A Rambling Update

Since my last post about the dogs, I’ve been feeling a little low and had the need to disconnect for awhile.  There were days that I didn’t even turn on my computer at all - no e-mail…no Facebook…no anything.  Although I have not been plugged in, things have been happening around here, so here’s a little update for anyone who might be interested:

Since my previous post, Molly has already moved to a new home.  The Golden Retriever Rescue Alliance did a wonderful job, and I can’t say enough about them.  (To visit their website, click here).  Due to a scheduling conflict, Ashley actually ended up picking her up on a Tuesday and by the next Monday she had been adopted!  Here is the cute little advertisement they had on their site for my big girl:

I don’t know exactly who adopted her, but I was told that she went to a more affluent part of the metroplex in which we live.  Her new parents are older (one of them is retired and one of them works from home), and they usually have three Goldens at any given time.  One of their dogs had passed away a couple of weeks before, so Molly joined the two remaining “kids” for romping and playing.  She is living in a big house, with a big yard and a swimming pool, so I’m pretty sure that I am missing her more than she is missing me.  And I would have it no other way.

 

I couldn’t bear to get rid of her bed right away, so it stayed in our room for several days:

After awhile, I couldn’t take it anymore, so it was gone, leaving me with just my memories.  It seems I was not the only one who was missing her; Nestlé used to sit on Molly every chance she got whenever we were hanging out in the family room together.  With Molly gone, Nestlé has taken to trying to cuddle with Cookie, but it’s not quite the same:

Toffee is still here with me; the Brittany Rescue has not found a home for him yet:

 

However, it’s okay because I will only be at peace if I know that he goes to the perfect home for him, and if that takes some time, then so be it.  Besides, it’s a long walk to the chicken coop from the porch, and what will I do without Toffee to protect me from “who-knows-what” as I go out to tuck in Opal Chicken each night?

The really big news is that my mountain man has gone back to Yellowstone.  I thought that it would get easier the more he comes and goes, but this time actually was the hardest of all.  It was more than just my son leaving home – my friend was leaving!  The only thing that makes it okay is that he seems so happy.  And this time, he actually scored a position as an Assistant Manager of one of the stores.  He won’t be at Old Faithful this year, but he will be in some other part of the park.  He also won’t be living in a regular dorm, but instead will be in a little log cabin with a wood-burning stove.  Before he left, he got to spend some time with his number-one girl:

 

With spring here, I’ve been paying more attention to the yard.  Well, I say spring is here; actually, we’ve been having spring during one part of the week, followed by a quick blast of winter, followed by a little more spring.  The plants and animals aren’t quite sure what to do!  I looked out one windy, chilly afternoon to see two little squirrels snuggled up in the jar in the squirrel feeder:

Despite the crazy weather, the scrawny little rose bush that Alan and I transplanted last year has been doing great:

And remember how we had those tents over the raised garden beds?  Well, the aloe vera and lemon thyme not only survived the winter, they had babies!  I have transplanted the main plants to a bed in the back and put some of the “babies” in little pots to give to friends:

 

I bought this little greenhouse thing at Tractor Supply Store for $20 and have been using it for rootings and seedlings.  It has done a really good job:

In fact, the lavender and the lemon balm are from some cuttings I did a little while back:

 

I also have some parsley growing (at Mom’s request):

 

Since it has been going back and forth on the temperature, it has stayed cool enough that my spinach and lettuce are hanging in there (I think Nestlé has eaten more spinach than anyone):

 

Here’s a look at the overall garden…some things are doing well, and some things are struggling against the surprise freezes we have experienced (as well as my “gan-green” thumb!):

Despite all of my effort, Robert still leaves me in the dust on vegetable gardening.  Before I even had things planted, he was bringing home more monstrosities from his community garden (Ugh!):

 

This year, I’ve added some more stuff to the yard.  I bought three rose bushes (and they have grown from tiny stumps to pretty decent in no time!).  The cute little “bug-eyed” critter in the middle is a little something that my sister bought for me when we were in Pinedale, Wyoming.  A great momento from that trip!

 

I’m always on the prowl for new planting containers.  Here is a party tub that I picked up at Wal-Mart for less than $5.00:

 

I bought three of them; I filled one of them with lemon thyme and another with moss roses.  I put them on the ground with the idea that they belong to Opal Chicken for her snacking pleasure:

Robert loves to go to auctions and brought home this cute little wagon.  It sat in the yard, leaned up against the house on its side, until I snatched it and filled it with some extra plants:

The wagon is truly a blast from someone’s past.  There is an inscription on the bottom that says,

“To Ryan

From Granddad &

Grandmother

1978”

We attend a free gardening education meeting at our local library, and Russell Feed store is one of the sponsors.  There are drawings each meeting and I won this little cloth pot…my squash plant seems to really like it:  

I was really thrilled with this little beauty.  I have come up with a way to make self-watering planters out of 2-liter soda bottles.  Even though it isn’t an issue now, I’m hoping that they help keep my new strawberry plants safe and happy once the blast-furnace that is Texas summer arrives.  I asked Robert to make a box to hold all of them for me, and I must say, he did a really great job!

