I’ve been inspired by my star-gazing husband to create a little night sky of my own. ♥
This painting is done with PanPastels on black Ingres Antique paper. I’ve named it “Moonrise”. I may do a lot of these, so maybe it should really be named “Moonrise 1”.
Oh, and of course, you know me, the stars were made using glitter hairspray. :)
That puts this painting in the “With Glitter” category, right? Hahaha!
XOXO,
Lucky Dog
♥
“Year by year the complexities of this spinning world grow more bewildering and so each year we need all the more to seek peace and comfort in the joyful simplicities.”
-- Woman's Home Companion, 1935
We only planted 2 Sweet 100’s this year, and just for fun, we also planted 2 regular tomato plants. We don’t know what variety they are -- they were tagged at the nursery as “mystery/unknown”. Gosh, I hope we don’t love them… we wouldn’t know how to buy more next year! Ha-ha!
This is today's haul:
"It's difficult to think anything but pleasant thoughts while eating a home-grown tomato." -- Lewis Grizzard
XOXO,
Lucky Dog
♥
Today is the Summer Solstice! It is the longest day of the year, and the shortest night of the year.
And it's the official beginning of Summer!
What does Summer mean to you???
Watermelon and corn on the cob? OR no school, swimming, and picnics? OR vacations and fireworks and pool parties?
Unfortunately, to me, Summer means heat. Energy-draining heat. And I do not do heat well. I have actually had a doctor tell me that I am allergic to heat, thus the itchy hives. All I know is,
I love love love my air-conditioning! ♥
Maybe that’s my Texan background talking, but June, July, and August are just plain HOT. Good grief, it’s been really hot here already this month. I thought moving 500 miles north, we’d get a break on the summer heat, but noooooo.
I knew it was coming. Back when we had the blizzards in December, it seemed like it would be a welcome change from all that snow. I thought I’d be happy not to be so cold, happy to not have popsicle fingers every day, but here I am, griping about the heat. Isn’t that always the way?! :)
In
And in
September can still be hot in
Up here, Labor Day is like a line drawn in the sand that signals that the worst heat is generally over.
I hope that’s true again this year. Because then I can think, if I can make it to Labor Day, then I’ll have it made. That’s only 2½ months, right? So, if the AC holds out and we can pay the electric bills, we’ll be nice and cool! :)
The funny thing is, in
Of course, up here we have a Sonic on most every corner, with Happy Hour half-price fountain drinks and slushes between
Okay, so let’s get some peach iced tea and settle in for awhile...
Enjoy the fireflies and let the cicadas serenade you…
And whatever Summer means to you,
I hope you have a good one!
XOXO,
Lucky Dog
♥
At least, I think that's what they are. They came with the house."No act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted."
-- Aesop
Gosh, I hope this is true! ♥
It has rained 8-10” here in
Mr. Man took some pix of our creek exceeding its bank this morning. We have a retaining wall, but it was underwater, so you can’t even see it.
Like the rest of the city, we’ll be better able to assess any damage once the waters recede.
We spent the noontime hour watching a live rescue on TV. A 17 YO girl was stranded in high waters, and the TV helicopter shot live video showing her swimming and clinging to branches. She finally found a big enough tree to climb and wait in, and the helicopter pilot was able to tell the firemen and rescuers where she was.
The helicopter wanted to hover over the area, to direct the rescuers to her location, but it started to thunder and lightning, and the pilot had to move out of the area. This slowed the rescuers from finding her, and it took what seemed like ages to us, to get to her.
But then, when they did, their boat somehow tipped over and sank!
Do you believe it?!? What are the odds??
So then, there were 4 people clinging to trees, waiting to be rescued: the girl and her 3 rescuers.
After we’d been watching this over the course of the lunch hour, they finally got another boat launched and all of them were rescued. At least there was a happy ending.
And that wasn’t the only rescue of the day. There were many. Several neighborhoods are underwater, and
They are calling it a once-every-500-year “epic” event.
Gosh, I hope they’re right.
Let’s see… we’ve had:
1. Christmas Eve blizzard of 2009
2. Snowstorms in late January 2010
3. The tornado outbreak on May 10
4. The hail storm on May 16
5. The tornado outbreak on May 19
and now
6. The flash floods on June 14.
As my dear friend put it, “we’ve had the blizzard of the century, the hailstorm of the century and now the flood of the century. Please Lord, don’t let us have the heat of the century, too.”
I agree!!
XOXO,
Lucky Dog
♥
So, I’m minding my own business, doing a little late night computer surfing, when out of the corner of my eye I notice a dark bug crawling over there on the baseboard of the bedroom. Great, I thought, and Mr. Man’s already asleep.
Okay, no problem. There was a junebug in the entry the other day, it’s probably just another one of those. I’ll just go get my can of hairspray, spray him, and leave the can on top of him. That’s my signal to Mr. Man to dispose of the bug in the morning for me.
I agree with Suzanne Sugarbaker, in the TV show, Designing Women, who said, “The man should kill the bugs.” And if he’s not around, at least he gets rid of the ones I’ve already contained.
And I generally use hairspray because it doesn’t smell up the place like bug spray would, but mainly because it’s close by, and I can grab it quicker. Plus, it’s very effective at gumming up their little legs, and slowing them down so I can put the hairspray can on top of them. J
But as I got closer to the baseboard, my heart sank.
I didn’t need the hairspray, I needed the clear packaging tape.
It was a BRS.
BRS is our shorthand for Brown Recluse Spider. And if you don’t know what that is, you are most fortunate. They seem to be extremely common here in
The night of 9/11 we had one literally run in-between us in bed, on our sheets, and I whapped him with the TV remote. Mr. Man asked, what was that? And I answered, you do not want to know. Needless to say, we slept in the guest room that night. It was a different, but still very effective, kind of terrorist.
