Chatter Boxes

I picked these flowers this morning and brought them into work. I didn't intend to be secretive about it but when I took them up to the receptionist's desk, she was gone. Now no one knows who brought them. Everyone is chatting about who the flower fairy is. Hee Hee!



Shh...don't tell!

Side note: I'm so glad we're all past the phase in our lives when we would have assumed they were from some creepy secret admirer. Flowers are hard to enjoy when you have to figure out who you might have been extra nice to but maybe shouldn't have. Take note my single guy friends - all two of you that read this blog. Give a girl flowers. We like that. But please just tell us who you are. Secret admirers are not as fun in real life as they are on tv...or maybe that was just me. Not that it happened often. I was just usually more scared than excited. And while we're on the topic, here's another tid bit of free advice on wooing a girl. When repeatedly leaving sappy country love songs on a girl's voicemail, it's also best to reveal yourself. If you don't, you will cause said girl great anxiety that might even involve reporting you to the police. Huh? I wonder what ever happened to that guy?

It's the return of Pet Pic Friday! I know you're excited. For those of you new to the blog. This used to be a semi-regular feature before I took on a second job as a house builder. See previous pet pic posts here , here, here, here, here, and here.

This week features Sheena's new life at the lodge. She was a little slow in accepting her new country life but seems to be adjusting nicely. She is now leash-less most of the time but not without parental supervision (except for a couple nights ago when I was so annoyed with her disobedience that I decided to just let the hawks have her...John took over the parenting at that point...lucky for her).

Anyway...back to the pictures.

Here's Sheena meeting the donkey down the street. That's right people, I said donkey down the street. Truth be told, these neighbors also have a goat. The house in between has three horses, three dogs, and two sheep. It's a regular zoo out here. There's lots of animals too. (bada bing!)



I call it "Well Hello Neighbor"

This is when we discovered that using the deck like a cage was not going to work.



I call it "Escape Artist"

We lost our dog last weekend. He's a country dog so he wanders aimlessly around the countryside, spending time with his country dog friends. He goes to his friend's house and sometimes his friends come here. I imagine during the day they nap together, jump in ponds together, and from the smell of it...chase some skunk together. We give him the freedom to roam where he pleases. So it's not all that suprising when we don't see him for a few hours.

Last weekend however, he was missing overnight, which isn't normal. John asked if anyone had seen him around. We hadn't. I commented that he hadn't come home last night. We shrugged our shoulders and went about our work of planting the front flower bed.

Side note: Here's us planting the front flower bed. That's Spring. She's our landscaper. Okay, not really...she's our friend who also happens to know a lot about plants. She knows about spacing and light and when plants look healthy or sick. She's also very good at digging up irises, which makes her a-okay in my book. She took hundreds and hundreds of them last weekend.


Anyway, back to business. Suddenly Spring says, "There's Carhartt!" John calls for him but he does not come. We don't hear the familiar jingle of his tags. Where on earth is he? Spring points towards the east, "In the window," she says.

And then we saw him.


That's our neighbor's barn. He was locked inside. We're not sure how long he'd been there, but at least a day. He'd probably been in that window quite awhile thinking..."Why don't they see me?"

The neighbor's weren't home so it took awhile to rescue him. Carhartt is rather fond of the neighbors and they have taken good care of him while we were not living here. I'm sure he was hanging out with Mr. Neighbor and fell asleep...getting locked inside. John got him out using the old credit card in the door trick.

Carhartt spent the rest of the day looking rather proud of himself that he knew enough to sit in that window...willing our attention. He also drank a lot of water.

Thank you Spring for helping us with all our living things, plant and animal.

I'm not giving my address out over the internet so this post is just for our closest and dearest friends, who already know where we live.

We're thinning out our iris population and there are lots to share.

So here's what you do:

Step 1: Be our friend
Step 2: Know where we live
Step 3: Come any time, day or night, with a plastic/paper bag
Step 4: Find an iris anywhere along the driveway. Please start at the plants closest to the road. Irises look like this

(photo by Spring)
Step 5: Pull from the base of the plant - the plant and bulb should come out. If it doesn't, dig around a bit and the bulb will pop right out. They are not difficult to dig up. There should be some wiggly roots shooting off the bulb - that's good, you want that.
Step 6: Take them to your house, your mother's house, you're neighbor's house, etc.
Step 7: Cut leaves down to about 5 inches - it will look like a fan.
Step 8: Break the old bulb, with no wiggly roots, off
Step 9: Dig a hole where you want it
Step 10: Insert bulb
Step 11: Wait
Step 12: Enjoy

I got my haircut on Wednesday. I cut 7 inches off and am now sporting a flippy bob just below my chin (I tried to take a pictures but none of them turned out very well).

When it's an obvious change in style, people notice and will comment. Most people are very nice and complimentary but there have been a couple that make me doubt those that have been kind.

The first one, said in a high-pitched squeal - "Ohhhh, you so needed that!"

The second, said as I was walking into the building this morning - "Did you get your haircut? That humidity is something huh? I'm sure when you left your house this morning it was cute and flippy."

With friends like that...