Getting dirty, living clean

It's been too long since the last post. The garden grows fast, the weeds threaten to eat up all the space and the world moves at a pace it's hard to keep up with sometimes. Last weekend was prom 2009 and my big girl had a date with a very hot football player. Not her style but all she wanted was arm candy at that point. Her heart's still too tender over so many things. She wanted a princess moment and she got one. Don't we all sometimes?

Simon is growing at an alarming rate. He is not as big as we'd estimated but 154 pounds two weeks ago at 9 months is still a scary proposition. Getting him in and out of the car is not so easy but doable as we discovered. All it takes is some patience, two people and a fairly good quantity of chicken parm. The dog is a fool for anything covered in tomato sauce and cheese. He also likes his doggy pills (to clear up what looked like doggy leprosy that probably came from an infection from a bite from some unknown thingie in the swamp). He eats his doggy pills like candy and aside from having trouble with them getting stuck in his flews he usually has them consumed in under a minute.

Here are gratuitous doggy shots to go with the gratuitous princess shots:

He considers and weighs the risks against the benefits of eating bees. He hasn't done it yet but Homer does occasionally with the expected results. As soon as the swelling goes down on his face he finds and eats another. This guy might just be too lazy to work that hard. 

Here comes swamp dog toward the back of the garden. I should probably have posted the entire series because he's just cute as hell but that would have been too gratuitous even for me. 

 

I love this. My girl and her dog. OK, he's my dog but they do love each other. She didn't go to prom like that she just didn't get dressed at the house. I think she kept my denim jacket on for most of the night though. Reminds me a bit of Molly Ringwald in whatever movie she altered a wedding dress for. And it wasn't Sixteen Candles.

 

This is what my compost bin looks like so far this year. The path to the left is the doggy trail leading to the swamp and woods. I am hopeful that they will stop covering the lawn with landmines and just contain that stuff to the back of the property. It's not as if there isn't enough room back there. Everything a doggy, not to mention small children, could possibly ask for. Except a tree house. Haven't quite gotten around to that yet. Maybe this summer. I think I need to modify the bin a bit to make it easier to turn. I read something about building or containing a compost heap with bales of hay or straw and I'm thinking that might be more effective and certainly easier to maintain. I don't much care for the big plastic rotating things that put the creation of hummus on light speed. Makes me nervous happening that fast.

 

If this isn't enough to get you to stop and slow down, or better yet just sit in the dirt getting your hands, nails and feet encrusted I don't know what is.

 

The wild buttercrunch is getting ahead of itself. I'm thinking a graze through this patch would make a good start to breakfast. Although I think I'll pass on the bug protein and stick with eggs. My replacement chickens and little guinea babies are due in the next week or two. I still need to build an incubator but I should have everything I need. We went and bought a light and a heat rock for a rescued Ball Python. Somebody threw the guy in his aquarium stuffed into a plastic bag into a trash compactor and was rescued by the maintenance people in my building at work. I took him home and we called him Steve after the The Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove  (Christopher Moore). We were just getting to the point of walking around the house with Steve when he made a break for it one night and is now living somewhere in the house. If the Rat Terrier doesn't get him he'll take care of any rodent issues we may have. We miss him though and would really like it if he'd come out now and then for a cuddle. In any case, the snake habitat can be converted to baby guinea home fairly easily and if Steve decides he want's to come back to his nice safe cage he's just going to have to wait until they've outgrown it.

 

Silly pre-prom girls. They'd make fabulous garden accessories. Sort of like a useful version of my pot smoking Garden Gnome that has yet to be located and installed this year.