Brown recluse spiders are poisonous, and their bite can cause black streaks and the flesh literally starts dying. Cutaneous necrosis. Some people have terrible, terrible scars.
Unfortunately, I have had so much experience with them over the years, that I’ve gotten to where I can recognize them from a distance: their lightweight small body and lacy legs making them almost the size of a quarter.
But even so, I always want to be sure. Was it really an actual BRS, or am I being hyper?
We will need positive identification. I have to know. Thus the clear packaging tape. Scotch tape is too narrow for the catch, so I use the wide packaging type.
I carefully lay it down on the spider, mushing him onto the sticky part, and then I lift and fold over a long piece of clear tape on the backside, trapping him inside a clear envelope, which I carefully seal together on all the edges.
Then it’s off to the bright light with my giga reading glasses.
(my strongest pair)
Yup, there’s the violin on its back.
Darn. Darn and yikes. This was a big one, too.
Why does my head suddenly itch so much??? J
Well, now I know what Mr. Man will be doing this weekend, if I have anything to say about it. It’s gonna be too hot and muggy to do much else anyway. An indoor chore like spraying all the baseboards with bug spray sounds like just the ticket to me. I hope he agrees!!
Now, if I can just get to sleep without being all creeped out. Right...
Where are my little benign june bugs and ladybugs?
They’re much nicer to deal with! Sheesh!!!
XOXO,
Lucky Dog
♥
Summer is in full swing with our flowers blooming so pretty! I've been deadheading and deadheading, which seems to be an endless chore these days. 
It’s even named Fur Ball!
Actually, it’s the city’s fanciest pet store. You can tell that from the pretty sack. ♥
And who even knew that Bed Head had a line of dog products called Pet Head??
This immediately caught my eye because Mr. Furball has a bit of itchy skin anyway, but mainly he has a lot of knots and tangles, so I was thrilled to find a product for that.
The label reads: "Spray for tangle free, smooth and shiny fur! This formula uses Essential Fatty Acids, Sunflower Seed Oil, Wheat Protein and Vitamin E to effectively detangle knots and tame flyaways while conditioning the skin."
It even has a strawberry yogurt scent.
(So, what’s the difference between a strawberry scent and a strawberry yogurt scent, I wonder??? Hmmmm…) :)
Mr. Furball’s coat seems to be different from our other Pomeranian’s. He has a really wooly undercoat that practically felts itself! It’s kinda like a white brillo pad. I just don’t remember that with our other dog at all. I wonder if our first pom didn’t have a typical pom coat, because I barely had to groom him much. I wonder if it's possible that he didn't have a double coat and I didn't know better.
ANYway… Mr. Furball’s fur and skin could sure benefit from a detangler plus skin conditioners. And I will benefit from having a strawberry-flavored dog!
I’m sorry, a strawberry yogurt-flavored dog! Ha-ha!
XOXO,
Lucky Dog
♥
Well, it’s June, and we have finished with most of our gardening goals for the season. From here on out, we mainly need to just water everything and try to keep it all alive through the summer heat.
I did need some tomato tape, though, to hold up the CrAzY tomato branches that have escaped the tomato ladders, so we went to the nursery over the weekend to buy some.
Not that I don’t already have some tomato tape, mind you. I just know I have a roll in the garage somewhere! In fact, I’m pretty sure that I have a lifetime supply. I just have to buy some more and then I’ll be able to find it! Isn’t that how it works?? :) Or is that true only at our house?
Anyway, while we were there, I found 2 perennial flowers that I couldn’t live without:
The purple ones are called balloon flowers. They are so cool. The buds grow and grow, and really seem to develop into little balloons, which burst open into a beautiful purple blossom.
How fun is that?!
And the pink clover is exactly what my mother had in her flowerbeds the whole time I was growing up. I just love them. They seem as familiar to me as the back of my hand, and it actually warms my heart to look at them.
Is that weird, to get sentimental over a flower??
I guess not. Once I had a neighbor who had hostas, transplanted from her homestate of
I would love to have a Turk’s Cap lily someday. Momma had those, too. And maybe some camelias. I wonder if they do okay here? And I just couldn’t abide not having at least one hibiscus bush in my garden. Those plate-sized fushia blooms are just spectacular! ♥ !
I’ve had to change some of my favorites in the garden, moving to Zone 7. Mexican heather isn’t perennial here, for example. And forget dwarf pittosporum. And we’ll never get used to having Bermuda grass instead of
I especially love the garden with all its seasons. My chives are always the first sign of Spring, and deadheading my perennials lets me know that Summer is finally here. And Fall means putting down more fescue seed. It’s a nice way to mark Time.
But a flowerbed is a lifelong work-in-progress. And I’m running outa room and sunshine in mine. Some things change, some stay the same. I’m not really much of a gardener, so things have to be tough to survive in my flowerbeds. And I hope I’m learning not to take failures so personally out there. It’s a plant; I can buy another one. Why does it feel so personal?
Truth be told, it’s already a little late to be planting. It’s June already, for crying out loud. (How in the world can that be??) But more importantly, we have some really warm weather coming our way this weekend (read: hot!) (nearly 100 degrees!), so hopefully if we water a lot, they’ll be okay.
Nevertheless, I hope the new plants work out; they’re sweet little flowers. And the tomatoes, well, hopefully we can tame them into submission at last.
XOXO,
Lucky Dog
♥
-- Mother Teresa
(when asked if she got discouraged with so many dying around her despite her efforts)
