Speaking of Forsythia...

While walking Kaylee and Ziggy yesterday between bouts of gardening and wall erecting, we wandered down Luna ridge, named by Hal as Luna is buried there. We paid our respects at her grave, with Rocket's daffodils blooming above her. 

Farther on I saw the 5 forsythia we planted one summer when we were still living in Virginia. They were in full bloom. I was totally surprised, as it was so long ago I had forgotten about them. They're in clay, untended, unfertilized, it's no wonder they're still small but it pleased me to see.

20 plus year old forsythia

A Surprise Cherry Tree!

A week ago, Hal surprised me by having taken his tractor and its brush mower to the weed trees and brush, (tag alders, Russian olives, golden rod, etc) along the slight dip at the edge of our future back yard. This exposed the ridge behind it where Luna is buried. as well as the small trees we have planted there. It gives us a better view from the living room and kitchen. It also exposes the low spot we hope to turn into a small pond someday. 

He also exposed a nice cherry tree  which he mowed around. So besides the 2 apple trees I planted this spring, we will have a nice little cherry tree in the backyard.

Luna is buried near that white tree protector on the right of the photo. The daffodils I planted over her should be visible next spring.

A Rambling Update

I've been neglecting my blog again so I will attempt to catch up on a few things.

kennebec red pontiac and short row of yukon gold

My potatoes I planted have finally started sprouting a couple days ago, I counted about 35 out of the 60+ I planted. There are 3 varieties, red pontiac, yukon gold, and kennebec. I also bought flowers from my favorite nursery, Harger's in Glennie along with some tomato plants.

almost filled the back of my car

I gave a few tomato plants to Hal's cousin along with some pea seeds and peppers and potatoes. I suspect more will be up today. Most of my snow peas are up, a whole row I planted in Spruce shows no signs though the first row is doing well, none of them are more than a couple inches high. I blame the random cold snaps, 3 nights in the mid 20s in the 3rd week of May, killed any chance of my yellow delicious apple tree flowering at all. And 2 chances for frost this weekend with lows in the 30s so I'm not planting my tomatoes in Spruce either till afterward. I will  cover the ones I have in pots here at home.

I planted a couple apple trees I bought from the Alcona conservation district behind the new house. Hal dropped a couple loads of top soil in 2 mounds to raise the roots up a bit because it's pretty wet there in the spring, they are already leafing out. I also planted 5 Saskatoon serviceberry over on the hill either side of Luna's grave. Got 5 forsythia which I planted in pots till I figure out where they are going. Need soil around the house before I can plant them as landscape shrubs. Was thinking about the north side of the house but maybe I'll put them near the apple trees, who knows? I certainly don't!

We also got the house cleaned up and listed with a new agent, the Scofield Realty in Hale that had the original listing when we bought 20 years ago. With the insanity of the pandemic going on I don't know if it will hurt sales (more than likely) or possibly help by someone wanting a place to get away from the cities. Guess we'll find out eventually. It only listed on Memorial Day weekend so it's too soon to tell.

While I deal with veggies and flowers and keeping the house clean Hal has been spreading and leveling sand into the crawlspace and starting the internal build by adding the floor joists one 12 ft square section at a time. He temporarily put up a couple pieces of OSB subfloor so we could sit in the living room and finally see what the view looks like through one of the windows.

Two 12 ft square joist sections out of 14

You see more sky than land because we were sitting on plastic Adirondack chairs and those are rather low. Real living room furniture heights will make a difference. Not too bad though.

We've had a miserable heat wave with high humidity the last few days so it's been hard working outside (and inside for Hal), and now there could be a possibility of frost this weekend so I'm holding off planting the remaining plants. It's been a bizarre spring, an even more bizarre year (I do not want to go into the idiocy going on within Michigan right now)  but I am hoping something good will occur sometime this year. 

Back for the Holidays

My younger sister, boyfriend and pup Lyra, Luna's niece came back to the swamp for Christmas on Friday. Lyra had her head out the window and was making all kinds of noise, she knew where she was going, it was funny. And when Ziggy heard her he started doing the same thing, running about like a maniac like his long lost friend had come home. Here is a video of the insanity when they met.

