Dawn Brocco's Life & Design Blog

I felt better last night, thank goodness! Nothing a couple hours of peace and quiet can't fix. Got the mitten reknit, and worked on the patterns. Hubby got pizza for dinner, so I didn't have to cook, and I started the larger-sized cloche for the collection.

It poured overnight, so I needn't water the garden, so more wallpaper seam repair is on today's list, and maybe that 2nd coat of paint on the parlor mantel, as well as finishing that hat and helping hubby take apart and off the roof those 7 sections of scaffolding. Of course, the one-piece gutter guy never called back, never came, even though he said he'd be here sometime this week. So, now hubby has to go buy gutter sections, which are less than ideal, as they *always* leak at the seams, and the rest of the redone gutters are one-piece. I wish people would stick to what they *say* they're going to do.

Our Wildlife and Pickles



This is a photo of 2 goose families from last spring. Note the watermeal in the background just starting to take over the pond! It's with us until November when it dies off.

All the years we've been here, we've enjoyed sharing the lawns and pond with a variety of wildlife - deer, turkeys, geese, groundhogs, chipmunks, the usual squirrels, the occasional red fox, and a plethora of bird species, including owls and woodpeckers, and those little surprise-guys, the hummingbirds. We've even seen a bear once and found the remnants in the back lawn of his/her digging up of an underground beehive. And, boy, we have those! And doesn't hubby always find them!

This year, so far, we've seen many more of *our* animals, more often than usual, and much closer to the house than usual. Maybe they're bidding us to stay, as they know we love having them about, or maybe they're saying goodbye, I don't know.

The deer mom and her young were here again this morning. Mom under the hemlock not 20 feet from the house and her teenagers dancing, leaping, frolicking wildly through the back lawn - boing, boinging everywhere - maybe they like the feel of the sopping wet grass?!

But, as soon as I say "oh, babies", our dog, Pickles comes running into the kitchen from his cozy spot on the couch and woofs at me - as he knows when I say that, that I'm looking out at the animals in *his* yard!

He doesn't mind the turkeys - he watches them and gives slow, deep woofs, but her does mind the geese. Funny, as they're both birds and near the same size. The deer though, he's wild about - it's their size and that they walk, not fly. But it's their leaping and flicking of the white tails really does him in and he wants to chase them.

But, we're responsible dog owners and he never leaves our leash or the dog run line, unlike some of our neighbors, no matter *where* we live, who let their dogs wander the streets or leave them outside all day while they're at work. Pickles is my side-kick and if I'm inside, and I usually am, he much prefers to be near me. If I'm in the garden or working outside and hubby is inside, there's no consoling the dog. Hubby's presence is OK, but it's me that he wants to be with!

He was a *Pound Puppy*. We got him at one of the local shelters one March day in '95. Hubby just had the feeling to go there that day, when we hadn't been there for many months. We've been looking, for many years, for a dog that wasn't a shedder and horse-sized or a pit bull. Just this one day, he wanted to go to the shelter and I said ok, though I knew how these visits usually went.

And there he was, the only dog not barking, pressed up against the cage door. It was like he was saying "I don't belong in here, and especially not with these noisy guys." He was about 6 months old and a terrier mix, not shedding, about 25 lbs, black and white fluff. He went directly to the vet, from the shelter, to get neutered and we brought him home. He didn't bark or woof or anything for 3 days.





Here's 2 photos of him, shortly after we got him, one on the old kitchen floor, before we gutted that room, and the other on one of our wide-board pine floors. He hadn't has his bath and haircut yet. He gets those about 3-4x a year or his hair blocks his eyes and it makes it harder for him to walk or run without slipping. He ends up looking like a mini-sheepdog, and then after his haircut, which is always really short, he looks like an entirely-different dog, as in the photo below, with him sitting on one of the kitchen chairs.