a tale of two dogs

I hate people. People are assholes. Someone dumped a black dog here Sunday night. 

It spent all day over in the shop yard on Monday. It’s a fairly big dog, looks like it has some black lab but not as stout and has really long legs and looks to be in good health. When Mikey tried to run it off yesterday evening it growled at him when he got too close. But I can’t have a stray dog living in the shop yard. Paisleigh comes with her dad sometimes on the weekends when he’s working on a car and Robin is afraid of it. Not to mention Minnie and I going over there to work in the yard and feed the outdoor cats.

Mid morning Tuesday it was over in the yard on the opposing corner next to my house so Robin and I closed the gates to the shop. Problem is there’s about a 14” gap so we secured a piece of sheet metal across the gap and chicken wire above that in case the dog tried to jump over the top of the sheet metal. So yeah, now the dog can’t get in but people and cars can’t get in or out either. I can probably engineer a more user friendly barrier with just the chicken wire but I need some bungee cords (accomplished on Wednesday).

So far it has not discouraged the dog. First it went and hung out under the carport of the house on the opposite corner but when I got back from the grocery store it was laying in front of the gate in the shade and is still there. He was over here earlier. I think whoever dumped him has a car like mine because when he saw me driving by on my way to the grocery store he got up and started following me and again when I was coming back. Even though he growled at my grandson, he is friendly enough and looking to be with people. The six year old girl, who is fearless and who lives at the other end of the street, was at this end playing with the little girl who lives at this end and coaxed the dog to her, petting him, tail wagging. He followed her home but was back in front of the shop gate this morning. 

I feel sorry for the dog, the poor thing is confused and afraid, but I already feed four outdoor cats thanks to my sister and one feral cat and I have a dog and cat of my own and am not looking to adopt a big dog. And before anyone suggests calling animal control, there is no animal control here in this low population rural county. I have emailed the local animal rescue group but they are usually overwhelmed with strays and in fact they just called me back, they aren’t taking any adult dogs and the best they could do is partner with me to have him euthanized. 

It just pisses me off when people dump their animals instead manning up and surrendering them to a shelter. Cowards, they are just fucking cowards.

Early afternoon - I saw the dog trotting down the cross street mid morning and haven’t seen him since.

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So I called the vet early Monday morning and the earliest they could get Minnie in was 3 pm. They took x-rays and she doesn’t have a fracture. She chipped a piece off the end of one of the bones in that joint on her leg. How the hell she managed that is anyone's guess. The chip is still in there somewhere though it didn’t show up on the x-ray. The vet said it would cause more damage to the joint trying to get it out than just leaving it in there. So they put her under and fixed her up with a splint which looks more like a cast. The vet says while the bone won’t grow back of course it should heal by forming a sort of callous around the injury and she should be fine. She has to wear the splint for two weeks.

She was pretty loopy the rest of the day and was clearly uncomfortable with this big clunky thing on her leg she didn’t know how to maneuver. 

She did a lot of quiet whining when we went to bed Monday night until she finally settled down and fell asleep sometime in the wee hours. Consequently I didn’t get much sleep last night either. But Tuesday morning she was much better, learning how to walk with it, thumping around like Peg Leg Pete, doesn’t seem to be in any obvious pain. And the dog has learned nothing. We were in the big backyard when the black dog came down the driveway. I didn’t see it but Minnie did. She took off after that dog barking the whole time and chased it back to the street. Dog! 

 

ordinary days

Monday afternoon I was to go in for a 3 month follow up ultrasound on my repaired femoral artery. Monday morning the office called and canceled, the tech was home sick. They would try and reschedule, squeeze me in, before my follow up office visit to get the results of the ultrasound on Wednesday morning. I heard nothing. Showed up Wednesday morning, explained to the receptionist what had transpired. She consulted with the tech. He had an appointment coming in soon but figured he could do the legs and schedule the aorta for later. I’m like, uh, aorta? No just the leg, the artery repair. We do both on everyone he says. Turned out it wasn’t just a look at the repair of the femoral artery, he did both legs from hip to feet, told me this would be the easiest test he did all day, that most people who come in have serious leg and circulation problems, and since he still had time, went ahead and did the aorta as well. Final report during the office visit with the doctor…some cholesterol but nothing to worry about, no blockages, repaired femoral artery good, good circulation but decreasing toward my feet which is normal and age related, no need to think about any intervention at this point, come back in six months and we’ll do it all again, and I’m released to do any activity I want. I didn’t tell him I was already doing every activity I wanted.