The next day we went out on our first walk and surveyed possible Christmas trees including the one I had originally picked out a month ago. And then Lyra found a good spot to sniff. and Kaylee had to join her.

On our second walk, later in the afternoon while Lyra ranged ahead, Kaylee found a stick and Ziggy decided he wanted it, too.

More Kaylee and Ziggy Photos

Here are a few photos from the past week.

Kaylee loves Duckworth, Luna's toy she got last Christmas and the last toy she carried around (she loved to carry stuffed toys around) the day before I had to let her go. I am so glad Duckworth got adopted. Kaylee sleeps with him every night, too.

Since Ziggy became extremely unhappy being left alone when I took Kaylee to the build with me (she cannot be trusted to stay home alone uncrated yet.) I started taking him, too. When I am not helping Hal I try to pay attention to them and take them on short walks. They still get very bored.

 After a swimming retrieve at Bliss Lake yesterday, relaxing in the shallows.

We're done now, mom, we can go home.

She'll Play with Anything

Tonight Kaylee was tearing up a pee pad, which is about the only use they've ever gotten by her. 

She has ropes and balls, and chew toys and a grunting hedgehog she seems to love as much as Luna loved hers. But one of her favorite things is plastic bottles. She particularly likes milk jugs. Here's a video.

I thought the Ziggy-Kaylee Relationship was Better

But last night while she was on her back, playing with her hanging rope toy, Ziggy went a bit ballistic at her, snarling, baring teeth, not good. I put him outside. I didn't let him in until she took herself off to her crate for a nap. After he spent some time on my recliner with me. She spent the night napping in her crate so there were no more incidents

Otherwise, Ziggy is very needy, staring at me, following me around, things he never really used to do. Yesterday I took both pups to the build site, tied her in the shaded garage and he just hung around with the shock collar on. It was about 83 degrees, sunny and he starts following me around the yard while I was mowing the fields. Crazy, his tongue hanging out, panting, a black dog walking behind my riding mower. I had to make him lay down. He chose to leap back into the car, so I had to pull it all the way into the garage to get him into the shade. Kaylee just laid around waiting for me to take them walking.

I'm really unsure how to proceed to fix this, assuming it can be fixed, and it must be fixed because getting rid of either dog is not an option. I have decided that from now on when she naps in her crate and I am not walking Ziggy alone, etc. he will also have to stay in the same room with her. Whether it helps remains to be seen. After 2 weeks I was hoping for more harmony. wish I could remember how long it took Rocket to like Luna. Luna seemed to adore Ziggy from the beginning. Maybe it's a guy thing to hate the new puppy?

The Garden Hose

Ziggy hates the garden hose. So did Luna. But in summer time when the dogs rolled in crap out it came along with doggie shampoo. Like today, Ziggy found something foul to roll in. Fortunately, Kaylee didn't have a chance to join him. He'd probably have chased her away anyway, he still is avoiding her and growling and snapping when she approaches.

So when we got home from our afternoon walk, Ziggy had a bath in the driveway and tried to escape several times. Kaylee, on the other hand, tried to get right into the mix and snap at the water. Rocket used to like the hose. It looks like Kaylee might, too. I will have to try a sprinkler tomorrow and see what happens!

It's Been Hectic

I thought I would post this yesterday but Kaylee is becoming a little maniac. She got diarrhea yesterday and I took her to the vet in Lincoln this morning. Coccidia. She's on a liquid to control the parasite and a pill to stiffen up the poo. She's feeling better, and is eating like a horse.The last 2 days she'd been eating a lot less. Today I can't seem to stop her eating.  Right now she is wrestling with a fake lambswool dog bed. Here are some photos from her arrival Tuesday and today, Thursday.

July 31

Coming home

Ziggy avoiding Kaylee

a few cheap dollar store toys

August 2

I'm a little worried that Ziggy still growls at her and doesn't really want anything to do with Kaylee. I hope he wasn't liking being an only dog and this is just temporary. But he is 7.5 years old. Luna was only 5 when I got him. Fingers crossed things will improve soon.

a little closer but not buddies yet

 She learned to climb stairs yesterday but is getting better today.

