When your Puppy Eats your Swing, you Improvise

Loula the puppy ate the seat off of our tree swing. Actually, she just chewed it from the super-strong woven straps it was on and carried it away. But, Esme has not let that stop her from making use of the leftover straps. She was proud to show me what she has been doing with those arm muscles...







I think she might have a career in gymnastics ;) just kidding. I was in it as a kid and was quite impressive at the uneven bars.



What actually impressed me the most was not her setting this all up herself in front of me to show me her trick - but the way she grasped both straps in her hands and 'walked' her fingers up until she had a good foot of each strap below her hands - she took a long and deliberate time doing this and looking at the ground before she actually made her jump. She was calculating her distance and arc by experience - if I grab this much strap I won't hit the ground when I swing. Now that's some thought process kid!



note: also, I find balloon strings wrapped around everything lately. I blow them up for her (helium tank left over from a birthday two years ago!) and give her one every once in a while. While she has not learned to tie knots she has figured out that if you wrap the string around something about fifteen times it tends to stay put - and our porch, the swing straps, even the refrigerator door have been 'hit' by balloon wrappings lately. I found one balloon with the string stuck in the kitchen cupboard door the other day - because she didn't want it getting away from her while she played with something else for a while.


purple silks on the field corn


the west field

The drought has taken a big bite out of both of my experimental corn fields this year. This field has only gotten about three feet tall but there are some very small ears still happening in there. I guess it would be important to keep seed from this just for drought tolerance. The purple silks on a few of them interest me - is it the genetics, or the 'hot' acidity of the soil? I planted mostly black and blue kernel corn here to see what would happen. Now that I'm on vacation I am making sure it is getting some extra water to do what it can. Read up on it - purple silks means a phosphate deficiency. I can solve that with a little epsom salts - already have some from the cucumbers last year.


sad little main garden

This is the 'main garden' after the drought and all of the clearing out of things that had died. I have replanted some things but it will be hard going with the hot dry weather we are still having (although there were rains a week or so ago). Still, there are bees and butterflies and hummingbirds and goldfinches enjoying the sunflowers, zinnias and bean flowers. And at that, it is still worthwhile even if the new plantings do not do much. Planted experimental field corn plot #2 yesterday in front of the sunflowers. Beans coming up everywhere from last week - corn coming up.... pulling in sunflower heads to dry every few days and getting nearly an entire quart jar of dried black seed already. The lemon sunflowers have a strange blue-gray tinge to them which keeps them separate from the other - there is maybe a small relish jar half full of those seeds.


lemon sunflower head