And then Wednesday evening I led the yoga class. Thursday was SHARE and a food delivery day from the regional food bank in Victoria. It was a small order because they just didn’t have very much on the list and I expect that to get worse as we get into Trump’s term. We got something like 28 turkeys to give out next week that she orders every year for the week before Thanksgiving but I’m not sure if they came from the food bank or elsewhere, and the food bank sent so many big bags of marshmallows that Jan made us all take home a bag whether we wanted them or not.

The past several days have been glorious blue sky days, mild temperatures and low humidity. Even dipped down in the 40s Thursday night. Today, Saturday is warmer and overcast and actually feels kind of like an early spring day. I’ve been working on cutting up the big pile I pruned off the monster rose bush, four mounded up cart loads on the burn pile so far and I don’t think I’ve even got half yet. finally got the back flowerbed weeded yesterday and ready to spread out the poppy seeds a friend gave me since mine have stopped volunteering back. That’s on the agenda for today.

Last night’s full moon rising.

I fixed egg foo yung, sort of a chinese omelet but ladled out and cooked like pancakes with a savory gravy, for dinner last night. 

I’ve made this a couple of times before and it always turned out well but not last night for whatever reason and the gravy never did really thicken enough and somewhere around midnight my intestines rejected it and I spent the next two hours racing to the bathroom. 

And just so I don’t end on that unpleasant note…dog and Cat.

all done, signs of summer's end, beautiful but deadly

I’m home. The procedure went well but once again had to lay flat on my back for six hours and an overnight stay in the hospital. Discharged in the morning and home by 1 PM yesterday. Another week of taking it easy slowly easing back into my regular routine. Still have to have another transesophageal echocardiogram in 45 days to make sure the device is still in place and stable. The shield is made of a sterile gortex like material with little titanium hooks that grab onto the heart muscle so now when asked if I have any metal in my body, the answer is ‘yes’ and I have to carry a card with me at all times saying I have this device in my heart with instructions on safely administering an MRI if I need one…specifications about static magnetic fields, maximum spatial gradient field, whole body averaged specific absorption rate. Have yet to find out if I’ll set off a metal detector.

Wednesday when I walked around the yard there was no sign of the ox blood lilies. This is what greeted me when I got home on Friday.

Once those two weeks of triple digits were over the weather has cooled quickly, the next two weeks of highs in the 90s changed to highs in the 80s a week later, partly cloudy/overcast with rain predicted all this next week. The change has been sudden and very welcome. Besides the ox blood lilies, other signs of the end of summer and approaching fall are emerging. Marc says the pampas grass is blooming though I haven’t seen any yet. The tallows continue to drop their speckled red/yellow/orange leaves and now the oaks are starting to drop some of their tired foliage. The days are definitely shorter, nearly full dark at 8:30.

I heard some clanking in the garage. One of the puppies was stealing empty dog food cans (rinsed clean) out of the box where I put them before it all goes to the metal recyclers. Minnie and I went out and there he was under the magnolia tree, she’s barking madly standing beside me and the goofy dog is not the least bit intimidated gently trying to get nose to nose with her which they did for a moment and then Minnie started barking again so we came in and I let her out in the little backyard where she continued to bark ferociously at the puppy on the other side of the fence directly opposite her, laying there wagging his tail. Puppy just wants to be friends. 

You might remember that I got stung by a wasp a month or so ago when I was working around the spot in the front yard where a pine tree used to be that died and the rotting roots have made a hole in the ground. A few weeks later I was using the trimmer around that same spot and saw a horde of wasps start to boil out of that spot and I ran like the wind and escaped getting stung. So last week, walking around the front I went over to check it out expecting to see a large paper wasp nest but what I found turned out to be a huge yellow jacket construction (no wonder that sting hurt all week). At first I thought it was a wild honey bee hive until I took a picture and zoomed in. Those were not bees. 

Definitely have to get rid of this, first on my yard to do list when my week of recovery is over. Even so their construction with the nest inside is really amazing and quite beautiful with the different colors and layers of chewed up and exuded wood.

the last one, puppies, and a bare hint that summer will end

Bearing down on the end of August and the end of summer as if the end of August is the end of summer here. Alas, not. But next week, the last week of August is also the last week of the summer of medical issues. Hopefully. For a while anyway. The Watchman procedure, the one that will close off the little pouch on the side of the left atria that will get me off the blood thinner, is scheduled for next Thursday. Then one more week of resting and recovering and I will finally be able to be over it all! 