Up towards the deck

relaxing before more mayhem

PUPPY!

So yesterday, Friday the 13th, I went to breakfast at the Lunch Box in Curran, (had the biscuits and gravy which were very good, if a bit over peppered), with my friend Tom, a man who has had many a bird dog over the years which he trained himself for upland bird hunting.  After breakfast we drove out to the town of Hillman to look at PUPPIES!!!

A couple days earlier my friend Judy's SIL heard an ad on WATZ radio for chocolate labrador retriever puppies for sale in Hillman and called me. I had already decided not to look at any more dog adoption pages at petfinder.com till after we finished putting the roof on the new house. So the plan to look for a new pup would be late September or early October. However, I was not going to turn down some cute little pup that might fall into my lap.

According to Hal's preferences the plan also meant NO PUPPIES. He'd rather I get a dog about 5 years old, figuring I would take Ziggy to meet every prospective dog at various shelters. That could take forever, no guarantee they'd get along or that I could find anything other than "lab mixes", most of them suspiciously pit bull types. Now I know there are many wonderful pit bulls and other dogs but I LOVE labradors, and that's what I want. And the minute a real lab shows up at a shelter they are usually snapped up.

I called the radio station, got the phone number, called and left a message. In a couple of hours the owner called me back I got to ask questions about price, how many there were etc and said I'd call back after talking to Hal.

I explained all my fears about not finding a good match to Hal and he relented. In fact he wants to go on record that he didn't say "yes, get a puppy," but "I won't stop you." YIPPEE! Good enough for me! Family harmony and a possible puppy. I texted Tom, called the owner back and 2 days later, on Friday, a rainy day so I wasn't interrupting the roofing, Tom and I headed to Hillman, in his truck because when I pulled my car out of the garage there was pale gray smoke coming out of the engine.

So long story short, I got to play with puppies, 3 girls still unadopted/sold. The 2 young girls who were there with their grandpa handed me the one they called Leia, put another they called Sophie and the third whose name I cannot recall on the floor. Mostly they preferred to wander off or eat, but I thought maybe little Leia hung around me a bit more. Of course, I hardly put her down once I had my hands on her so maybe she had no choice really.

So in 3 weeks, this little gal is coming home with me. I have named her Kaylee. The name may even stick. I think Luna would be happy for me. She always wanted me to be happy.

 Mom's name is Marly.

She is the one with the orange collar

Luna

The good day on Thursday, when she ate, and walked, rolled on the grass, laid in her swamp, and greeted people who came by was followed on Friday by limp tail, not eating anything for 36 plus hours, not caring when I drove her over to see Judy. The light was literally gone from her eyes. This morning she coughed up a vile yellow liquid shortly after fighting her to force down pills which was never a problem before. So Hal and I took her back to see Dr King at 11 am. Her lungs sounded worse to him, I made the decision, Dr King agreed it was for the best.

So my best yellow furry friend in all the world was gone by noon. I feel like maybe I jumped the gun, maybe another day would have made a difference, but probably not.  Watching her slowly fade away, in obvious respiratory distress, but not acting like it really hurt.... Dogs are so damn stoic.

We took her to our new home. We took Ziggy. He knows, he watched us bury her. I always thought I'd bury her next to Rocket but we're moving. We can't take Rocket with us but I can take a few of the mass of daffodils planted over his grave with us and plant them over hers. I'll be able to see the hill where she lays by the lilac and white oak tree from the new house.

This hurts so much.

I miss you so much my sweet little Luna.

Goodbye.

Luna  9-11-2005 to 6-23-2018

Hopeful Luna Update

She ate a little supper and she ate a little breakfast. She spent a lot time in the garage (which isn't unusual in summer anyway) and then the basement and I found her sound asleep on the floor of the small bedroom next to ours this morning.

