Weekly Favorites

Here it is the last Sunday in August. I had a devotional time early this morning on the patio. I'm currently going through My Utmost For His Highest by Oswald Chambers. As I enjoyed the peace of early morning, a flock of geese flew low over my house. I watch them fly over each morning, and sometimes I catch their evening fly over. It always fills me with joy. I started to think about things that bring me joy. Some days it is an easy thing to do. Some days the list is very long and other days I have to stretch my thinking to find it. Joy is always there, it's just that sometimes it is buried under the every day busyness and struggles. So in an effort to make myself uncover that joy that gets buried in life, I am going to post an occasional joy list. Perhaps everyone could think about their own joys and add to it. So here goes.
A Joyful Sunday
1. the sound of geese on a quiet morning.
2. a good cup of coffee. (My son Jim's is the best)
3. the smiles of my grandaughters
4. a fall sunset
5. a day when I've accomplished everything I've set out to do.

Garden Update

Maddie checks things out and gives me updates through out the day. I do sometimes detect a little "onion" breath.
The pole beans are putting out runners and climbing the wire. The bush peas seem a little slow, but we'll see.
We ate our first yellow squash a couple of days ago. We are going to be up to our eyeballs in them real soon. The zucchini should be ready to pick tomorrow. I like them grilled the best. The cucumbers are climbing the trellis and it won't be long before we'll see little cucumbers. Some of the tomato plants already have little tomatoes. I'm looking forward to "homegrown" tomatoes versus "store bought".
Maddie so far has only tasted the onion tops. She is more likely to just walk among the plants and sniff. However, I did fence off the beans and peas to protect them from her big feet!

Cold Snap

After a lot of rain in the last two weeks, all is sunny but not warm here. We're having the early April cold snap that comes after the garden has been planted. Usually around Easter. If you wait to put in your garden until mid April, the plants will wilt in the summer heat (which will probably be here by May 1st). So what you see in the pictures is our way of protecting the plants from the freeze warning that was issued for last night and tonight. The tomato plants' cages were wrapped in plastic trash bags. Yes, I know it is not ecologically correct and we've enlarged our footprint, but it is what works best. I'll try to find a second use for the plastic. Under the buckets are the squash and zucchini plants. It's a good thing I save those detergent buckets. They are so multipurpose! Everything else is blanketed in pine straw, except for the onions. I've never grown onions before, but they seem pretty hardy.

Now I've got to go out and uncover the plants with plastic and buckets before the sun makes it too warm for them. We will cover them again this evening. I'm going to leave the pine straw alone. All this just makes the vegetables taste so much better than store bought when we finally harvest.

Labs, Dachshunds & Girls

The photos of Maddie and Trellany, I've entitled A Girl and Her Dog. Dogs can be a girl's best friend. They listen to your problems or wishes and keep your secrets very well. They give kisses and extra love when you're sad. They are just plain fun and good for laugh when you need one the most. As you've read in previous posts, life with Maddie the Lab is never dull!

Sometimes I feel like Minnie Mouse the Dachshund. I just want to crawl back in bed and pull the covers over my head. Minnie is good for snuggling and when awake, can look at you with such intelligence! It is as if she knows what you're thinking. Smart dog!

Spring In My Backyard

I love the view from the kitchen window these days. During the winter, I watch the birds at my feeders and hope to glimpse a cardinal or two. Mostly I'm visited by doves, chirping sparrows, house finches, and our winter visitors the yellow finches. When the yellow finches arrive before Christmas, they are mostly gray, but in late March when they leave, they are a bright yellow.

Now that it is spring, there are other colors to brighten the view. The plumbago has pretty deep pink flowers. The white flowers of the spirea really stand out against the darker colored bushes. The jasmine on the fence still has a few yellow flowers, but reached its peak in February with a bright yellow display. It was gorgeous. I don't know why I didn't take a picture! Oh well.
I love that the grass (and weeds) are green. Unfortunately that means mowing. I use a push mower in the backyard. I don't mind cutting grass when it is 85 degrees or less. I also don't mind cutting grass once a week. Unfortunately, it gets above 85 from April to September and thanks to Rick's use of Weed and Feed, I have to cut grass every three days or risk losing Minnie the Dachshund in a jungle!

As you can see from all the roofs in the background, there are a lot of houses around me. Thanks to fences, there is a little privacy to enjoy the view. Fences really do make good neighbors. It gives you a place to retreat when you don't feel like company sometimes.

Maddie Gets Mad

Maddie the Lab was not amused when I left her Thursday to take Trellany to a karate demo in Daphne. Her anger pushed her to do something Bo, our previous Lab did when he was about Maddie's age which is 17 months. Rick came home from work to find that Maddie had chewed his TV remote to pieces. Bo ate not only ate one remote, but also ate the replacement remote which had been placed on a high shelf out of his reach or so we thought. Bo lived to be almost 13 years old and we never figured out how he did it. From now on, our replacement remote will be placed in a drawer when we leave Maddie.

Her mischief doesn't end there. The next day while I was substitute teaching and Rick went to the grocery store, Maddie took a supposedly empty yellow ink cartridge from the trash can by my desk. I usually recycle them, but was in a hurry before I went to work and dropped it in my trash. When Maddie greeted Rick, she had bright yellow whiskers, a bright yellow tongue and yellow feet. There is now a yellow stain on my carpet. Rick called Epson to see if the ink was toxic (which it wasn't), the vet to see if the ink and plastic were harmful. The vet's office, after a good laugh, told Rick to just watch her to make sure the plastic passed and didn't bind up in her system.

Up until now Maddie has been really good! She hasn't eaten the garbage, books, homework, tables and entire chair arms as Bo did. Yes, there were some skeptical teachers when my sons said the dog ate their homework. They were vindicated when they produced the text books totally chewed up! I guess she's entered the terrible twos of a Lab puppy. She's a late bloomer.

Spring Garden

The first picture shows what used to be a flower bed, but has been changed to a vegetable garden. I put in sets of onions in the closest one. In the second one I've planted pole beans, purple hull peas, and radishes. The seeds have all sprouted and now have to be thinned out.
In the second picture is the main garden or Rick's division. He is in charge of tomatoes, squash, zucchini, and cucumbers. The cucumbers seeds have just barely poked their heads up by the trellis in the back. The rest were all plants purchased at Lowe's. I'm hoping to try to get in ahead of Rick when possible to try to keep him from needing the use of pesticides. He does love his chemicals!