I Had To Try It

Turkey Minestrone Stew

carrots, green beans, canola oil, ground turkey, potatoes, frozen peas, cannellini beans, crushed tomatoes, dried egg noodles, chopped fresh parsley, garlic powder, water 

The recipe is found in the book by Rick Woodford, Feed Your Best Friend Better and ...

Min loved it!

What are the missing ingredients in this list?  Salt and pepper.  I added quite a bit to my bowl and it was quite palatable but really needed onions badly.  Onions are not good for dogs.  It was all cooked in a crock pot so the egg noodles had almost disappeared.

Tomorrow is going to be a cooler day and so I am making Turkey Meatloaf, an oven recipe.

I bought Min the food she had been eating at the foster home and she has not really been enthusiastic about it.  I have been gradually adding the Acana dry food I have fed the boys for several years.  I will feed one home cooked meal and one kibble meal each day next week and see what happens.  I will also have to mix together a supplement to make sure she gets all her vitamins and minerals.

So fun!

Meteorological Drama

20 mile an hour winds this evening for an hour or more and I think maybe two.  I don't like it one bit. The umbrella blew off the deck, a distance of at least 10 feet.  It's tipped over in the wind before but it has never actually left the deck.

I did put it back up there but kept it closed as it was still very windy.  Not sure how it will look tomorrow.  Hopefully not too pathetic.

Horticultural Drama

It wouldn't surprise me if this lilac has been in this very spot for more than fifty years.  It has looked unhealthy for the entire time I have lived here.  I have pruned it and more recently just been removing branches as I could to make it easier to remove it.  I actually toyed with the idea of buying a chain saw and doing it myself but that was vetoed by Amy.  Given my history with tree work, kind of falling off the ladder and truly scraping up my leg, I conceded that it was not the best idea.

So Mark came over and did it today.  Why the tree survived is beyond me.  Jack had dug a huge trench behind it and Dylan worked on it as well.  I even heard Min who has only been here 6 days making dirt fly.  It was the perfect little hide-out, cool and shady.  A Serious Hazard though for someone with a chain saw in their hands.  Turns out there was very little chain sawing.  Mark did some digging but most had been done, cut a few pieces and then with a long pole with a flat end, levered huge portions right out of the ground.  Amazing.

And, he hoisted enormous sections of the tree on his shoulder and carried them out to the street to his truck!  It took him just more than an hour and I am very grateful that he did this for me.

It's a big hole but not terribly deep.

Lots of work to be done!

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A Day of Drama

When I sit at the computer, I can see out the back door as well as the three windows facing the back yard.  Since Min has been here I have kept the storm door open so she can come in and out as she pleases and that gives me an even bigger view.

Quails on the roof of the garage are an ongoing event and I enjoy every loud minute of it.  This time it is mom and dad, most often it is just dad.  The other day I could hear him very loudly but couldn't see him anywhere until I took some trash out.  There he was on top of one of my chimneys.

As I was watching the quail through the back door, something caught my eye from the window.

Holy cats, Batman!!  I have never seen this in all the years I have lived here and we sure know what had his attention.  I pointed out the situation to Min and then clapped my hands and scared everyone away.

Ha!  No killer instincts in this dog.

Oh Happy Day!

The adoption is final.  Meet Min......

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A Greater Swiss Mountain Dog, two and a half years old and her name is just Min, not short for anything although I like to think it is humorously short for minimum.

She came from her first foster family with this bag.

You can see how big it is compared to the iron.  It was packed full of supplements, a couple of prescriptions, a toy, a leash, and most importantly, a binder filled with her history.  Very helpful. She also came with the orthopedic bed and as she has hip dysplasia, this makes for a more comfortable nap.  I drag it back and forth from the kitchen to the bedroom.

This has scared me more than once.  Not what I expect to see on the kitchen floor.

Like all my other big dogs, Min does not seem to be interested in a toy, hedgehog or not!  Kudos to our friend Lucy who is a dog that loves to chase, retrieve, and shake the living daylights out of a toy..

There's a feeling of contentment at the ranch.

The Second Walk

I tried to go back to bed this morning but that did not happen.  Oh I laid down but there was a big black dog wiggling about and staring at me.  She wanted to get out there!

Two amazing things happened.  The first was this:

From Google Images

We were on our west walking loop and out of the corner of my eye I saw something very big and very dark fly overhead.  The turkey vultures roost in a huge Sycamore tree on Center Street.  This morning I counted twenty (20!!) relocating to a huge pine on 100 North.  And there were already birds in the tree!

Up close, these birds are not pretty but oh my, in flight they are incredibly awesome plus because they are gliders, eerily quiet.  They have a wingspan of about six (6!!) feet.

As we stood and watched, the second amazing thing happened.  All of a sudden two Border Collie type dogs come barreling across the street at us.  We just waited for them and the foster dog just stayed still and sniffed her greeting.  Not overly excited just friendly.  What a good girl! 