One of my neighbors had acquired two big dogs via family members, a german shepherd and another of indiscriminate heritage but equally as big, and they had four puppies. They are not restrained by a fence or other means and the adult dogs kept mostly to their yard. The puppies however, playful and joyful, would roam and mom or dad or both would follow to keep an eye on them. They often found their way to my yard because I’m not that far and Minnie would go berserk barking trying to chase off them off. The more she barked and ran at them the more they were convinced she wanted to play. Apparently, two of the puppies have found new homes and the remaining two are old enough now that mom or dad don’t follow. And these two puppies are huge. They are going to be very big dogs. 

This summer has been hot and dry lately and they discovered my small kidney shaped pond several weeks ago that was filled with water plants. Was, past tense. The pond is just the right size for one puppy to get in and get soaked, then the other gets in. 

They show up every day, get wet and go romping around the yard while Minnie goes engages in outraged barking. If I let her out she tries to run them off. She’ll chase them off a short way and then they will chase her back. They’re monsters as far as she’s concerned but they’re just big golumping puppies, not even a year old yet. Yesterday when Minnie retreated to the front of the garage where I was standing one of them came up to her, kind of bowed down and whined at her. Minnie was having none of it. I keep telling her they just want to play.

Yesterday evening I tried to get some pictures of them just outside the gate into the little backyard but they were like perpetual motion machines. So this is what I got.

Back to the end of August and the promised end of summer. While we will still have hot weather for the month of September, the crepe myrtles and the tallow trees are starting to drop their old tired foliage. This is usual and a sign of the coming change of season though it will be months before those trees lose all their foliage.

musing, meals, streaming, and spring

Another picture of my dwarf redbud tree in full bloom.

For practically my whole life I have been taking art lessons, either in school or out, or making, from craft kits as a kid to sewing as a teen to exploring different mediums in college to finally as an adult building my own art studio making etched and carved glass for architectural installations and small cast glass sculpture for over 40 years. We retired from the etched glass at the end of 2017 after the house flooded and we spent the next two years dealing with FEMA and the Texas Land Office for funds and getting that half of the house repaired. Since then I have made some cast glass sculpture and even took two watercolor classes which I enjoyed but I have also had extended periods of complete lack of motivation or desire to create. I’m in one of those times now, going on a year and a half this time; I don’t draw, I don’t watercolor, I don’t make models for casting. The last piece I made was the Coral Reef box that I completed September 2022. I keep thinking I still have some work in me that I want to do but I’m not motivated to go over to the studio or getting out my watercolors. Am I done? Marc mentioned the other day that he was going to close the business bank account and put that minimum $5,000 required to not have a monthly service fee to better use, like earning interest, and I’m fine with that. Last year there was no water in the studio due to a busted pipe from our new very cold arctic vortexes that have been hitting us the last three winters and the horridly dry and hot summer and now the pipe is cracked again. So, I don’t know. I guess we’ll see. Right now I’m happy enough to watch the birds, read, write, work out in the yard, volunteer, go to yoga and spending a couple of hours a day in the studio means not having the time to do other stuff.

We finally fixed and ate all three of our HelloFresh meals and they were without exception very good. We tried the soy glazed steak with zucchini stir-fry and jasmine rice with scallion ginger oil (10 ingredients), penne with spinach and grape tomatoes, garlic butter breadcrumbs and parmesan (9 ingredients), and apricot, almond, and chickpea tagine with zucchini, basmati rice and chermoula (14 ingredients). The pasta dish was very similar to one I make only a little fancier. I’ve never eaten chickpeas that weren’t in the form of hummus or falafel, which I really like, and I’m not that impressed. The tagine was very good but I’m not likely to add canned chickpeas to my staples in the kitchen.

I mentioned we had watched two episodes of Mr. and Mrs. Smith on Prime and that it was nothing like the movie and at that point we weren’t sure if we were going to continue watching it but we did. It’s one season of eight episodes and it’s actually pretty good. It’s not just about two people working for an unnamed powerful secret spy organization given missions, it’s also about two complete strangers paired together as partners with their cover being a married couple and their developing relationship. Anyway, the last episode was the only one that mirrored the movie and it ends in a cliff hanger intentionally so as to let the viewer decide how it ended. It also sets up for a possible second season but there is no indication at this time that there will be one.

