We've gone to the dogs

I had a lovely week with my mom, but believe it or not, the only photo I got of her was when we played dominoes for my birthday! (That was a rare treat as Rick rarely plays table games.) Other than that, we didn't really do anything out of the ordinary, mostly visiting and cooking, it was just good to be together.

During that week, Rick looked through the available dogs on the Pacific NW Bulldog Rescue website, the same rescue from which we adopted Dozer, and saw a French bulldog he liked. I have been campaigning to get Poppy a playmate, and although I wouldn't have chosen a brachiocephalic dog, Rick has been bringing up Frenchies periodically and I figured I'd better go with what he was open to. We filled out an application, then texted our contact (from Dozer) with some questions. She texted back that the one Rick liked was already adopted, but she had other options. In a flurry of texts, she told us about a sibling pair of Frenchies that were being surrendered in another state that we could possibly foster with an eye toward adopting one. We said we were interested, and mentally prepared to meet them this weekend. But because of incoming weather and volunteer transport availability, that got moved up to last Thursday night!

Oy; what a day. I got up at 1:45 a.m. to get Mom to the airport in time, came back and tried to sleep a couple more hours, got up for work and appointments in town, came home for less than an hour before leaving for agility class with Poppy, and then drove to another town to meet our rescue contact and transfer two traumatized, tired, soiled dogs to our car for the ride home.

Leo and Gracie are intact 11-month-old French bulldog siblings and Gracie is in heat, so that complicates things as they must be kept apart for now. The rescue pays for their neutering surgeries and other expenses while they are in foster care, and we provide love, routine, training, and exposure to new things for evaluation. They were from one of the last litters produced by a reputable breeder known to our contact and sold together as puppies. Last month, the breeder happened to drive past their current residence and saw the pups outside in sub-freezing weather without shelter, food, or water and promptly confiscated them. Normally the breeder would have taken responsibility to rehome them herself, but she is dealing with a dying father so contacted the rescue.

Poppy is being a wonderful hostess, interested, friendly, offering them toys, trying to get them to play, and letting them follow her around when they are less sure of us humans. So far they haven't responded much to her overtures (much to her disappointment), but hopefully that will change. They are definitely getting more comfortable and warming up to us in just two days; today they showed interest in toys for the first time. Below are photos from Thursday night to tonight; Gracie is in the mint harness, Leo is in the black one. (I have some cute videos but can't get them loaded right now.)

To close, I have to turn the spotlight back on Poppy. This morning I heard a rustle near the front door when I stepped out to get firewood, and thought I saw a gray form huddled behind a pot. I called Poppy over, and she grabbed a RAT.

That's the dog saga for now from . . .

Veterans Day 2022

I copied these images from a friend's blog:

I especially like the second one because it is the first time I've seen something acknowledging the animals used and oft-times sacrificed as cogs in the machinery of mankind's wars. I can't wait for the day sung about in that old spiritual, when we will "study war no more."

In much happier news, I got an early birthday surprise in the wee hours of this morning. After saying he'd be late and to not wait up for him, my husband arrived home with my MOM in tow! He'd invited her, bought her a ticket, and picked her up at the airport without dropping a clue. She and I have spent one lovely day visiting and cooking my birthday dinner, and I have five more days to look forward to. She lucked into a stretch of beautiful fall weather here, although we got some rain this afternoon that I didn't think was in the forecast. I took the first photo below this morning before the change; the rest were taken in town yesterday as I walked to the post office for work.

Feeling very blessed at . . .

Season Segue

We have transitioned fully to fall, ya'll; summer is now just a sweaty memory! And with fall comes a bounty of beautiful photo opps, so prepare yourself for a deluge. 😁

We did indeed get rain the day after my last post; just a quarter of an inch but enough to rinse some dust off things – including Stella!

The sunrise before the rain:

Maybe the horses actually brought that first rain, as they were doing a 'rain dance' as the first drops fell:

Another 2.25" fell a few days later, with fine blades of new grass sprouting up in the pastures virtually overnight. But between the rains, Rick and I tried to make the most of the dry weather in different ways. I trimmed toes on Boop and Broadway, giving them both much needed halter-training:

 Broadway still isn't cleaned up and coated!

Rick's woodworking friend came over with his portable saw mill and helped him cut slabs from the silver maple trunk:

I reveled in the fog and spiderwebs, my preferred "decorations" for the end of October:

Rick gleaned from the nearest vineyard and filled our evenings with steaming and canning assorted fancy varieties of grape juice – more Muskat (we canned a batch from our own vines earlier), Riesling (not pictured), Pinot Noir, and Pinot Meunier:

I picked some of the last good apples from an old tree in our pasture using the picker I bought earlier this year. It's not long enough to reach the top-most apples, but I was able to pick from higher than ever before. A couple of them were HUGE; see one of those with quarts of grape juice, above. I used some in them in these scrumptious Apple Cinnamon Rolls, which I will definitely make again!

I also did some outside clean-up, sweeping off the stairs on the south side of the house and cutting back the candytuft and lavender to reclaim the sidewalk leading to the front door. I need to prune two of the three Japanese maples in front of the house, too, but will do that when they aren't dripping wet – maybe when their leaves have dropped. That may be awhile, as they really haven't started showing their fall colors yet. (The potted ones on the deck are blazing with final fire!) The tender deck pots (geraniums and stevia) are now ensconced in the daylight basement, but still need their 'winter haircuts.' I'm going to pot up cuttings from my Apple Blossom geranium; it needs to be cut way back anyway, and who wouldn't want more of those gorgeous clusters of color?

 

Chuckie trying to impede my progress for pets

Mushrooms are starting to appear again, too, including tasty shaggy manes. I haven't seen any sign of them in the wooded lot where they came in so thick last season, but a few have popped up in the arena (above). The photo below was taken during a walk at a women's retreat I attended with a friend the last weekend of October. There may be a post on that event later with a few more pictures.

And of course there has been fiber play. My most recent finish is this big, beautiful skein of 2ply:

It's made up of The Woodland Pixie batts I purchased at Black Sheep Gathering plied with the Black Diamond tussah/alpaca I got as a TdF prize on the Jenkins forum of Ravelry, spun and plied on Jenkins spindles. Haven't measured it yet, as it is drying after a bath; I'm thinking it might become a generous scarf/shawl/wrap or maybe a vest.

With cooler weather, lean Poppy appreciates the wood-burner and fleece blankets when she's not running all out at home or in agility class:

Another pretty sunrise through the lifting fog:

Both Friday and today have been soakers. This was our range gauge earlier today; I'm sure it has more in it now.

That's it for now from . .