Last night some neighbors dropped over to meet her and as they approached the fence, she barked twice and that was it. We have a 4-plex behind us with an open stairway.  She does not like that one bit.  None of the dogs do.  Something wrong when people are above their head and "floating".  She startled me with very serious something-is-wrong barking and I'm pretty sure scared the woman coming down those stairs.  She will adjust, all the dogs have.

With Dog

Today I took my friend Susan and we went on a fairly harrowing trip to pick up a rescue dog.  It was fairly harrowing because because while it was barely dripping here in Utah County, by the time we got into Salt Lake County it was raining significantly harder.  The spray from the surrounding traffic made visibility difficult and while I thought I knew how to turn the defroster on, I did not get it right until we were on our way home.  One should not be fiddling with things on the dashboard while traveling at 65 mph.

And unless it is an absolutely perfect day with dry roads, I am not at all fond of driving through Parley's canyon.  And then, we exited at Mountain Dell Reservoir, East Canyon, Little Mountain at which point the low gas light went on and we were in the middle of nowhere with no one around.  We phoned the current fosters and were actually headed correctly and just didn't see the Emigration Canyon arrow.  Got to their road and then had to phone again to find their house as house numbers appear to be optional in their area.  He very graciously emptied his gas can into my tank and we got home just fine on that.  He had given very precise directions but as we were driving I realized there was no trip odometer in the car.  (That seems odd so I will check the manual.)  I was very glad that Susan had come along.  Having another person in the car seems to dilute the stress.

Very nice people and let me just say it is a very, very happy experience to be standing in a group of three swirling Greater Swiss Mountain Dogs and one slightly crazed Entelbucher puppy.  Oh those sweet faces!

So I am the foster home to a sweet two and a half year old female Swissie.  She is a little taller than Dylan was and perhaps a little longer.  She has some health issues, which is why she is a rescue, and will have for the rest of her life.  I am already smitten.

The foster paperwork I signed says that I may not post any pictures of her on a website or any social media until I adopt her.  So, only words today but I should know positively before the end of next week if this is as perfect a match as it seems right now.

Ahhhh... black dog hair is back.

Bean Update

All we can say is YIKES!!!!

The first picture is the bag with one paper towel.  The second picture shows the other bag with two thirds paper towels which appeared to be a dud but really the seeds were just too snug inside.  They are growing too!

Batiking

Lots of knitting this past week but we did fit in some time for an art project involving surface design. 

Flaked soy wax was melted and we heated up one of the  pizzell
cookie forms "rented" from the local thrift store, to use for our resist patterns.

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Excess wax is allowed to drip off the form before it is stamped.

The hot wax penetrates the fabric and is then allowed to cool and harden.

We stamped over several layers of muslin to protect the counters. 

 

Cinco de Mayo or Channeling Jack

I know, a couple of days late but we are on vacation here.

When we made our run to Costco, the tasting ladies were passing out lots of Mexican food samples.  They were very tasty and so I grabbed one box of each with the plan of Fiesta for Cinco de Mayo.

We started the day with scrambled eggs in tortillas.  We had flautas and tomatilla salsa for lunch. For dinner we warmed up pork tacos, chicken and cheese quesadillas, and shredded beef tamales.  I made a black bean and corn salad as a side.

While we were watching Jeoparday and waiting for the timer to ring, Amy saw some movement in the kitchen and gasped causing Miss Lucy to quickly remove her head from:

 

 the bean salad bowl.  Amazingly she did not knock the bowl off the counter and only a couple beans were tossed out onto the counter.  We chose to ignore the fact that we did not exactly know how much, if any, of the salad, besides those two beans, had been touched by dog lips.

The oh so innocent Lucy, surprisingly "tall" for a medium dog.

Earbud Pouches

I've been wanting to make these for a long time and of all the curious things, Amy had them on her sewing (for me) list too.  So no more delays, I had at it and they are fun to sew.  I found the tutorial here.  I should have put the ubiquitous quarter in the picture for perspective as they are not as small as you might think but just less than 4 inches in diameter.

Today's First Visitor

This is Lucy.  She is just visiting.  Really.  She is the neighbor's dog and I'm just seeing if she would be comfortable enough here to spend a week or two.  I'm sure it still smells of Dylan and I think Lucy can smell that Dylan was a big dog.  Lucy, although on the chubby side is just a medium dog, probably a small Boxer and American Staffordshire Terrier mix.  She is a very nice dog and very cute!

So the first summer with a screen/storm door and I currently have it propped open so Lucy can go in and out and get really acclimated.  Maybe we can close it in the afternoon when the bees and wasps start to buzz around.

Pre-School Science!

When Terry told me this was one of yesterday's activities in the pre-school she was teaching at, I wanted to play along!

In case I am not the only one that doesn't know about this, it's a closed sandwich bag with a wet paper towel and two bean seeds. taped to a south facing window.  I have paper towels that divide into thirds so the bag on the right has two thirds and the bag on the left has one.  Trying to improve the odds because I would very disappointed to be the only one with no bean plants.

Terry says there should be sprouting by Tuesday.  I assume the bags stay as is but I will have to check the details with her.

SPRING!