Hoping it's not wishful thinking but she seems a bit peppier today, more alert, too. When a neighbor wandered over from Judy's old house next door Ziggy and I walked back with her and Luna followed. We walked very slowly for her. She even went into her usual swamp hole for a drink and a mud bath. Maybe the meds are working, I hope so, even if it gives her just another good month, or even a week, she is worth it.

Luna and duckworth

Luna is Not Well

In fact she may not have much time left at all.

For about 10 days she's been choking/coughing randomly but nothing comes up. She's been skipping meals, She no longer walks far and in the last few days she pretty much doesn't walk at all. And in the last 36 hours her abdomen swelled as if full of fluid. So we went to the vet today and my suspicions were confirmed. Luna has congestive heart failure. As well as some tachycardia.

So she's on furosemide, a diuretic to remove the fluid, digoxin for her heart and enalapril for something to do with her blood pressure. The doctor says it will either help her or not do anything. Apparently it depends on the dog. I'll know by Monday. Today is Wednesday.

For a very sick girl she certainly seems happy enough, her tail wags, she still eats biscuits. She is alert, she has been hanging out in the garage, the big door open so she can go in and out. That's where she is now. I check on her periodically and she always seems to be fine.

I knew this was coming, she turns 13 in September after all. I just don't want it to happen. You can never be ready for this.

Thwarted by Thunderstorms

Today was the day Hal needed me back at the build to cut purlins for the left side of the house, finally we were going to have some progress to show! But after I selected the first twelve 14 footers and loaded them onto the truck for the drive back to the barn and the equipment, the sky decided to open up, make noise and drop water. Got a bit windy, too.

So much for the morning forecast of no rain till tomorrow! Hal stayed because he thought there would be a long enough break (it did get sunny again, but the clouds to the west were massive) to get some of the other work done that he can do alone. I got to go home and start making pizza. No planned leftovers for tonight anymore!

So the dough is in the bread machine doing doughy things and it is pouring rain here at home. Temperature dropped from near 90 (it was there earlier today) to only 78 now. Looks like it's still a dry spot surrounding Hal, according to the radar. Not for too much longer though.

Good thing Ziggy chose to come in from his spot under the deck. He'd be a soggy mess now. Luna is hiding in one of the bedrooms or the basement. Not because of the thunder anymore, she's pretty deaf now, sweet, old girl. She just keeps looking for cooler spots to lay down.

Maybe I'll get to cut some lumber tomorrow. I hope so even though they're predicting the thunderstorms for then. We shall see.

We're Tired

Hal and I came to a decision about 3 months ago, in a roundabout kind of way. I'm tired of the long drives to Alpena and back (70 miles), he's tired of the numerous trips he's had to take to deal with his dad's cattle in winter and the 35 mile round trips whenever he needs to go to the camp/pole barn. We're both tired of driving long distances to decent restaurants. I'm tired of all the staircases. I know Luna is tired of them, too. In fact she seems to be in pain any time she has to climb them. I know all 4 of us, especially Ziggy, are tired of deer flies and mosquitos which are terrible this year. Ziggy's black coat seems to be a magnet for them, he constantly drops to his haunches (usually right at my feet, tripping me in the process) to protect his butt while he snaps deer flies out of the air. So whenever Hal and I have been in the vicinity of the camp we'd jokingly make the comment often seen on residential billboards, "if we lived here we'd be home now."

At some point the light dawned and we both realized we wouldn't actually mind moving there.

Yes, we've become tired of the swamp. Yet it's still a beautiful place and I know I'll miss it. But I think it's time to go.

So we started a massive clean up project of the house this spring. The county had its biennial cleanup in May so we took advantage and got rid of lots of large things that were just in the way for only $25. And believe it or not, the hot tub was cut up and dumped as well. After the filter freezing 2 winters ago when the breaker failed, it just wasn't worth fixing.

Hal and the Haul

In the meantime Hal had a well dug. It is 140 feet deep and is a flowing artesian well with quite an impressive flow. They finally capped it today after telling us a couple weeks ago they couldn't. Not really sure about this well company now, they seem to keep changing their minds about things and asking for more money. I know they want to keep "working" for us in the near future but Hal is having other thoughts. I wish the water tasted as good as it does here, but alas, it does not.

