have the longest, silkiest coat.)

I think I'm going to finally break down and map out all my beds. I know
it's a particularly geeky thing to do but I think it will help me
visualize the changes and additions I want to make this year. Besides,
it also is something to do, gardening related, right now while I'm
waiting for everything I have ordered to arrive.

I'm a heavy duty computer geek so I've thought about looking at software
for doing this but, much to my surprise, am still heavily leaning
towards doing it by "hand" in either photoshop or illustrator or doing
truly hand drawn maps. (I have a stylus and pen on my office and home
machines, digital camera, scanner, digital photos of the yard, etc. In
other words, the "works".) What I'm looking to do is a layout of the
yard with beds marked and then a detailed layout of each bed with
markers indicating what's planted where. Any thoughts, ideas?

Susan
s h simko at duke dot edu