Everywhere…

You’ve seen a lot of here through my posts of the past and I’ve shown you quite a bit of there through the last few posts. I’m having trouble finding the rest of the photos I wanted to wind up there with so now we are going to everywhere so you can see the blank slate that I am starting with… This is a rental home so I won’t be able to be as comfortable in doing any radical creativity but I can certainly make the place feel more like a home.

Here we go…

The house is on a corner and has this fourteen foot wall in the front yard. I’m already planning on what I’m going to do out here.

There are a few neglected and older shrubs along the about 3 foot wide bed that goes along the walk heading up to the front door.

then the walk is right along the house to the nook where you find the front door. This is looking north to the stockade fence. The shrub on the right is a rose of sharon that was there when we rented. Our rose of sharon that I’ll be bringing is younger and shorter and I will plant it closer to the brick pillar.

This is a crepe myrtle and there is one planted on either side of the drive way and you know that something else is going to be planted in there so it doesn’t look so plain.

This is looking up the side yard from another gate in the stockade fencing. I love the fence, SueSue doesn’t. She can’t see what’s going on in her world except for the occasional squirrel that drops into the yard, the she is on a mission to get that critter. Being the ornery and lazy woman that I am, I’m going to start feeding the birds AND the squirrels. After I need some entertainment to lighten my day occasionally, too. And if she catches one and kills it, I know how to skin them and fry them. I’m not too worried about that happening, because while Suess is fast she is not quite bright. She runs straight at them and you know squirrels can twist and turn on a dime…

This is the back yard. It is pretty large which the girls love, except with the stockade fence they can’t keep track of what all might be going on in their corner of the world.

This is the side of the house that the front is on, just the other side of the fence.

As I do my planting thing, I will take pictures along but I must tell you that Carol’s sister has her ideas about how we should plant the place. She, besides being rapid cycling bi-polar, has got to be ocd as much as she likes and needs order in her life.

She likes things in a row, I like things the flow. When I got to the house I took my babies out and looked around. When I saw a number of plants all along the back fence all in a row and almost exact distance apart. I just got my shovel out of the truck and started working on them… even as boring as she like it. Carol and I have lived together for so long that she know that there is method to my madness and whatever I do usually comes out somewhat unusual. And usually she loves what I do even if I do things somewhat with odd combinations that I enjoy trying odd colors and/or textures. So I know that while I will keep as many plants alive as I can, this will be essentially a plain, basic garden because the riots of color and shapes of a garden that Carol and I both enjoy is like raucous noise to her sister.

So as I get things planted and growing I’ll keep you posted but for right now, besides my life being bland, I’m so exhausted from the moving that I probably won’t be a very interesting blogger. And if I don’t live through this move I just want to say thanks to all of you who have become my friends through this wonderful blogging medium.

I think I'll play along...

Seems like there have been several blogs that I've read this week that were a little of this and a little of that and my week has been a little bit of this and a little bit of that, so that is what you are going to get in this post.

This first little bit is what took up most of my day today. My niece called me from Dallas at 7 A. frickken M. Her Great Dane, Madeline, had started birthin' babies and her husband was freaking.

He had never helped birth babies, Nancy Lu was at a seminar and while she got back in 4 1/2 hours, she hadn't ever helped birth babies. So the frantic call went out for some mutt mid-wifery... i.e. AUNT HELEN----HELP...

So I thru on some clothes, grabbed my meds and cookies to help get 'em down with the assistance of Diet Pepsi and took off for OKC. 40 minutes later I bail out of the car and run into the house and Steve (Nance's hubs) said, "I am so glad you are here. I went out to feed Maddy (the mom) and Max (the dad) and noticed that neither one had eaten and upon investigation, while checking out Maddy's fat belly, it was alive.

It looked like those babies were rolling around in there and it freaked me out. Then I discovered that she had 3 and had laid on them to keep 'em warm and squashed them.'' (1st time mother).


By the time I got to the house, two of the kids and their significant others and their kids had gotten there and they had gotten Maddy in the house into her wading pool birthin' bed and Steven had settled down. I got in the swimmin' pool (kiddie sized) and started checking out mom.

She had 4 living pups by the time I got there and it was soon apparent another was on the way. They let my great neice Chloe (who will be 9 on Monday) watch since I was there and she got to see the next pup come out in it's bubble and was just awed how Maddy tore the sac and chewed the cord and cleaned the baby. She had a lot of questions and I was able to answer all but one... can a momma dog have twins? meaning two babies in one bubble. I told her I hadn't heard of it but I would find out.


Maddy had 7 living pups and only needed help with the last one. His sac had busted and I had to make sure when the contraction stopped that he didn't get sucked back in where he couldn't breathe. Steve and the rest of them decided that they would have freaked out and probably not been able to save the little guy. One of my nieces videod that birth and that was good because next time they birth babies they will all know what to do.

I'm officially whooopppped out.

Thurs. night Bro and I drove to Ft. Worth, got up Friday morning and got my nephew's trailer and loaded as much stuff as we could in my pick up and in the 6' X12' lawn equipment trailer and drove back home. Didn't get home until about 8:30 that night and was exhausted, so when the call came at God-thirty this morning to go help birth puppies...... GROAN. But I couldn't not go and let my kids worry.

I'm so tired I'm going about this backward. I'll post some more puppy pics tomorrow, and a couple of sky shots that I took earlier in the week, too.

Good night... and oh, yeah... OU whooped Texas A&M!!