I was able to get out in the yard yesterday, a cool but pretty blue sky day and the wind had mostly died down. I pulled up one of the two remaining cabbages and clipped all the little broccoli sprouts that come out after you harvest the main head and then pulled all the broccoli plants up and continued turning and weeding the dirt in preparation for planting the spring garden. Not sure what I’m going to plant besides tomatoes. The mustard greens are bolting so I need to pull those up. I never thinned my carrots and I have no idea how they are growing since I haven’t felt around the tops. I’m thinking they probably aren’t even as big around as my little finger.

Minnie and Cat enjoying the pretty weather outside today, cat in the shade on the right, dog in the sun on the left.

Still nothing much happening in the yard here but over at Pam’s house the white crinum lily started putting up a bloom stalk a week or so after the freeze here

and the fig tree is putting out new growth.

The cuttings I took when I pruned back the yellow angel trumpet to cover it for the deep freeze have started putting out roots 

as have the fire spike but the small branch that broke off the pink angel trumpet when I moved it into the garage is still stubbornly refusing to root.

A small cluster of pink 10 petal anemone.

 

dead stuff, low on food stuff, blooming stuff, and other stuff

The mosquitoes aren't nearly as bad as they've been so I guess my mosquito suppression tactics coupled with the county spraying a couple of times in the evening have had an effect. Or it could be that it's just because it hasn't rained in a couple of weeks. Whatever the reason, it was mostly cloudy Wednesday morning, humidity at 54%, which may seem high to some of you but is somewhat tolerable down here, until it gets hotter anyway, so I got out the chainsaw to take down those two dead shrubs which I did.

I'm not really sure what this shrub was before it started dying but this is about a third of how big it was before the first arctic blast when it lost a third, and another third after the second arctic blast and now this last third.

The other dead shrub was a very old white with red throat althea that would bloom profusely which I suppose was nearing the end of it's lifetime anyway and the deep freezes killed it all the way off. 

Then thought as long as I had the chainsaw out I cut a big limb off one of the yew trees and then turned my attention to the four photinias across the front of the house and cut some branches and limbs off those that had to be ducked under or were crowding other stuff. Ordinarily I would cut it all up into smaller sections and pile them up on the side of the street and then bring the truck around and load it all up but the battery in the truck is currently dead so I had to carry it all to the truck in the driveway. About two hours of activity and sweaty when I came in. Late afternoon it was really hot out there with our summer sky full of puffy clouds.

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We are running low on food at SHARE. The food pantry from which we order once a month in Victoria is having a hard time getting provisions and so it trickles down to us, the HEB and Walmart from which we buy food also hasn't been able to completely fill our orders, and the day old stuff from Walmart has shrunk from about 300 pounds a week to less than 100 the last couple of weeks. I did a complete inventory yesterday of all the food in my section and we are perilously low of some and completely out of other things and running out of meat and other shelf staple items in the other section. If it wasn't for the dollar store donating their 'sell by' milk and lunch meat every week it would be even worse. People are not getting as much as we've been able to give in the past.

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On to happier things. All the pink plumerias are sending up bloom stalks.

The zinnias, black eyed susans, and the double or triple orange daylilies are the stars of the yard these days as it gets hotter and hotter out there.

And my pecan trees have baby pecans! You might recall I haven't gotten any for the last three years, not even baby ones so I hope plenty of them stick.

A few other random pics.

My little Minnie dog cleverly disguised as the evil Emperor Palpatine.

a day with Robin and other miscellaneous stuff

Waiting for the next front to come in which it did on Friday and it rained. Saturday was cold and windy and wet, Sunday was a gorgeous day, perfect for working outside but I had plans with my grandgirl Robin, so OK, Monday, I'll get back out there Monday, except it rained off and on all day. Damn, can't work on the vines, can't play with my new toy.