Hal is in charge of getting the site ready for a new house, the well, the septic, the land leveled, permits, etc. I'm in charge of selling the house.  I've hired a roofer to replace our very leaky roof which I was hoping would be done by mid July but all it does is rain up here and that backs them up. I think I'll be lucky if they're here by August.

I also want to stain the front side of the exterior siding, I did the east wall 3 years ago then ran out of steam. The rain however has been a problem again. I finally finished cleaning the front yesterday after trying last week and needing a better cleaning agent. Now I just need 3 days of dry weather. One to dry out the siding, one for 2 coats and then another to dry before the rain hits again.

Hired a friend with a cleaning business to come tomorrow to dust, polish, in general spruce up the place before the realtor comes next week to take photos. Hope to have the house listed by July 1, even if the roof hasn't been replaced or the siding stained, or the grass hasn't been cut because it's too dang wet! It will be interesting, if not also nerve wracking to see if the house sells fast, or not at all, and then what will we do?

Mundane Happenings Which I Forgot to Post a Month Ago

My snowpeas started to sprout a few days ago and I planted the remaining packets I had before the last rain. I also scavenged the chicken wire around  the veggie garden across the driveway that never did well because it was in the swamp and wrapped the heck out of it. This garden is in the front yard inside one of the chicken runs, where I moved it to last summer after the bunny and deer devastation in my first garden that had never happened before in the previous 15 years I had planted there! In another month I can plant my beans and cukes and zukes.

The weather has been mostly delightful in the 70s the last 2 days though a drop to about 41 for a high is forecast in 2 days, with almost 2 inches of rain possible over that day and the next! At least it isn't snow which could happen with the temps at night in the low 30s'.

Hal and I have been doing other things though. I had 3 roofing companies bid to re-roof the house, we picked number 2 who was in the middle price wise but he had a few points the others didn't stress that we liked and he and Hal got along very well. So I signed a contract and we'll have a new roof around the beginning of July. It will be nice to have a roof that does not leak.

Yesterday I took Ziggy to the vet for his yearly shots. I left Luna home though. She is 11 years 7 months old and it shows. It's almost impossible to get her into the car, I have to pick up her back end every time and she's about 75 pounds. Even Ziggy required a little back end help to get him onto the back seat. He has no trouble jumping into the cargo hold at the back but the footwell/seat arrangement confuses him. The cargo hold was packed with stuff to donate, the food cooler and a bunch of bags as I was shopping with Judy as well. Fortunately though it was  degrees at home it was only 63 down at the vets, clouding over and then lots of rain so there was no danger of Zig overheating while we shopped. (and the shopping was short for once!! the eating at the AYCE Chinese restaurant down there was very enjoyable though.

While I was gone Hal emptied the hot tub, took his chainsaw and reciprocating saw and hacked it to pieces. We made the decision to get rid of it 3 days ago rather than go to the very expensive route of trying to fix a broken filter system (it died when the breaker failed and went unnoticed during a -20 F degree winter), a new blower, which failed pretty much right when we moved in, a dead light which leaked and it was developing micro fractures all along it's edges. In the last year we probably used it once or twice, so it will not be missed.

I started cleaning the siding on the front of the house, I need to continue the staining that I started 3 years ago and never got beyond the east wall. That wall is holding up nicely, by the way. There is lots of mildew so I'm adding a little bleach to the water and scrubbing away. This will be an all summer job. I hope to do a little more today.

She's Not Toothless... Yet

So a couple days after Ziggy's tongue operation I went to brush Luna's teeth on (Sunday night?) and noticed one of her back molars was rather ragged. On closer inspection I saw the side was sheered off and there was a piece of tooth floating below the gumline. She did not like me touching it. I had no idea she had broken it though I should have as I heard it when it happened. She was chewing on one of those peanut butter stuffed bones, heard a horrendous crack and I checked the floor for a broken piece and didn't find one but for some reason I didn't suspect he tooth. Luna never made a noise.

