Flowers Flowers Everywhere

For mum: these are all the different flowers we have blooming in our yard right now:

Bluebells along the south side of the house behind the roses.

Bleeding heart? next to the front door in my fabulous newly edged flower bed.

Large pink Rhododendron flowers

and small pink rhododendron flowers along the south side of the yard at the foot of the hedge

Yellow tulips in the large planter in the front yard.

Red tulips in a whiskey barrel out by the drive way.

My Busy (but not as busy as Colleen's) Weekend

So my project for this weekend was to get the front flower bed back in shape. The lawn had started to creep in and it was hard to tell where the lawn ended and the bed began.

I dug a straight line from end to end,

Cleaned all the grass and weeds out

and put in a plastic edger thingy that delineates the edge of the flower bed so that I can weed it and keep it pretty for flowers. It turned out so good that I am going to do the same to the rose bed on the south side of the house. While I did this, Archie lay in the shade over by the fence and Aaron hid in the house from all the allergens. I think we all enjoyed ourselves.

A Visitor for Archie

Last Wednesday Kathy came over to meet Archie.

What started out as a very polite visit on both their parts soon degraded to cuddles on the floor.

He even sat in her lap like he belived he weighed 10 lbs in stead of 80!!

Good news is, we have added one more name to the dog sitter list!

Banana Cat

I'm sure everyone is wondering how the cat is doing with all this new dog stuff. He is actually pretty good. We had some hissing the first couple days but since Archie is very uninterested/well versed in cat behavior (he lived with three indoor outdoor cats who probably taught him the purpose of claws) Moe seems fairly content.

The dog is not allowed on the bed or the furniture Moe has lots of safe spots and he continues to get lots of attention. Once Archie goes to bed for the night (insanely early) Moe will sneak in for a closer look and a sniff or two. This morning he was back to his regular racing around the house so I quess he has decided everything will be okay.

POOR PUPPY with a new name

Yesterday was the last day for Archie's manhood.

When we got him home he was far from manly. He could hardly even lift his head and was just a blob for most of the day. Which is probably best considereing the delicate nature of the surgery.

Aaron felt really bad for him and kept a really close eye on him all day. We only made him wear the cone until he settled in the living room and when we were going to bed.

Later in the eveing we gave Archie some of the pain pills the Vet had given us and he seemed to go almost unconcious. We were both really worried so Aaron decided to sleep on the floor with him until he went into a normal sleep pattern.

Even though Aaron will hate that I put this picture on the blog, I couldn't help myslef when I saw their hands/paws entwined. This is the evidence I will produce when it is suggested that he is OUR dog and that I should pick up the poop.

How to get your Bernese to Sleep Through the Night

The following is a list of activities that when performed in succession within a 28 hour period will allow you one FULL night of rest with your dog peacefully snoring at the end of your bed.

Roll around in the newly chopped grass.

Play with new toys.

Get many many belly rubs from the new guy.

Learn to walk through the river.

Go for a walk

and another and another and then run around the block twice.

Lay in the uncut grass laughing while the new guy tries to convince you to come into the house.

Meet the new neighbours and check out the new neighbourhood.

Get lots of snuggles.

Chase the new guy around the yard.

Pose or not as the whim takes you for NUMEROUS pictures!!

A New Addition

This weekend we were so lucky to have another member added to our family. Some of you may know that we have been waiting for a while now for the right Bernese Mountain Dog to come our way and we finally got our wish.

He came from a great family in Tacoma who are really busy and just didn't have enough time to spend with him. He is two years old and very well behaved. We have taken about a hundred pictures of him so this will only be a small sample. His name is Honey Bear which we are thinking of changing but haven't come up with anything that seems to fit yet.

He is headed to our vet for a check up tonight and then back on Wednesday morning to be fixed. You can bet there will be conehead pictures on Thursday!

He and Aaron have totally bonded and are virtually inseparable.

One of his coolest features...giant feet!!

Aaron rigged up this bed of egg crate foam, an old comforter and and old sleeping bag for him in the garage to sleep on while we are at work. I was just helping test it. He slept in the bedroom last night and barely moved. I think he was completely tuckered out from two days with an excited Aaron.

New Baby

Sunday afternoon we headed up to the Wellseses to visit with them and their new baby boy Elliot. We brought pizza to distract them while we stole snugglies from the little one.

He is a TOTAL cutie pie. He slept the whole two hours we were there all wrapped up in his tortilla being passed around the room.

Aaron said on the way home..."If you were to get pregnant now it would be a January baby" all I said was Yep, and ignored all the baby related sentences that flooded my brain.

Plants

Although this weekend wasn't ideal planting weather and I had to run inside several times to escape the intermittent torrential downpours, I sucked it up and got some stuff done.

Went to McLendon's Hardware and raided the garden section. I found all kinds of great stuff.

I picked up a bunch of flowers, 6 tomato plants, two bell pepper plants, 6 strawberry plants and a whole bunch of seed packets.

I will plant most of the stuff in window boxes and buckets and old whiskey barrels this summer as we have a lot of work to do before we can set aside a patch of yard for a garden. I am hard at work but super happy to be able to do something with the deck out back to distract from the lawn.

The prettiest part of my afternoon of work. Pansies and Geraniums. I also tore out a few of the plants from the front yard that Aaron and I agreed we didn't like and I have plans for the front flower bed for Wednesday!!

What Climate Change????

For anyone who has thought that all this "global climate change" stuff is just a bunch of BS, we here in the Seattle area have experienced it first hand this last week. We were headed for our lovely spring weather, warm and wet, when the tempurature dropped (think Day After Tommorrow killer deepfreeze or so it felt) and it snowed for four days then we got the crap beat out of us with hail for a couple hours.

The previous three are hard to see but this is what things looked ike int he valley when we got home late Sat night. Up on the hill there was about 4 inches of snow on the ground. Please remember it is the end of MARCH!!! All our poor trees that are in bloom are freezing their flowers off!

The Monday evening hail storm begins.

The pace picks up a little.

Some of the hail stones were really big!!

Hail in the street.

When it was all over it looked like we had just had a snow storm. For all of you in Canda that may be seeing this and thinking "phhtt, this is nothing" please keep in mind we only get 2-3 days of now all year and that in December or January. It is the END OF MARCH!!!!