Robin wants to sew an oversize hooded jacket with bunny ears, so we drove to Shopping Mecca to shudder the other Evil Empire but their good lord saved us as they are closed on Sundays which I had forgotten. On to the nearest Joanne's for a pattern and fabric only they didn't have the only pattern that looked suitable enough so we segued to crocheting. She also wanted to crochet a hat so we looked at ALL the yarn until she selected some and a crochet hook and then we spent the next hour or so looking at all the paint and brushes and markers and sketch books and cake decorating stuff and cookie cutters and fake flowers and scrapbooking and stamps and christmas ornaments and every other other craft thing before finally looking at all the fabric until we decided we had seen it all. I had no plans to buy any fabric but how does one resist? I found a nice bolt of cotton that I really liked, thought it would make a good summer skirt and really I need another one because (here's the justification) I've about worn out the two I wear all the time (only sort of true).

Years ago when Robin was still a kid and was coming for her summer visits I taught her how to crochet but we never really got any farther than a basic chain stitch but she picked it up quickly. She also took to sewing faster and better than her two older sisters. Anyway, once home she found a video tutorial for crocheting a hat/cap and started on it. The yarn she picked out is blanket yarn, big and soft and fluffy and a pain in the ass to crochet even if you know what you're doing.

But she persevered and got a good start on the hat band and as it was getting dark she gathered up her stuff and headed home. 

About midnight I got this picture.

She watched the video again and soldiered on through without any guidance from me. That's her mom, my daughter Sarah, in the picture as the hat turned out too small for Robin. Plenty of yarn left, she's going to try again.

Did I mention it rained all day yesterday? About 4 PM I started texting Abby that I wouldn't be coming to yoga last night and before I finished I got a text from her: Skipping...too gross out. We were of like minds. So since I wasn't going to yoga we started watching a new series, The Peripheral on Amazon Prime, based on The Peripheral (The Jackpot Trilogy) by sci-fi author William Gibson. Set in a technology altered future Flynne, a young woman trying to hold her broken family together, discovers a secret connection to an alternate reality as well as a dark future of her own (paraphrased from a search description). We've only seen the first episode which had some pretty hairy parts so if dystopian brutality puts you off you might want to skip it. It's intriguing though, centers around virtual/alternate reality and time travel in a way.

The only other thing we did was meet with the guy who handles our investments because I had to take a mandatory draw from my IRA as the government only lets you put off paying taxes on that for so long so we're opening a new account with that and reinvesting it.

10 AM and still only 49˚ out there. Overcast but should start clearing soon. Burn ban has been lifted so that's on the schedule for this week.

I've mentioned that Cat wants to be part of the puppy pile but when she plonks herself down so she's touching both Minnie and myself, Minnie is having no part of it. Up her head goes and she moves to the other end of the couch. The other night sitting on the couch with Minnie laying under the blanket on my left and Cat in my lap, Cat moved stealthily leaving her back half on my lap and slowly gently laying her head on Minnie's blanket covered body reaching across it with her front leg. Minnie never noticed and there we all stayed until it was time for bed.

cool enough to get some yard stuff done

We're back to having no rain again and everything is horribly dry. Consequently I spent the morning Monday moving the sprinkler around every 30 minutes and same yesterday and so far today. I did get most of the back flower bed weeded Monday. I'll be able to get more of that done now that I've watered and the dirt isn't hard as a rock. The orange cosmos are putting on buds as are the confederate roses but no flowers yet. I had the sprinkler in the midst of one stand of orange cosmos yesterday morning and it was filled with birds playing and bathing in the water, even a hummingbird was flitting around in there.

Later, I got the newly released 6' ladder (the one the chandelier has been suspended from) and used it to get high enough to pull dead fallen branches and dead canes out of the crepe myrtle with the climbing rose all intertwined and then used the ladder and hoe to drag more dead fallen branches and leaves off the roof next to it all. There's still a lot more up there but it's going to take someone getting on the roof and that won't be me. I'll dare a lot of things still. I'm limber, have good balance, still strong enough and I have been on that roof a few times. But I am also acutely aware that if I fell off, it would be devastating. Maybe if I went and got the 8' ladder from the shop...

The rest of this post is just some miscellaneous pictures.

Minnie and her dog buddies at the other end of the street.

A little brown tree frog sitting on the top of one of the wind chime tubes.

Another quick and easy one dish meal...orecchiette pasta, broccoli, garlic, italian sausage.

Porterweed bloom, hummingbirds and butterflies love it.

The mistflower is blooming and the bees are all over it, though not in this picture taken late in the day.

The confederate rose buds mentioned above.