Another Rainy Day, Hooray!

If the sun was shining and the temperatures a bit warmer, I could have planted my new Dahlias yesterday, but I guess they will have to wait another day as it is raining. Again. Perhaps we are back to a more normal rain cycle, after several years of very dry weather. I found these at Gertens, and although I had planned to look not buy, I could not resist. Lovely!

Signed the paperwork for a new leather sofa and chair yesterday. Hate having one more financial commitment, and COULD have put it on my Visa, but decided to take advantage of the interest free financing at Slumberland. Hope to pay it off quickly, but you can never be sure what expenses are Right around the corner, and the brakes on my Minivan are not sounding quite like they should. Brakes and tires, oh my. . .

New furniture is not scheduled to arrive until next week, giving me a chance to do some cleaning (ugh) and hopefully get the old furniture picked up by then. Who wants an old sofa and love seat? Sofa is in pretty good shape, love seat is in excellent shape, primarily because we spend so little time in the living room, preferring to share the family room with the dogs. My gosh, but the dust behind the love seat was thick - when did I last move it out from the wall and clean? Years? Decades? And the radiator in the corner between the love seat and sofa. Oh my! Finally decided to let the dust settle last night and get back to the project tonight. That includes washing the drapes - and if they fall apart I will have to buy new drapes too. And of course lovely new furniture will make the area rug look even older than it is . . . But I have been looking for a new rug for a year, so now I will have another reason to find the right one!

Where does dust come from? Dog hair I understand, but there's a lot more in that gray fuzzy stuff than dog hair. A quick search on the Internet says,

. . . there are three main components of dust: first, dead skin cells, second, the dried feces and dessicated corpses of dust mites (oh lovely!), and the last component by volume is tiny fibers shed by clothing. Ugh!

Electronics Dependency

Am always amazed at how dependent I am on my computer and how much I use it for. Just this morning I have already checked my email and responded a couple of things, ordered meat for the dogs (chicken backs and ground turkey), entered Argus at some shows over Memorial Day weekend, sent an email to Lucy's owner in Canada to discuss the possibility of getting her down here for some shows, sent an email to another Canadian friend to see if she might be coming down anytime soon so I could save myself a trip, checked Facebook to see how everyone is doing, and here I am updating my blog. How did I survive without my computer, and what would I do if it failed? I do have a nice little backup gizmo called Clickfree - sure hope it works like it is supposed to, if this computer fails. And if it fails it will be from overwork, I am sure!

A reader asked how to see my Facebook page. The answer is to join Facebook, search for me, and invite me to be your friend. When I accept, we can see each other's profile page (which can have as little or as much as you care to reveal about yourself and your family). My brother won't join because he is concerned about security issues, and that's a decision everyone needs to make for themselves. You'd be amazed at how much information about you is already out there! If you don't believe me, check www.spokeo.com, and search for your name. If you have any kind of an Internet presence, you will find out that there is probably a lot of information on you already.

The picture above is one of the candid shots from DCA week. Not a perfect moving shot, but it's pretty nice, showing good foot fall, balanced movement, proper topline and tail carriage. Wish Argus had his mouth shut, but Jess said he started sneezing right about then - and a couple of additional shots in that sequence seem to show that. Bad timing! I get so tired of seeing bad gaiting shots with tails up, toplines looking like the dogs are running downhill or with a big hump in the middle, or with so much over reaching that you can tell the dog is running sideways, even without seeing the down and back.

We had a really nice Mothers Day. I picked up mom and met up with Jess & Ron at Chatterbox for the Mother's Day Brunch which was good, although I thought the place was awfully dark and would have benefitted from better lighting. After eating we dropped Ron off, and the rest of us went out to Gertens which looked like a Plant Store Theme Park on steroids. Oh, so busy. Found a good parking spot though, and Gram sat and people watched while Jess and I did a bit of shopping. We both avoided the temptation to purchase tender annuals though - just too early!

Rain due again today, and the grass looks great. We're still two inches behind in precipitation for the year, but things are getting better!

Happy Mother's Day

It was 32 degrees when I woke up, but my freezable plants are sitting on the bar in the kitchen rather than in the ground. Hopefully all the perennials will be OK as many of them are quite large and lush already. And the rhubarb - hope that's OK as it's time to pick a second batch of it for mom. The outdoor thermometer currently says 77 degrees, a minute ago it said 81, but it's in the sun of course. Dogs are laying sprawled in the family room staring at me, telling me that it's time for breakfast, but they'll have to wait just a bit.

Brunch reservation at noon, so I'll pick up my mother and meet Jess & Ron at Chatterbox. Then, if mom is interested, we will head out to Gertens which will no doubt be a Garden Store Theme Park on steroids today.

Squirrel on the deck, but only Watson sees it as the other dogs are still staring at me. Oops, Argus and Josie are now standing at attention at the patio door. The wretched squirrels come to drink out of the bird bath, and I pray the dogs don't decide to take matters into their own paws and go right through the patio door!


Went to see Charlie yesterday as his owners were painting in their new house which is only a mile from me. Now what are the odds of that? If we decide to show Charlie, he's certainly handy! (Occurs to me that I need to check and see how THEY spell it, Charlie or Charley? He's really looks nice, and the 4 mile jogs have tightened him up nicely so that he's a lot sounder than the last time I saw him as a rubbery teenager. Was a bit concerned about size as he grew so quickly, but he's just the right size. I sometimes forget that kibble-fed pups seem to grow faster than raw-fed pups even though they end up the same size.

Time for breakfast.