Dog Shaming

Do You See This?!?

This is the face of shame. Shame for his brutal murder of Lucy the chicken.

That's right. We are down to three chickens. After all the work, and seeming to be over his issues, Emmitt took advantage of our lack of attention today. So his still damp from the bath; post two walks and a frisbee session, little furry ass is in doggy jail for a bit. He will no longer be allowed to be around the chickens unattended, and maybe not even then. Maybe next time he's out, I'll put him in the coop and let them out?

Actually, the girls are transitioning to be outdoor birds this next week. During the heat of the day they can be out in their coop. When someones home, that can be out of the coop. At night they'll come back in to the brood box until night temps are high enough for them to stay out even then.

And speaking of birds, we have some unintended birds in the yard, that we're glad to keep around. That's right, we have a robins nest in one of our maples. I can only see two eggs here and this is as close with a zoom as I'm really going to get to the tree to keep them feeling safe and around the yard.

On today's walk, I found a molted blue jay feather. Sorry, most of todays posts were taken with the iPhone and it's being a bitch again about focusing. Or perhaps not, you do know what focus means, right? It's really an acronym...

F uck
O ff
C 'uz
U r
S tupid

So, If I've told any of you to "focus" randomly for no apparent reason, you now know what I was truly saying. And it had nothing to do with your ADD. A paramedic I worked with once told me that and I kind of like it, because well, we've all had those conversations with people that you can't seem to get something simple through to them and this is what you really wanted to say, right?

Anyway, it's been  crazy week here. How about you guys?

This morning I wrapped up the bath mat! All done. Not the prettiest weaving job, but I learned somethings I'm excited to try on the next project along the way. Such as Selvedges and that I should really have hemstitched the leader edge before winding on. Oh well, the guy was a sport and held tension across the rug while I hemstitched the first edge then cut off the loom before actually hemming and washing the mat. I declare, "Not Bad". Too bad it took me about 8 inches to get my edges going strong. Good selvedges may have helped... Oh well, lessons learned.

Then I took the boys for a walk in the peace park. Being solidly in the 70's they were panting away so we cut it a little short, watered them and then headed to the dog park for a frisbee romp after they cooled off a bit en route. Then we all had baths, brushing and nail clippings.

If we keep these temps as they're calling for we're going to have full leaves by next weekend. I love how these ones seem to unravel out of their golden bronzes bud casings.

And we should have a bumper crop of maple whirligig seed pods. Does anyone know, are Maples like Cottonwoods and have male and female trees? We have one in the back that seems to get little tiny blooms, but never gets seed pods, and I was assuming it's a male.

Even though the whirlygigs are a bit of a mess, I like them. It must be the Alaska kid in me that's used to aspens, willows, and birches, and a whole mess of different pines, but never really grew up around the hardwoods.

See, tiny ones! Well, you could if it weren't so damn blurry. Let me go get another shot, the suns back out.

There you go. Oooh, pretty.

And here's the tree noticeably lacking any seed pods. You can't see here in this photo but there are still the little dried stems left behind from the "pollen plugs" I'm calling flowers that it had. They really weren't flowers in that sense, but that's as close to a description as I have for them. So, if they are like Cottonwoods, the boys have these "flowers" that produce pollen, or a trees endosperm, and the female trees little "flowers" are receptacles for the boy's pollen, and wala, we have seeds. Other non-sex trees and plants can self pollinate since theirs flowers have both the pollen creating bodies, and the seeding bodies in them.

Anyway, onto other things, like this delicious dinner that I wish I were re-creating tonight.

Jerked shrimp and pineapple kabobs. All I've eaten today is my breakfast Nutella and carmel pear jam sandwich and it's showing... I'm short on temper with chicken killing dogs. That's why he's in doggie jail. It's for his own protection.

So, I suppose I should go hunt up something for dinner.

Oh, and I snapped these the other day on a walk as they were popping up out of a front yard the boys and I were trotting by. I heard some feathery sounds behind me while snapping these but was stunned when I turn around and startled up the half dozen vultures that were lined up on the top ridge of this houses roof. None of the shots I got off were any good, but I thought, is that a good omen or a bad one if you vultures roosting overnight on your house?

And I found these while walking today too... Spring is here I say!

Even the bugs know it. We hung up the wasp deterrents the other day. We were noticing a lot of them around already so I placed them out and I'm noticing I see fewer already. We'll have the ones that don't care but it does seem to quiet the action down a bit.

And if anyone can tell me what this ground cover that's on the side of the house is, feel free to let me know. You'll get bonus points. For what, don't know, but you'll get them anyhow. Now, I need to go find something to consume or perish in the attempt.