Luna pants a lot. Looking back at the few weeks between the break and he discovery she really seemed to be panting more. But I didn't put two and two together. So my poor girl had probably been in pain at least a month. She got to see the vet by midweek and on Friday, had it removed.

It's been 10 days or so and she's panting a lot again. I guess I had better go look at the removal spot just in case. SHe finished her antibiotics a few days ago.

What's Been Happening?

This is sort a catch up post, probably won't be that detailed but more of a list of things that have happened or are going on etc., whatever I can think of in the next half hour before I go to bed.

In no particular order.

Tonight one of my upper right molars, one that had a root canal and that broke a year ago and was rebuilt and recrowned by my dentist the first time it broke, fell out. Knew it would happen, just didn't know when. I have opted to get an implant because I refuse to need dentures some day. Have to pay fot this whole thing myself as we don't have dental insurance. Ah well, it's a lot of money.

Bought a used small camera last month from a guy on dpreview.com who at first had offered to just give me the same camera I already had because he saw my post about mine have dust on the senosr. Instead I got the Panasonic ZS-50 for a very good price. I haven't been able to do too much with the camera outside because of extremely lousy weather in th month I've owned it but I'll keep trying. Here's a photo I took with it.

metal chicken on the plastic tree

My younger sister and her BF and Lyra were here for 2 weeks at Christmas. We had a very good time. There was food and the men hunted and there was more food. Looking forward to their next visit.

I bought another camera Sunday night and it was delivered yesterday. This one is the Panasonic FZ300. It's almost one  f-stop faster than what I had, 2.8, is weather sealed and has been getting very good reviews. I've seen lots of excellent photos. It's not perfect but for a fixed lens camera with a 600mm zoom for the price I got it for, I'm pretty happy. The weather has been lousy of course, but I managed to go outside with it and take a few photos but they're still in the camera so there won't be any here tonight.

We're dumping DISH as our internet service provider and switching to Exede. Ever since we both got Windows 10 installed on our laptops, the only reason I can think of, we run out of bandwidth less than a week into each month and end up with our download speeds throttled down to somewhere around 128 kbps. It's ridiculous. Five, 5, GB a month? We can't watch you tubes, photo heavy sites are killers. I take photos I am a member of a photo heavy site, both Hal and I are on Facebook. Exede claims we will get 150 GB a month for barely much more. So hopefully, they come tomorrow and internet will be fun to use again.

I bought a shock collar for Ziggy. He has been bad. I won't go into the things he has done but I determined in mid December it was the only thing left to try. It is my second brand, the first was dead in the water when I got it. The new one works great. It has a beep mode, a vibration and the shock. I have not used the shock once. not once! The beep works. I've used the vibration a couple of times and now it's just hit the beep and he comes running. No more screaming my head off for him to come. He's such a well behaved boy now. I hardly even use the beep. I blame the stubborn beagle half of him for having to resort to this but it works. Now Luna is less well behave on our walks.

Okay, it's possible the satellite person could be here at 8 am so I must head to bed.

Good night and Happy New Year!

A Few Dogs

I have been ignoring my blog, so here's a photo of dogs taken with my "new" used Panasonic ZS50. Ziggy is the little black one, Luna is the yellow one on the left, and Lyra, visiting from Massachusetts is the creamy one in the back. I think they are enjoying the snow.

Skunked Again!

Barely 1/3 of a mile into our morning walk Ziggy come barreling past me, leaping a downed tree and within 30 seconds the pungent smell of skunk wafted to my nostrils. Yes, Ziggy has for the second time in his life attempted to play with a skunk. At least he didn't take if full force into his mouth, it seemed to be a glancing blow. I cut the walk short there and we went home with Ziggy rolling in leaves, dirt, weeds, every few seconds trying to get rid of the smell.

I gathered the bucket, hydrogen peroxide, baking soda, Dawn dish-washing liquid and a little lemon juice which isn't in the traditional recipe but I think it helps. So Ziggy is freshly washed, unhappy though that made him. And now he is drying outside, also unhappy that I won't let him back into the house yet.

At least this time I remembered to wear rubber gloves.

And Luna, smart girl, stayed out of trouble.