A friend of mine showed up at the house last week with a really neat thing that she had bought at a craft fair, just for me!  She was excited to give it to me, and I was very excited to get it!  Isn’t it cute?

In addition to planting things, I have been doing a lot of yard clean-up.  It is getting a little aggravating, though.  Just as I get everything perfect, I come out and find small branches everywhere:

The squirrels are making nests, and apparently they like clipping off more than they need.  But, sure enough, the jar in the squirrel feeder has been filled with leaves, making it comfy-cozy:

Nestlé loves the fact that I am in the yard more often.  With better weather and me outside to protect her from hawks and other predators, she gets to spend more time hanging out:

She also gets to run around in the large area (with the make-shift fence) that we call the “big girl” pen when I am outside.  The little pen in the back left area of the picture is her “little girl” pen, and it is covered so she can be out there when I am not in the yard:

One of her favorite things to do is to “taunt” Opal Chicken whenever Opal gets close to the fence.  She darts back and forth, and I swear I can hear Nestlé saying, “You can’t catch me!  You can’t catch me!” in a little sing-song voice:

As for the rest of our little family, Mandy and her crew are doing fine.  Our baby boy will be here in a couple of months, and Paisley is talking more and more about her “baby brudder”.  They recently enjoyed a Texas tradition - bluebonnet pictures:

Well, there is more going on, but I won’t prattle on any more.  There are more posts coming soon, including an update on (P)Earl chicken (yes, I got to see (P)Earl today!).  I’m also going to be catching up on a little blog reading, too!

Defying Convention

I am not the rebellious type – truly, I’m not.  I don’t mean to break the rules of conventional wisdom; somehow, it just seems to happen.  I notice this at times when I am sitting in Sunday school.  Like all the times I have heard that when things are going well, we tend to forget the Lord, and then as soon as things begin to go badly we are “stirred up in remembrance” and turn to Him.  “I’m just a freak,” I find myself thinking, mostly because I know secretly that I am prone to feel more spiritual when things are going well and get a little agitated (spiritually and emotionally) when things are not going so great.

Gardening has proven to be no exception to my weirdness.  I have been trying to garden for about five years now and I had decided in the beginning that I wanted to be as organic in my approach as possible.  The pests in the area were delighted with this decision and I have struggled every year.  Having been told that garlic pepper tea was an excellent deterrent I whipped some up to deter pests.  Compost tea and other organic amendments (including some primo bunny poo) have been added to enhance plant health and growth.  Yet, once again, this year my tomato plants looked terrible; they looked so terrible, in fact, that I threw up my hands and decided to forget it.  They were a lost cause and I would save my money and my time by doing nothing more than watering them and letting nature take its course.  It wasn’t long before one of Robert’s “experiments” actually started taking over one of my tomato plants:

Logic would tell you that a plant that looks that terrible and that has been that neglected wouldn’t produce a thing, yet I am amazed every time I venture outside to see that those awful looking plants keep churning out these cute little tomatoes:

Meanwhile, my Cherokee purple tomato plants have grown big…

….and have produced tomatoes that are badly cracked and not so pretty.  Who would have thought?

Our living situation has also defied conventional wisdom.  (And before I start, let me say that yes, I know that in these times I should just be grateful that I have a house.  The logical, spiritual part of me knows this, but it is the irrational, upset part of me that is writing this particular post today).

I have been begging Robert for some time to consider moving…out of Texas (way too hot);  then okay, not out of Texas , but at least out of the metroplex (way too crowded);  then okay, just to a house with a bigger yard and some windows.  I just hate the house we are in.  There is very little natural light in the house itself.  The yard is great if all you want to do is have barbeques and then go inside, but if you want to garden you are very limited in space.  And our newest wonder of wonders happened this weekend when we discovered that what we thought was a clogged kitchen sink turned out to be our 40-year old metal pipes going bad.  Replacing them is going to mean tearing up something in the kitchen (floors or walls or both), and the repair is probably going to eat into any money that we had to buy some land somewhere.

“I know you want to move,” Robert has told me (even before this weekend’s fiasco), “But moving is just logistically impossible.  There’s just no way to do it.”

Really?  Logistically impossible?  How many new families have shown up in church recently?  From other places?  And how many of these people are even in our age range?  How many families that we really liked have recently moved away?  To other places?  Some of which are not even in Texas?  Why are we the only family we know who finds it logistically impossible to move?

