Happy first day of spring!

And it really felt like it here, with sun and temps in the 60s. Good thing, too, as smoke woke me up in the wee morning hours. I got up and opened the damper, and by this morning the fire had burned out (and the house smelled better). We'll give the wood-burner a good cleaning (again) so we can utilize it next week when it is supposed to be cooler and wet.

Today I went to work and then to the grocery store. I was pleasantly surprised to see a 'normal' number of people acting in 'normal' ways, and filled my cart with nicely priced oranges, apples, cabbage, onions, asparagus, garbanzo beans, and a few other things. I would have gotten a bag of russet potatoes if there had been any, but they were gone, along with brown rice, rolled oats, and whole wheat flour. No worries here, though; I have enough of the latter two to get by and can work around being out of the first two.

A 'service day' (technically a half-day) was on today's schedule for Brian's high school, so students had to give their parents two hours of work at home. I directed Brian to weed the garden – his least favorite chore (so LOTS of balking, arguing, and otherwise trying to get out of it), but more necessary now than ever. He didn't get very far, but did clear around the volunteer parsley and up to the kale. I need to do better at utilizing those and the beet greens (from the beets I never got harvested last fall 🙄); yay for free food!

Here is Poppy with her new splint, courtesy of her vet visit yesterday:

She also got puppy shot #2, which had her feeling puny – for about six hours. Then she was up and tearing around when we were all ready to wind down – ha! I think we should have named her The Unsinkable Molly Brown – it would have fit her, but for the color. Anyway, the x-ray showed Poppy's leg is healing, but definitely still needs the splint. One of the three broken bones is demineralizing instead of mending, usually a temporary set-back. As long as the other two bones are looking good in four more weeks, she'll get switched to a support bandage instead of a splint, as using the leg more will actually help the third bone heal. We'll have to monitor her activity level because of the laxity in her carpus and general atrophy, but the vet said not being willing to use the leg is more common at first than over-using it. (Maybe that's a common problem among other breeds, but I suspect over-use would be the danger for a Decker puppy!) She weighed 14.7 pounds, up six pounds from four and a half weeks ago; growing like a weed she is.

Hand out the cigars; Blake is a papa again! This morning the Babydoll Southdown owner who leased him for breeding last fall called this morning. She found a ewe with a water bag protruding at 4:00 a.m., and at 8:00 she still wasn't pushing or showing any sign of progress. Rick told her she'd better scrub up and go in; something was wrong. While at work she texted me: "FYI; I wasn't able to find lambs in her womb but was able to load her into our trailer and take her to a vet in Dallas for emergency help. I was sure we would find a dead lamb or two. Turns out he pulled out two ram lambs. They both sure looked dead initially but both survived! The vet was really surprised and so am I!"

That's it for today from . . .