Since we have once again defied all trends and happenings, I have been working on trying to make our cluttered, smothering, dark little house more bearable.  I recently went on a cleaning/packing spree.  The back of Mom’s little Honda CR-V was loaded completely with a donation for Goodwill.  I will be sending this little stack of items to our local 4-Paws animal rescue group  for their annual garage sale:

Mom and I even have rented a little storage unit in which to put some items that we don’t really use but aren’t quite ready to get rid of yet.  This also defies the wisdom of most organizational gurus who would say if you have to store it, you really don’t need it.  However, I don’t want to be too heavy-handed in my de-cluttering efforts just now.  I’m hoping that if I can get to the point that I don’t have to move two things out of the way to reach the one thing that I actually am going for, I might like our house a little more… because it has become clear that I’m going to have to…(sigh).

On a lighter note, it seems that The Most Beautiful Child in the World has a knack for defying convention, too (although as she gets closer to being two,  Mandy probably would say “defiant” instead of “defying”).  I saw an example of this yesterday evening during a visit from Mandy and Paisley.  You see, my little Nestlé bunny loves being in her run so much that when it is time for her to come in for the night, she runs away from her mother every single time.  Said mother has threatened on more than one occasion to leave her out for the owl, but after lots of chasing, Nestlés mother finally reels the errant bunny safely in.  Well,  you can imagine my surprise last night when I witnessed Nestlé happily stay in place while Paisley walked up to her!  Nestlé even let that little curly-haired girl pet her:

And then pet her some more:

Is Paisley a bunny wrangler or what?  The kid who is allergic to animals seems to be the one who has a special way with them!  Doesn’t that just defy all?

Birthday Blessings and General Updates

This has been a busy month and once again, I am so behind on blogging!  I have just got to get with it, especially since I recently made the decision that our family blog may be my new alternative/additive (?) to the traditional scrapbooking that I can’t seem to get done, either.  I recently began fiddling around with a “blog-to-book” service  that actually “sucks” your posts right out of your blog (pictures and text) and throws them on some pages.  You can use their free editing software to make changes to make it better suit your liking, then upload your finished product to their website where they will print a hardcover (or softcover) book for you.  I am in the middle of editing a book that has all of the posts that I have done so far, and I must say, once I got the hang of it, it has been pretty fun.  I’m over halfway done and am itching to get it finished.  I must warn you that since this may be our new “scrapbook”, it might get a little boring for a lot of people, but I’m so excited about the books that I’m going to post as much as I can!

The good things that have happened this month have been birthday blessings.  We recently celebrated Alan’s birthday and he was a pretty happy guy.  Everyone read the memo and he received cash – his one true love – and it will come in handy when it’s time for him to buy his car.  He will be going back to Yellowstone in May which is a blessing in itself because the Albertson’s grocery store is closing this month.  I couldn’t believe it!  That was the first place I learned how to navigate to when we first moved here, and the pharmacist and I were on a first-name basis!  Alan feels so very badly for all of the other employees there who do not have a Yellowstone to which they can go.  He is feeling very lucky, indeed!

My birthday present from Robert came a week early.  We went on another of our infamous Saturday rides and ended up at the Russell Feed Store.  I had to laugh as I carried my present into the house.  Last year he surprised me with two chickens and this year…well, here she is:

Introducing:  Nestlé, my new “chocolate” bunny!

He not only bought the rabbit, he bought a starter kit so that we would have everything we needed to get her set up.  I later added this little basket bed and she absolutely loves it!

She has been outside some, and when she is not being held and snuggled, she gets to run around the house some, too.  At first, Molly was intensely interested in her, but after a while the magic faded and Molly returned to her old routine:

Mandy and her family came over for dinner on Sunday to help me celebrate my birthday.  Mandy has recently gotten into baking and I was so surprised when she came bearing cupcakes.  Aren’t they beautiful?  (And they tasted good, too!)

Not all things have been wonderful.  The most beautiful child in the world has been sick for what seems forever, and she can tug at your heartstrings with her misery:

However, even in her illness, she is still Miss Independent and her mother snapped a picture of her in the doctor’s office.  While other children were sitting in their mothers’ laps, clutching at them for all that’s dear, our girl wanted to sit alone:

After this weekend’s diagnosis of bronchitis, the doctors have finally concluded that a regular regimen of maintenance drugs and breathing treatments are going to be required to keep her chronic allergies and asthma at bay.  My poor girl!

In other news, Opal has finally started to lay eggs on a regular basis, and it is so exciting to go out every day and find this:

We also recently had a significant rain event which helped to replenish our lakes a bit, although we still have a way to go to really counter the effects of the drought we have been enduring.  It rained for two-and-a-half days straight, and afterwards, all of the neighborhood critters were quite hungry.  I was tickled to look out one day and see them enjoying the food that I put out for my feathered and furry friends:

That’s what’s going on in Woodbury World.  Hope things are great wherever you are!